Dying Light 2 offers great gameplay and a surprisingly strong story. However, open world monotony and a big loot problem gnaw at the zombie game.
Nobody really needs zombies. They stink, leave body parts everywhere and eat brains that humanity really needs! And then my favourite setting has actually been hopelessly oversaturated for decades: Every Resident Evil, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead or Dawn of the Dead, no matter how good, is followed by at least three times as much rubbish that it never needed.
But apart from trash pearls, the question arises whether there is still room for a good zombie story in 2022? Dying Light 2 provides a clear answer to this and I even dare to say that in its best moments it can even compete with The Witcher 3 – I know, what an outrage!
But before you indignantly banish me to the train to Busan, at least give me a test to explain why Dying Light 2 is also suitable for you if you find zombies totally boring. Because whether you play the title for its story or its gameplay: You won’t regret it – even if you run into problems that I don’t really want to see in any open world game in 2022.
Table of Contents
Dying Light 2 is a really good story game.
Let’s talk about the best part first: Dying Light 2 tells a really exciting story. That surprises me twice over, since the predecessor’s story could be safely forgotten. And at first glance, the sequel’s story seems rather functional, but it unfolds more and more as the game progresses, until it finally picks up speed and you can’t get away from it.
What is it all about? In Dying Light 2 I slip into the role of Aiden. The hero of the game roams as a so-called pilgrim through a world that has belonged to the undead for almost 15 years. Aiden was born into the post-apocalypse – which is a refreshingly different perspective – and is now searching for his missing sister Mia. Cruel experiments were carried out on both of them as children, separating them from each other. By the way, you will get all this information in the first few minutes, before someone yells spoilers.
Aiden’s search for Mia now leads him to the city of Villedor – also known simply as the city. For this is possibly the last bastion of humanity. But at first Aiden doesn’t find any answers, instead he finds himself in a deadly game of intrigue between different factions. Here, one fights not only against zombies and bandits, but also for supremacy and the eternal question of who has the biggest stick.
As Aiden, however, I am not a silent participant in a fixed plot. Instead, I have the choice and often influence the further course of the story. With numerous decisions, I can determine not only Aiden’s path, but also the future of the last city on earth – for the better or for the worse.
Accusations against Techland
In recent months, accusations against developer Techland have been made again and again. Among other things, this involved crunch, sexism and the alleged failure of the management team – specifically against story writer Chris Avellone, among others.
Egg and bacon or Belgian waffle?
My influence starts with the two main factions when it comes to who I support: Do I support the survivors, who are eager for independence but at the same time shattered by internal conflicts and meet strangers out of caution with the gallows rope for the time being? Or do I opt for militant peacekeepers who risk not only the lives of their own people but also those of everyone else for their goals? I did what I did with the Brotherhood of Steel and went for the ones with the coolest armour first.
What makes the story of Dying Light 2 so exciting now? There’s no striking division between good and evil, just as there’s no objectively correct path for Aiden. Instead, many of my actions have unpredictable consequences – and some of them are really, really bitter. I’ve wrestled more than once with kicking a 30-hour score into the bin and starting all over again because I had a guilty conscience …
For example, when I give the Peacekeepers control of a water tower that is essential for survival, I first think to myself: Yeah, sure. Those guys are badass and won’t let zombies or bandits in. But I could have guessed beforehand that this would make the inhabitants of the bazaar dependent on and blackmailable to the peacekeepers. I can hardly blame the survivors for the fact that I no longer have the best reputation with them, despite my actually good intentions – I can shout I’VE ONLY MEANT IT WELL! against the screen as many times as I want to.
Do I need to know the story of the predecessor?
To understand Dying Light 2 in its entirety, you don’t have to know the story of the predecessor. The adventure around protagonist Aiden takes place more than 15 years after the events of the predecessor. The most important information about the world of Dying Light 2 is also summarised for you in an intro sequence after starting the game.
But sure, faction and decision shenanigans have been pulled off by other games before. With Dying Light 2, however, I was surprised at how complex and, above all, tricky the choices turned out to be. No game has given me so many headaches since Fallout: New Vegas or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt! But the story and subplots would only be half as good without the damn authentic and humanly written characters. In fact, the authors from Techland prove to have a real knack for every seemingly unimportant side character here.
A bit of a promise
Fairly, I must mention at this point that Dying Light 2’s choices rarely take the plot in entirely new directions. As in Fallout 3, for example, the goal and ending remain similar for each player – but it’s all about the path that is shaped and changed by my own choices. There are no completely new areas or storylines like in a The Witcher 2. Decisions on the scale of putting entire districts under water or freeing them from it only happen once – unlike what was advertised in advance.
Unfortunately, the actual main story of Dying Light 2 is also cobbled together rather hastily and unsatisfactorily towards the end. Here it almost seems as if Techland simply ran out of time for a decent conclusion or they simply didn’t have a bright idea of what exactly the answer to the game’s big mystery should be. Techland promises to adjust the ending in the weeks after launch, but only time will tell what it will look like in the end.
But the basically very exciting main story is supported by surprisingly many interesting side quests: Whether I’m playing detective in the Peacekeeper canteen, tracking down a little boy’s missing dog, meeting up with a few survivors for a piss-up or taking part in a kind of End Times Tinder – many of the optional missions often lead in a completely different direction than one would initially suspect. As much as I’d like to go into detail here, any further description on this would only spoil potential surprises.
The copy protection
As was only revealed shortly before the test embargo fell, Dying Light 2 relies on the anti-tamper solution Denuvo for protection against piracy. In the (Steam-Forum) it is said that this will be the case at least for the launch period. So it is possible (though not certain) that Denuvo will be removed at a later date.
Breathless through the night
But as much as the story is engaging, most of the time in Dying Light 2 you’re surrounded by colleagues whose conversation level stops at Uoaaaaarrrh!!!! So let’s talk about gameplay. In terms of gameplay, Dying Light 2 is a little bird of paradise among zombie games: A complex parkour and melee combat system go hand in hand with each other, and the only place I have a breather outside of the safe zones is on the rooftops. So Aiden climbs, fights and sneaks his way through the city, always with the nasty groans of rotten corpses breathing down his neck.
But it gets even dicier at night, when the really bad zombies are driven outside. These are particularly aggressive variants of the undead, some of which also come with exotic mutations. According to a rather motivating risk-reward principle, I can earn extra experience points and valuable loot at night, for example by clearing out the now empty super zombie stalls.
Keyword Loot: The rather leisurely progression system of Dying Light 2 makes for incredibly motivating loot raids, as Aiden molts over time from a leek to a parkour and fighting machine. While I still stumble around relatively clumsily in the first few hours of the game, with the right skills I eventually pull off such powerful moves that even Ubisoft assassins would get their blades stuck in their wrists. So the more I daredevil down chasms or do headers into mattress bins, the more likely I am to pull off spectacular wall runs, because Dying Light 2, like Skyrim, relies on an elegant mix of learning by doing and quest rewards.
The fantastic core gameplay of Dying Light 2 is naturally complemented by a beautiful and, above all, atmospheric game world that Aiden is free to explore and climb. While the game world of Dying Light 2 is certainly coherent to look at, it is not quite as impressive and captivating as that of Far Cry 6 or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Another downer: the weather system could have been more dynamic and surprised us with more dynamic changes. A missed opportunity to make the otherwise atmospheric world with its unique modern medieval setting even more atmospheric.
Instead, interesting side quests, optional challenges such as mini-bosses or climbing puzzles, useful loot or simply an impressive view are hidden at every turn. I often found myself spying an even higher tower from a tower I had climbed with difficulty – and immediately felt challenged by it. If I get hopelessly screwed in the process, all it means for me is that I have to add experience points and drive up Aiden’s attributes more resolutely than Munich does his rental prices.
And that’s when it hit me, the fun motivational cycle that kept me entertained for at least 40 hours in Dying Light 2. Only then did I feel like I was finally getting to the (disappointing) end of the main story. At the latest from this point on, however, the signs of wear and tear and the open world monotony, which Dying Light 2 had concealed quite cleverly until then, became increasingly noticeable.
Mouse and keyboard vs. controller
Dying Light 2 can be played on a PC with a controller as well as with a mouse and keyboard. Even though the latter works in principle, we advise you to play the game with the controller in the long run. Especially with the more complex skills that you unlock later in the game, it can get quite crampy with the various key combinations.
Open World Trot
For example, the combat system of attacking, parrying, dodging, countering and other unlockable manoeuvres remains fundamentally fun and challenging, but there really isn’t much variation in the long run. Even though there are many different types of opponents, I don’t really have to experiment at all. No matter which opponent I face, my tactics always remain the same.
Normal zombie? Cudgel in the face. Fast zombie? Cudgel in the face. Normal bandit? Club to the face. Bandit with crossbow? OK, he gets my boots in the face. You can guess three times whether the two-metre guy with a three-metre club will engage in a fact-based discussion instead of a scuffle. Even the fattest and ugliest monsters will eventually collapse if I pummel them long enough with a shabby crowbar.
It’s also a bit cheeky of developer Techland to make fun of me in the tutorial via a side-swipe at Ubisoft for climbing radio antennas, only to have me blow up more than a dozen windmills in the city. But okay, a windmill is something completely different from a radio antenna … of which, by the way, you also unlock a palette to climb later in the game. Well, great.
It’s also a shame that the particularly challenging GRE labs with valuable inhibitors are made up of the same copy/paste structures over and over again. Of course, it’s no easy task for developers to fill an open game world with varied content for hundreds of hours of play. Nevertheless, I hear Septa Unella’s bell ringing softly somewhere when I think of Techland’s huge content promises that Dying Light 2 should keep us entertained for at least as long.
Because the mere prospect of new loot or additional resources is simply not enough to draw me into the same dungeons or diligences over and over again. Especially because in Dying Light 2 I quickly and easily become an end-time bigwig anyway, raking in money, crafting items and even weapons and clothes.
So why should I go into the exact same designed dungeon for the exact same shirt just because it makes two percent something better? Every weapon and clothing item feels absolutely arbitrary and interchangeable, and after a few hours I don’t even pay attention to what I’m shovelling into my inventory in the first place. While looting plays a big role in Dying Light 2, it’s simply not fun and quickly becomes a chore.
To be fair, many of the recycled side quests are completely optional and I don’t miss out on anything if I just leave them to the left. Challenges that are indispensable for further game progress are quite varied in Dying Light 2. Even I, as a puzzle muffle, was able to find something to like about the cable knotting in the substations, for example. Maybe I should take this as an opportunity to sort out the chaos of knots under my workplace …
Technology leaves a mixed impression
Dying Light 2 no longer relies on the Chrome Engine in its sixth version like its predecessor, but on the C-Engine. According to Techland, two important aspects of the engine change were support for the new consoles – i.e. Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X – and ray tracing.
There are also supposed to be improvements in various areas, such as multi-core support, streaming, AI, physics and animations.
Nevertheless, despite the changed, rather colourful style, it is easy to recognise visually that this is the successor to Dying Light. The game is not quite up to date anymore, which can be seen, among other things, in the rather low level of detail of objects and sometimes blurry textures:
On the one hand, the open world makes up for this somewhat with its very harmonious design and convincing lighting, especially during the day. However, factors such as the (too) bright nights or the lack of shadows when using the torch (even with ray tracing) tarnish the overall impression.
In addition, the system requirements are too high for our taste, considering the visuals even without ray tracing. With an RTX 3080 in high details and WQHD resolution, we achieve values in the range of 90 FPS, while the RX 5600 XT only just manages 60 FPS in Full HD.
If all ray tracing options are active, even the RTX 3080 stumbles in 4K with less than 30 FPS. If we activate DLSS, it’s 45 FPS again.
Planned too far ahead?
So you notice: Dying Light 2 keeps stumbling on a range from damn, it’s good to pretty 08/15. While the plot, story decisions, characters and gameplay make you forget many shortcomings, the open world monotony, loot boredom and technical stumbling blocks become more and more serious in the long run.
Dying Light 2 can entertain for many hours of play – and perhaps even justifies a second playthrough, just to see what you have missed based on your own decisions. Because there is no free saving system, if you regret a choice, for example, you have to start a completely new game.
The foundation to actually offer 500 hours of gameplay or five years of content supply is therefore on shaky ground. Techland must not rely on patching its own open world to be more versatile later.
Despite great story and gameplay moments, Dying Light 2 remains a title that could have offered potential for so much more. A year or two more time, polish and good ideas could have turned a good game into a fantastic one.
Why don’t we give a rating yet?
During our test phase of Dying Light 2, we were not yet able to try out the co-op mode, nor were we able to get a picture of the Day One patch. Therefore, we have decided not to give Dying Light 2 a final rating in our GlobalESportNews test.
Even though we don’t expect that both aspects will change our rating tendency of 80-82 points, we will not give a final rating until the release on 4 February 2022.
Preliminary rating box
Editorial conclusion
Often I have to deal with quite a lot of trash as a zombie fan. Sometimes a so-called story elicits no more than a weary shrug from me. My beloved Resident Evil is not immune to such faux pas either. So the story of Dying Light 2 surprised me all the more. The Techland title not only delivers a successful main story, but also many exciting side quests with fantastically written characters.
I know, the Witcher comparison is daring, but in my opinion it is justified. In hardly any other game have I started a completely unremarkable side quest only to find myself in a completely different situation an hour later – especially emotionally. It is also refreshing that virtually no character in Dying Light 2 is safe, no matter how important or unimportant. A fact that fits the nihilistic end-time setting like a glove.
Last but not least, I would like to issue a clear warning regarding Dying Light 2’s decisions. Because the scope promised in the pre-released promotional material is almost non-existent. Instead, in Dying Light 2 you shape your personal path rather than the entire game world – which works very well. Those who had hoped for more serious and complex consequences from the decisions of Dying Light 2 will undoubtedly be disappointed.
