Dying Light 2 has been highly anticipated since it was announced at 2018’s E3, and although it hasn’t received major news in a while, there’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to this release.
Developed by Techland, the game is about jumping, climbing and sprinting through a zombie-infested metropolis filled to the brim with helpless civilians, ruthless bandits and factions with varying alignments.
Here’s everything we currently know about Dying Light 2, including its release date, gameplay, story and multiplayer.
Dying Light 2 release date
Dying Light 2 was initially set to be released during the spring of this year. However, the game was delayed indefinitely in January, before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the USA. Dying Light 2 has recently been re-revealed as Dying Light 2 Stay Human and is set to release on December 7.
Hey Survivors!Here’s the Dying Light 2 Development Update. pic.twitter.com/CKMkAe2eD7January 20, 2020
Dying Light 2 will be released on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Microsoft Windows. Dying Light 2 has had a tumultuous development, but it seems that the game is close to completion.
A report from Kirk McKeand at TheGamer has shown that Techland suffers from terrible management, which is the primary cause for Dying Light 2 having not been shown for a long time. Many employees have claimed that the studio is “marred by autocratic management, poor planning, and a toxic work culture that trickles down from the top.”
Dying Light 2 gameplay
Dying Light 2 is expanding upon what made its predecessor interesting by increasing the scope of its world, the freedom of its parkour and making sure every choice the player makes somehow impacts the environment around them. According to an interview with Tymon Smektala, Lead Game Designer of Dying Light 2, the game will take about “15 to 20 hours for the main story,” where as everything else within the world could take “more than 100 hours” of playtime to complete.
Dying Light 2 intends to greatly improve upon the possibilities of parkour by allowing the player to interact with the environments in ways previously not possible in the original. The player can climb up vents, hop off of buildings, slow their fall by stabbing a pair of scissors into a sign made of cloth, and even swing across a pipe to dropkick an enemy off a ledge.
Similar to the original, the player will collect all sorts of resources to craft weapons and upgrades. There will also be quarantined areas that function as dungeons, with jumping puzzles, loads of infected and ruthless scavengers. Most exciting, however, is the addition of the grappling hook, which will not only allow for more seamless exploration of the game’s world, but it can also be used in combat in some colorful ways.
In an interview with Wccftech, Senior Technology Programmer Łukasz Burdka has confirmed that Dying Light 2’s map will be four times the size of the original game. “The estimate that the map in Dying Light 2 is four times bigger than that of the original game is the most precise estimate that we can provide,” he claims.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human was revealed with a new gameplay trailer. This showcases how the player’s decisions impact the world around them, with parts of the environment and world shifting depending on what occurs in the story. This city might be the “last bastion of mankind in the world,” as the player jumps in the shoes of an outsider trying to unravel their past.
This trailer also reveals the terror of darkness, as every infected grows far stronger and more threatening during nighttime. Similar to its predecessor, Dying Light 2 puts a focus on parkour traversal, allowing players to sprint, jump and climb throughout the city.
Dying Light 2 story
In Dying Light 2, players will play as Aiden Caldwell, an infected survivor who uses his exceptional combat abilities to survive in a dying world. Narrative Director Chris Avellone claims that the game will feature a “functioning ecosystem that reacts on multiple levels to the things you do and the choices you make.” Techland intends to allow you to “carve out your own world,” and while this may seem like a steep promise, it’s one that could be realized quite well thanks to the game’s delay this year.
In the trailer above, we’re given an example of this where The Peacekeepers, a faction within the game’s world, orders the protagonist to negotiate with a group of survivors controlling a much-needed water supply. When the player arrives, they’re faced with two decisions; join these survivors or carry out the mission and retrieve this water supply.
If the player chooses the former, they’ll gain access to additional resources and have a new primary source of trading because of the preciousness of water in this world. If the player chooses the latter, The Peacekeepers will restore the stability of certain areas, giving civilians access to a reliable source of water.
Dying Light 2 multiplayer
Dying Light 2 will feature an environment that’s constantly changing due to the players choices, so multiplayer will work far differently than before. As always, it will have a limit of up to four players, but instead of completing missions and progressing through the story together, players will only progress when they’re hosting the game. This is because Techland wants the consequences reflected in each player’s world to be a result of their own choices.
Malgorzata Mitrega, a producer for Dying Light 2, claims that “the choices and the narrative and the consequences you have in your own game are really huge and your friends could have chosen differently.” This could also mean certain weapons, upgrades and resources that are a direct result of choices the host makes could become unavailable once the player returns to their world.
Dying Light 2 DLC
In an interview with Tymon Smektala, Lead Game Designer for Dying Light 2, he confirmed that the game would most certainly receive DLC. He claims that “Dying Light 1 was supported for 4 years after its release, and the plan for Dying Light 2 is exactly the same.”
Even with Dying Light 2 on the horizon, the first game just launched another DLC called Dying Light: Hellraid. It’s quite clear that Techland intends to support this sequel for about as long as they supported the original.
Smektala continues, “We want this game to be supported after its release. We know that a lot of fans will be waiting for DLCs, updates, extra stuff they can get their hands on. And we promise to deliver them just that.”