Techland's design made it clearer that the core of the game and the roots of its original success lay in parkour and combat.
The emergence of the first generation of "Fading Light" created a subtle phenomenon: its developer Techland was not among the first-line studios, and many players who were accustomed to staring at masterpieces did not leave a place for it, so the final sales performance was misplaced with the "impression" in many people's minds. But that doesn't stop more people from feeling the developer's efforts and ambitions to join the first echelon.
Techland is also not very high-profile in terms of its original sales figures. The last official figure was in 2018, three years after the initial release, and the full-platform sales reached 13 million units. In an interview with Xbox's official magazine last year, designer Tymon Smektała revealed that the game's sales have exceeded 17 million. This is undoubtedly a miraculous achievement for a team that has not yet entered the first line of AAA studios.
If the original Polish studio intentionally or unintentionally exposed its ambitions, then "Fading Light 2: The Battle of Man and Ren", released on February 4, is a concentrated embodiment of this ambition, and the 1500-person development scale makes it impossible for players who ignored the first part to ignore the new work again.
In the first ten hours of gameplay of "Gone Withering Light 2", in addition to the improvement of the screen, for the old players, the first change intuitively felt was that the enemy had a blood groove. This loses some of the game's sense of realism and oppression, but with it comes a sense of certainty and confidence in the player's battles, which is crucial for improving the game experience.
In the middle and late stages of the original generation, the ammunition of long-range thermal weapons is too easy to obtain, and players will instinctively be more inclined to burst out, while the gameplay is unlocked, resulting in a cliff-like discount on the game experience, which has become the biggest criticism in terms of gameplay in the original generation. This problem was alleviated in the sequel due to the rich and varied terrain environment and the more useable and easy-to-use melee energy savings, the developers' efforts to encourage players to fight closely were quite effective, my attention was attracted by the smooth movements and battles, and the boring fatigue was much later than in the original generation.
The original hot weapons deal a lot of gameplay damage
Besides, when you can rush to the enemy standing on the edge of the roof, grab it and jump off the roof together, use its body as a landing buffer, and fall to the enemy at the moment of landing without being injured. In the face of such a cool style of play, what reason is there to use the ranged weapon in hand?
The most obvious improvement in the second-generation system is the simplification of the skill tree from three sets in the original generation to two sets. The developers chose to eliminate survival skills and retain the parkour and combat skill trees, which simplified the game system and enhanced the experience, but also showed that Techland more clearly recognized in the design that the core of the game and the foundation of the success of the original generation lies in parkour and combat. Overall, it is wise to make this subtraction.
In the early generation, due to the lack of skills in the early stages, players could only rely entirely on their own reactions and positions to survive the early stages of the game, and many players were discouraged that year. In the first few battles, players can already master some useful skills against humans and zombies, and it is much easier to get started. But that doesn't mean that the fun of the second generation will be unlocked prematurely, and the skills for different enemies and terrains in the later period are more abundant than those of the original generation, and the vast majority of them can find their place to use.
Before becoming a National Geographic game, the Assassin's Creed series was barely a city rooftop parkour game, after all, the third-person perspective had an innate advantage in action. The Edge of the Mirror series proved the viability of first-person parkour, but its sequel failed to carry it forward. For years I had a hard time believing that this was a zombie survival game.
If you're lucky enough to overcome 3D vertigo, Gone With The Glow 2 will give you the best first-person parkour experience ever. The original parkour is already quite good, a variety of stunts and jumping and climbing adsorption judgment have achieved a natural connection, with the unlocking of parkour skills, after mastery, players can smoothly shuttle between the roof.
However, the evolution of parkour design in the second generation was unexpected. Of the two maps offered in the game, the first one is designed to be closer to the original, small and compact, and the buildings are mainly low buildings, where players can use traditional parkour skills. The game's expendable stamina is limited, which encourages players to reduce brainless climbing and instead maximize the efficiency of climbing and parkour.
As the quest progresses, players who have unlocked many skills will come to the second map of the game, which is the biggest feature of the second generation: the three-dimensional space lined with high-rise buildings. After mastering endurance distribution and more parkour skills, your series of moves through the city will become more silky smooth, and most of the movements will be completed in one go whenever you wish.
The lack of fast-moving features in the early generation has caused mixed reviews, but if movement itself has become enjoyment, then many times fast-moving has become a flaw that destroys the game experience like hot weapons. Of course, the result of the trade-off between the developer's own design ideals and the player's appeal often wins the reputation at the expense of the former, so the second generation still joins the fast movement, but in the early stage, the player must first explore on foot for a long time.
In addition to the classic action game interactive elements such as monkey poles and swing ropes, this game also designed parkour actions and skills specifically for high-rise buildings, and even added a simple glider, as long as you operate properly, parkour can achieve a seamless connection between high-rise and high-rise, high-rise and ground-level, and there are many explorable areas in high-rise buildings, which is the most closely integrated game I have ever seen in the Z-axis direction.
However, it may be that the vertical expansion of the game map brings obstacles to game optimization. The art of the game is quite beautiful, but it does not reach the next generation level in all aspects of the screen, but the current generation of console version in the high-quality mode of the frame rate can only lock 30 frames, pay attention to the frame rate players can only choose the performance mode to get 60FPS, fortunately the gap between the two quality is not significant. Judging from the performance of the PC version we tested, the game's requirements for graphics cards are not polite at all.
The day and night cycle has long been standard in the open world, but in the vast majority of games, day and night are only visually reflected. Techland is clearly not satisfied with this, the initial mid-day outdoor zombie enemies are slow to move and attack, even if they attract a large number of zombies at the same time, the player will not feel the pressure. Zombies behave at night like a complete game change, the dull blind snail immediately turns into a galloping berserker, although killing zombies at night is more exciting and the experience reward is higher, but I would say that the developer is simply encouraging the player to sneak during the night.
Gone With the Wind 2 further deepens the bright spot of the difference in day and night gameplay. The original generation of players complained that the outdoor during the day is too simple, and the night and indoor are too difficult, and now the daytime outdoor idle walking is finally over, the outdoor enemy is now quite threatening to the player, and the indoor zombies can also be lured to the outdoors at night, and the zombies who chase away cannot return to their hometown, so that taking the opportunity to return to the indoor exploration and looting during the day is no longer the patent of the bold player.
Indoors and at night are completely different experiences
Players who have played the first generation should have a "fresh memory" of the game's script and dialogue: the lines and cutscenes are full of clichés, and you can guess the end after playing the beginning, and some of the dialogue is so awkward that you can't help but cover your face. This aspect has improved in the second generation, but as an open world game with a lot of RPG elements, the script of the second generation is relatively simple. Although the player has a choice of dialogue, the impact on the plot is very limited.
The multiplayer part of The Lost Light's original generation is another reason for its widespread acclaim, allowing four players to work together to complete the main storyline, an experience of spending dozens of hours together with friends in gags, which is now increasingly valued by the single-player community.
The sequel also allows a player to invite up to three friends to explore the map and complete many challenges that would never have been possible when alone. For example, when you've provoked a group of zombies chasing you to death at night, you can't be patient enough to pry a lock, and under the cover of your teammates, you can calmly and calmly pry the lock to open the door for everyone's benefit. By the way, in the four-person cooperation, if you provoke a group of zombies at night, you will have the instant visual sense of "The Way to Survive".
Large maps, side quests, collectibles, all the essentials of an open-world game are all available in Fading Lights 2, and I didn't encounter any bugs worth mentioning in the 20 hours before the deadline.
In addition, the rise of China's legitimate game market has also brought more and more obvious benefits to domestic players - better localization than before. The importance that European and American game companies have attached to the Chinese market in recent years has reached an embarrassing level, and I believe that sooner or later I will get used to this, but at this stage, I have to sigh at the excellent Chinese Simplified translation and dubbing quality of Fading Light 2. The matching of the character's lip type with the Chinese voice also eliminates the "dubbing sense", further enhancing the emotional substitution of players in the Chinese-speaking area.
It's like a re-reminder to Chinese players that the polish game industry, which is emerging around the world, doesn't have its honors and achievements just for individual Polish companies. At least in Fading Light 2's design breakthroughs and emphasis on players, you can see that Techland has the same "Polish conscience".