The life expectancy of a free-running enthusiast who is infected with a zombie virus is admittedly pretty slight, but that doesn't mean you have to try and get yourself killed. The new choose-your-own-adventure style interactive trailer for Dying Light embedded below lets you get a feel for the game's survival freedom: engage in your preferred mix of high-flying acrobatics and clever zombie traps, or maybe even hang back a bit when distraction is the better part of valor (hint: no matter how much you idolize Casey Jones, taking on armed thugs with a baseball bat is still a poor idea).

Will Techland finally make good on its grand zomb-pocalyptic ambitions, previously seen in ? We'll find out soon enough. Dying Light's set to release on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on January 27, 2015 in North America, but until then make sure to click on for some of our preview impressions from earlier in the game's development.

Usually, your character in a first-person shooter isn't much more nimble than your typical zombie. It's here that Dying Light immediately separates itself from the rest of the genre, with fast, acrobatic movement that looks more like Mirror's Edge than Dead Island.

You can scale trees and poles, jump from rooftop to rooftop, and climb around almost anything, within the world. Being this agile completely changes how you approach situations, as you don't always need to carve a hole through the undead horde in order to escape. When forced to choose between fight or flight, flight is actually an option, and it looks incredibly fun.

Climbing around wouldn't be as entertaining if the world itself wasn’t wide open to explore. Thankfully, Dying Light is massive, with detailed environments that look truly stunning. We watched as the hero ran across rooftops, looking off into the brilliantly rendered distance and surveying the gigantic playable game space.

Techland wasn't ready to talk about the actual geography of Dying Light, but we could see that the game didn't take place in a wholly developed nation. The buildings were made of wooden planks and sheet metal, and the location looked more like a shanty town than a bustling metropolis. If we had to take a wild guess, we'd place the setting on an island or in South Africa, but we're not sure just yet.

When our demo started, the protagonist saw a number of supply drops fall from the sky. After a quick radio call with another survivor, he set off to try to work his way towards the nearest one in hopes of finding medical supplies, leaping over buildings and avoiding undead along the way. As he passed a building, he heard a noise that sounded like whimpering, and went into a nearby home to investigate.

Inside, he was attacked by a zombie, who chewed on his leg for a few moments before being stomped to a pulp. In the next room, a little girl was hiding in an armoire, crying about how her dad was "very mad and might hurt you." You got back in touch with a woman on the radio who said she'd come pick her up, and continued on your way. Objectives like this are optional and randomly appear in certain areas, creating unique situations for each person who plays.

Yeah, you read that right: Your character just had his foot chomped on by a zombie. Shouldn't that, you know, cause him to freak out and kill himself else he be turned into one of them? Well, no, because he's already on his way. Your character in Dying Light is infected with the zombie virus, and a little nibble here and there isn't going to change that.

His infection does come with a benefit, though: it also allows him to sense other zombies. He can send out a pulse--a sonar of sorts (zombdar?)--that shows where undead monsters are hiding. Totally worth it, right? We're guessing this is why it's so important that he finds medical supplies.

Sure, you'll spend plenty of time running over and away from zombies, but eventually you're going to have to fight some. This is, after all, a video game--and one made by the people who made Dead Island, no less. We watched as the zombie-hunter beat down hordes of enemies, cracking their skulls with blunt objects (with gory visibility thanks to with a cool x-ray effect), slicing off appendages with blades, and even using some cool acrobatic maneuvers to kick enemies or jump on their heads.

There are special abilities unlocked throughout the game, too. At one point the hero spun around with a machete, slicing enemies in a circle around him. Later, he grabbed a sledgehammer and leapt off a building, smashing into the ground and sending a wave of body parts flying through the sky.

You won't be limited to the weapons scattered around the world, though. Tinkering is a major part of Dying Light, and you'll be able to piece together different weapons from parts found in nooks, crannies, and bodies. We watched as the hero turned loot into a badass electric machete that was later used to slice apart undead hordes.

This element feels like it might be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, adding loot that can be turned into upgrades and crafted items gives you a reason to explore the world even more. No stone will go unturned when there's a chance that doing so could result in making a rocket-powered sledgehammer. That said, we feel as though an open-world zombie game with an emphasis on parkour might be enough complexity for one game, and adding in goofy, makeshift weapons might muddle things.

It's not uncommon for there to be day and night in open-world games, but usually day is bright and sunny, night is dark, and that's all there is to it. This isn't the case in Dying Light--when the sun goes down, everything changes. In the demo, the character was finally able to find a supply drop (besides the first one, which was guarded by gun-toting soldiers), but he arrived just as the sun went down.

During the night, the zombies behave more aggressively. This, alone, is disconcerting, but even more troubling is the other stuff that shows up when it's dark out. There's a different, mysterious kind of monster that prowls the streets after dark, hunting down the living (instead of, you know, just wandering around like a dumb zombie). You can try to outrun them, hide from them, or avoid them altogether by getting back to your base before they arrive.

We're still learning about the world of Dying Light--we don't know what caused the zombie outbreak, where the game takes place, or what's going on with the story. After seeing some of the different zombie types, though, we're sure it's all bad news. Besides regular zombies, which can swarm in massive groups (at one point, it looked like there were easily 100 running at the player) and the aforementioned night hunters, there are also other things that go bump in the day.

Giant, monstrous zombies roam the streets, bashing walls and charging the player. The coolest thing we saw, though, was a recently turned human. It was a zombie, through and through, with a hunger for flesh and a case of the undeadsies, but he still had some of his humanity left. It felt… different when he was killed. The noise he made unsettled us. We doubt the game will go into the morality of killing a mostly-human zombie, but we were intrigued by the concept.

We'll give you a few minutes to let this all sink in. We know what you're feeling. It's… confusion. Here you were, thinking you'd seen everything there was to see from a zombie game, when Techland shows up and throws Mirror's Edge into the mix and gets you all excited. Will it end up bringing your love for zombies back from the dead? Let us know what you think, and be sure to check back as we find out more about this intriguing game.

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