Just for a second, as you hit the apex of a particularly audacious jump, the bottom end of Dying Light 2’s audio drops out. It’s as if bass were a grounded concept you’d momentarily left behind - an earthy comfort for mortals. Then the tumble begins, and you’d better have already picked out a nice, safe spot to land. This is the irresistible dichotomy of the parkour game, as first defined by Mirror’s Edge in 2008 - an invitation to soar, with the understanding that true freedom doesn’t come for free. Height is earned, momentum is managed, and mistakes are punished with a 30 foot plunge.
Perhaps you’ve seen footage of Dying Light 2’s rooftop running and wondered, “How much of that is me?” In a medium where climbing systems are typically automated rather than simulated, and first-person control tends to end at the waist, it’s natural to suspect that what you’re seeing is a fancy set of animations, triggered by pointing your character in a given direction and holding down the parkour key. I’m here to tell you that Dying Light 2 is not that game: it’s the real deal. It is, among many other things, Mirror’s Edge.