Comment on Dying Light 2 Removes Stamina from Parkour System
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day agoI assume a mix of testing late stage balancing for the new one and realizing that “Aiden Chase” from DL1 is not the legendary video game protagonist they thought he was and that they have to actually remind people that DL can be GOOD with a good game.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I thought DL1 was Kyle Crane? Was Aiden even in DL1? I’m a little confused by what you mean.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Eh, whatever. They’re both the same personality-less void with a buzzcut who will probably be played in an adaptation by Jai Courtney. Although Jade was way cooler than whatever the hell Rosario Dawson was doing.
Its just hilarious how much the marketing has tried to portray (I’ll take your word on it) Kyle as some amazing protagonist that we all missed and that the only problem DL2 had was that it wasn’t about Kyle. And… it is telling that basically every big press release was like “The hero you have all been missing, the protagonist of the good Dying Light, Kyle Crane!!!”.
And don’t get me wrong, I think that playing as a human/zombie hybrid who is powered by energy drinks, zombrex, and the magic pseudo-African tribe (that lived in the Middle East) is a REALLY interesting premise in the same way that the console only Far Cry 1 was.
But it also very much speaks to the mess that DL2 has been and how much of that game’s life cycle has been just undoing all the risks they took. Like, take the guns for example (DL2 sure did!). The excuse for why there were no guns in the entire world was half-assed but… anyone who played DL1 can tell you that they kind of broke late game once you could walk around with full purple AR ammo at all times.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Totally agreed. Kyle Crane is pretty forgettable, I had do look his name up, in fact I had to look both the protagonists names up.
The funny thing about the Kyle Crane stuff is that for anyone with even a passing interest in media other than video games… you’ve heard Roger Craig Smith’s voice everywhere for over a decade now! He’s one of the most prolific and easily forgettable voice actors there is! Not only was he the voice for Sonic the Hedgehog in a litany of cartoon and video game iterations, but he’s just in nearly anything you can think of that requires voice acting. He literally was in 122 episodes of Cartoon Network’s regular show playing about 170 different characters, including Thomas, a character whose entire arc is based on a joke about how shows add new characters and then focusing on them and constantly avoiding focus on Thomas and making him ridiculously boring! In fact, episodes where he played Thomas were airing during the time that Dying Light released.
I don’t know how they ever thought Roger Craig Smith was going to be remembered as the action hero everyone loved. I mean, I love me some Roger Craig Smith, but way more for being a fucking goofball than being a gritty action hero.
Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Credit where it's due, around the time Dying Light 1 came out, Roger Craig Smith was lending his voice to Chris Redfield, one of the more iconic zombie guys from Resident Evil.
My favorite Redfield moment was when, without a shred of irony, he talks smack about the villain acting like a comic book villain. Then in the same breath, he punches a six-ton boulder into submission.
Dying Light also really kinda shook up the zombie slaying dynamic with parkour. It seems like a fairly minor thing now, but that freedom of movement was a pretty big deal at the time, even if it was pretty janky.
Narratively, I agree that Crane isn't a very strong character. He's a dime-a-dozen government goon turned idealist. I don't even remember how the story ends, or even most of the major beats except for a couple of major characters.
But at the time, to kick zombie butt while scooting around the rooftops and listening to Chris Redfield quip one-liners: those were special times even if it was a decade ago. They're probably trying to recapture that magic, but I don't know. It was lightning in a bottle and you can't always get that back