2015’s Dying Light ended up being a special game. Though rough at launch, the blending of platforming, first-person combat and RPG mechanics with a zombie survival game ended up being gold. Several updates, amajor expansionand continued support over the years have created a juggernaut that 25 million players have enjoyed so far. It’s that level of success that has made its successor, Dying Light 2 Stay Human, so anticipated. Techland has been working hard promoting the game since its reveal at E3 2018, promising more features, a deeper story, refined mechanics and a branching storyline. Finally, all these years later, Dying Light 2 Stay Human is finally here. Is this a sequel worthy of the original’s vast success or is it merely fodder for the infected?
Dying Light 2 Stay Human takes place fifteen years after theoriginal gameand ‘The Fall,’ a cataclysmic event that saw the virus leak out and wipe out modern civilization. You play as Aiden Caldwell, a Pilgrim wandering the countryside searching for his sister, Mia. Drawn to Villedor, the last standing city, Aiden accidentally becomes infected and entangled in a vast conspiracy involving a person from his past. Forced to tangle with Villedor’s politics, Aiden must choose sides and save the city or advance his own agenda.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s story stands as a massive improvement over its predecessor, primarily thanks to its protagonist, Aiden Caldwell. Well-written and acted, Aiden has tremendous agency in guiding players through the twenty-hour story. Though some of the story beats come off cliché and certain twists can be seen a mile away, there’s genuine intrigue that makes it difficult not to enjoy each story mission. Things get more hit-and-miss after that, though. The supporting cast is mixed, with Rosario Dawson delivering a solid performance as one of Aiden’s key allies. Others don’t fare as well, coming off as different character cliches like the no-nonsense commander, the drunk and wayward mentor, the thief with a heart of gold, etc. While each plays their part in the narrative, none particularly stand out. None get it worse than the antagonists and perceived antagonists, however, both of which come off both incompetent and comical. The enemy faction, the Renegades, look and sound like typical cartoon minions, while the main antagonist, Waltz, feels like an undercooked supervillain. None get it worse than the Peacekeepers, though, who aren’t even supposed to be antagonists. Rather than serving as an equal faction attempting to recruit Aiden, the Peacekeepers are regularly at odds and give players little reason to side with them over the more sympathetic Survivors faction.
The issues with the Peacekeepers stem from the game’s ‘Choices and Consequences’ mechanics. Despite promising that player choice will intensely affect the story and the city’s development, the existing system is relatively shallow. The story plays out the same regardless of which choices are made. For example, an early decision involves you deciding to help the Survivors at a hotel or return to report to the Peacekeepers. Regardless of your choice, you’ll still pursue the same missions and witness the same conversations post-choice. A few missions do have deviations, but overall, choice rarely matters in the main narrative. This lack of choice makes the Peacekeepers more villainous and more of an impediment than a potential ally for Aiden.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s main narrative is well worth the time if only to see how Aiden’s story progresses. There are a decent amount of side characters around, but don’t expect anything deep to come out of the antagonists, nor that your choices matter. Outside the story, there’s a lot of content here. The story, as previously promised, will take you around twenty hours to complete. Beyond that, Dying Light 2 Stay Human features different side quests and activities to pursue. Villedor itself is a large, well-designed world split into two sections that lend themselves well to exploration and Aiden’s unique capabilities. Old Villedor serves as the initial area with a flatter, more residential design. It’s a smartly designed locale built to help players get a handle on the parkour mechanics. Once players get to the Central Loop, however, is when the training wheels come off. Featuring tall skyscrapers, the Central Loop challenges players to use all of their tools and skills to uncover many of the biggest secrets, including infested dark zones, GRE complexes, substations, water towers and deadly bandit camps.
Nighttime has always been an essential aspect of the Dying Light series, giving players a stronger, scarier challenge. Dying Light 2 Stay Human expands upon that concept with a series of quests and activities that can only be completed at night. For example, at day, infected swarm inside buildings, making it more challenging to access GRE and other facilities. At night, however, they roam the streets, making it easier to gain entry. With these facilities, GRE Anomalies and more only available at night, there’s far more incentive to wander out then.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human will feel familiar to fans of the original game. Split into parkour and melee combat, the gameplay feels mostly refined compared to Dying Light. Melee combat still focuses on crowd control, with players able to craft a broad set of weapons and unlock different moves. Meanwhile, parkour remains about gaining and maintaining speed and navigating the world efficiently. Both utilize similar control schemes as the original release, meaning your hands will always be on the trigger buttons. R1/RB is primarily used for all platforming and R2/RT plus L1/LB for melee combat. Ranged weapons return in the form of bows, but firearms, asides from a craftable pistol, are absent. Gameplay is fun, encouraging creative experimentation, but it has its flaws.
Parkour can feel clunky at times, fluctuating between overly responsive and unresponsive. It’s common for Aiden to randomly get stuck or just not operate at all for a split second like when climbing a ladder. Meanwhile, there are other times where just the slight touch of the joystick plus a tap of the jump button will send Aiden dodging off a building to his death. When parkour works, Dying Light 2 Stay Human provides an exhilarating no other game can match, it’s just clunky in its current state. Standing in the way of Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s fun factor is a lack of polish. While not as unfinished or unpolished as Cyberpunk 2077 on console orBattlefield 2042, it does have its own fair share of bugs. Some are harmless, like accidentally glitching into geometry, while some can downright ruin the experience, like an audio bug that skips all dialogue. Most concerning is that some are game breaking, including a glitch that corrupts save files and makes it impossible to advance the story. While Techland has moved quickly to address some issues, others remain unresolved.
Thankfully, Dying Light 2 Stay Human does feature a solid presentation outside of the audio issues. The game looks beautiful enough, capturing the feeling of an apocalyptic city struggling to survive. What the presentation does best is giving players a sense of speed and momentum, particularly in the 60fps Performance Mode. There are jaw-dropping moments to behold as you race across the rooftops and soak in the beautiful lighting during the day or the horrors at night. Where the presentation can’t hold up is in dialogue cutscenes. The cutscenes never successfully establish where Aiden’s eye-level is, creating awkward moments with character’s eyes darting all over the place. Shadows also often flicker during dialogue in Performance Mode, though this is smoothed out by switching to Fidelity Mode. Dying Light 2 Stay Human is beautiful to explore in motion, but slowing down for a chat is often visually distracting.
Closing Comments:
Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a unique game that players have waited seven years to play. It’s an ambitious project that aimed to improve upon the original’s mechanics while creating more of a unique world. In many ways, Techland has succeeded, giving us a much more involved story that’s presented better, additional moves and actions that enhance gameplay, more rewarding nighttime features and a great playground in Villedor. The game gets into trouble elsewhere, though. While the story is filled with intrigue, its antagonists are far too goofy and cliché to be taken seriously, and it’s disappointing how shallow choices, one of the most talked-about features, really are. As great as the game plays when everything works, it’s difficult to ignore how clunky it can get when it doesn’t. Finally, it’s impossible to dismiss that this game is launching with glitches capable of corrupting save files. Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a diamond in the rough, a fun experience capable of delivering hours of quality entertainment, yet still clunky around the edges. This is one zombie title worth exploring; just know it’s not the diamond it should be.
