Tymon Smektała, former Dying Light franchise director, revealed that during the development of Dying Light 2, developers had to use fan encyclopedias to understand their own universe. The reason was a lack of documentation left over from the creation of the first part.
At the Digital Dragons conference, Smektała admitted that during the development of the original Dying Light, Techland did not pay due attention to documenting the game's mechanics and features. Many decisions were made directly by the developers and were not reflected in official documents.
The problem affected not only game systems but also the plot. According to Smektała, the team did not expect Dying Light to become a long-running series, so they did not create a comprehensive database of lore and world structure.
During the production of Dying Light 2, this led to serious difficulties. Developers had to reverse-engineer their own mechanics, as well as verify plot continuity and chronology of events. Smektała admitted that the team searched for some information about the game's world in fan-created online encyclopedias.
According to the developer, this caused a feeling of awkwardness, as the studio had to rely on community work instead of its own archives. He noted that this experience became an important lesson for teams working on new franchises.