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Dying Light crosses Dead Island with Mirrors Edge and sprinkles it with I Am Legend

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I Am Legend was a fine film – not great, certainly – but it was solid and compelling, particularly as a result of the clear danger that nighttime presented protagonist Robert Neville. At night the monsters filling the city were able to hunt him freely, uninhibited by the sun’s harmful rays.

Techland are taking frames out of the film’s reel with their latest project: Dying Light. It sees you searching the game’s Rio de Janeiro-styled city for supplies by day and holding up in buildings by night, fighting off hordes of hunting creatures.

And all with a dash of first-person freerunning to keep us entertained.

Now, according to the press release slipped under my door earlier today, Dying Light is “a first-person, action survival horror video game with a portentous day-night cycle set in a vast open world”. The open-world may be a little over-egged, considering this is Techland developing the game. Most famous for Dead Island, Techland’s zombie game was also called open-world but it was made up of different connected zones, rather than being like, say, Skyrim. The world wasn’t open, per se, but opened up as you progressed through the story. It also provided little to incline you to explore areas you’d moved through already.

Of course, there may be a marked shift from Techland in their development style.

Other similarities to Dead Island can be seen in the Rio de Janerio-esque city design, combat with zombie-like infected, and a weapon crafting system.

Where Dying Light sees a major departure from the Dead Island series is in the game’s free-running movement system. If done right we could be seeing a Mirror’s Edge-like experience. Mirror’s Edge and zombies would be an excellent thing.

Here are some screens of the new game:

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