Expect plenty of women to appear in the upcoming game

Dec 10, 2014 15:00 GMT  ·  By

Dying Light, the upcoming open world zombie survival game from Polish studio Techland, features an array of interesting female characters with rich backstories, at least according to one of the title's writers, Dan Jolley.

Dying Light launches next year and promises to deliver an impressive-looking zombie survival experience that takes place in a Turkish city that's been invaded by the undead. Besides fighting the actual monsters, players will also have to go through some intense situations involving the remaining survivors in the city.

Female characters are important to Techland

While the main character is a male one, Techland writer Dan Jolley confirms on his Tumblr that he and the team went to great lengths to ensure that female characters are represented in a great way in the upcoming title.

Even if this aspect of the games industry is controversial nowadays, Jolley emphasizes that these questions have already been raised inside Techland's staff ever since work began on Dying Light a few years ago.

He explains this point of view with Jade Aldemir, one of the main characters in the game, whose backstory evolved from a rather cliché beauty pageant winner to that of a kickboxing champion that emanates power.

"From there, we added reasons for her to be as skilled and resilient and determined as we felt she should be. We gave her a detailed backstory, an on-screen personal tragedy, some complex, conflicted emotions regarding the story’s protagonist – in short, we did our level best to put her on the same footing as any male character."

Bland characters equal bad writing

The writer also explains that crafting one-dimensional female characters isn't just insulting to female gamers, but also reeks of bad writing, so no creative mind should actually resort to it.

A few other women have also been remodeled in the game to have a bigger impact on the story and some of the other characters.

The writing team also had help from some of the female developers at Techland so that everything could work out as well as possible.

"We tried our damnedest to take Dying Light’s female characters out of the one-dimensional, trope-defined roles seen so often – way, way too often – in games, and turn them into real, multi-faceted people. I can’t say that all of our female characters (or male characters, for that matter) live happily ever after; Dying Light is a grim, brutal game. But if we’ve done our jobs right, we have given these women believable, realistic lives. Lives players will care about," he concludes

Dying Light launches in January of next year across the PC, PS4, and Xbox One platforms.

Dying Light Screenshots (6 Images)

One of Dying Light's female characters
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