Tymon Smektala is the person responsible for directing Dying Light, and after 13 years of work at Techland he seems to be done with it. While the latter titles in the Dying Light franchise weren’t the best, the first one is genuinely an amazing experience that still holds up even today, and it has defined a genre as a whole. All the parkour, all the freedom in ways to do things was something never before seen in other games, at least coming from a small company like Techland used to be. There’s tons of reasons to praise the first game, however we need to focus on the fact that someone important isn’t working on it anymore.
The future of Dying Light
Considering the quality of the sequels and other entries, its definitely a bad sign when the director just leaves the series to its own fate. There does not seem to be anyone involved at Techland who cares about cultivating the IP further, so perhaps we can say goodbye to it unless its some sort of remake or remaster. There will always be someone who will just resurrect an old IP even if the original team isn’t involved anymore, and while I consider that a way to defile the creative vision of people, some see it as a boon.
Sometimes one can get burnt out of working on the same things for more than a decade, so its understandable that Tymon Smektala decided to take a leave to focus on other things. So many creatives have taken the same approach such as Hideo Kojima, or even other Konami staff, to end up following their own path instead of being restricted in what they can do with what they created. Moving on is a good thing, especially if it opens a door to a vast array of possibilities in the future, maybe Dying Light finally died, but a spiritual successor might pop up.
