Dying Light's expansion, The Following, is coming soon and bringing along some fun features including the ability to drive a car. However, for a now getting older gamer, it's difficult for me to understand the idea of returning to a game after you finish it. It's not that the idea is foreign - I spent most of my life reading The Wheel of Time, revisiting it when the next chapter arrived, but at the same time I'm very much used to games being a complete package. A final deal. You beat it and you either wait for the next game to come out or that's it.

The original Fable was a single story, collect, sold, and finished. Another version was released, not specifically an expansion, that included more stuff, but was in general the same game as the original. Now, we often revisit every game, constantly. The Witcher III received weekly updates while Dying Light actually had live events that would patch in the game. Once you finish a story, it's no longer finished, but just honestly have begun.

Fallout 3 for instance has more expansions than I have hands, plus some on top of that. Each one expanding the story in specific ways. One of the more easier to digest portions of the Fallout DLCs were that they were side stories more so than main stories, even more true for Fallout 3 New Vegas. Fallout 4 will most likely contain a specifically large portions of the game that will come after you finish it.

Main stories are becoming more and more a single story, or the setup, for large expansive worlds with lots to do. Games entice you to either let it go and explore sidequests, with the main story being sort of there for you to consume as you get to it. In a game like Dying Light, the main story isn't specifically much of any interesting. It's basically a dude walking around being told what to do for hours on end. Some may say it's lazy writing on the development team, but that's not true - every sidequest has a compelling story to it and they're all waiting around for you to consume them, mini-story arcs amongst a world full of depth.

I think it's interesting how we're choosing to consume content now, more than ever we're looking at a game being something we play over months or even years, consuming it daily, even if we're all alone in the world. Single player game habits are now starting to seem more and more like MMO habits, as players login to complete seasonal events, explore expansions that provide entire new segments of gameplay, and constantly working a variety of side-quests over long periods of time. Marathon finishing a game isn't even realistically possible with some games like The Witcher III who has, for me, well over 50 hours of content even avoiding all side quests that don't relate to the story.

I don't think any of this is bad, but it's a realization at how we're changing. Since Humans love static enviroments, it's theorized in some studies that change threatens autonomy, and as such we reject it. It's hard for me to fight this baked in desire to finish a game and then add it to my memory as "been there done that." Yet, that's not how you enjoy most modern games. You just don't put them down, you continue playing them.

I'm glad developers give us the option to buy into season pass DLC and not pass on the costs of extra development into the main game (in instances were it's obvious that the main game comes with more than your money's value in content like The Witcher III). It lets you choose - do you want just the single story, or the expanded universe? DLC has come a long way both in the good and bad directions, but something like an expansion to Dying Light is rather enough for me to give a nod to my hard earned money - assuming the details include a sizable content update, which it should.

That's my thoughts on the matter, I encourage you to share yours, if you feel as if games need to come as an all complete package or if you're fine with the idea of playing Dying Light almost a year later to check out the new updates and content in the game.


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Last Updated: Mar 20, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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