Dying Light 2 on PlayStation 5
Following on from the whimsical chaos of its Dead Island IP, Techland’s original Dying Light stood apart from its open-world counterparts for its pleasing combination of parkour traversal and melee combat. It shined as a true gameplay-driven sandbox experience, one that felt clunky, awkward, and slightly unpolished at times but uniquely satisfying and immensely entertaining to control. It was big fun, plain and simple. For its anticipated sequel, though, which has been many years in the making, the developer has sought to add new layers to the formula for something deeper, more engaging, and more complete in nature.
Its solution, as has been the case for so many large-scale open-world games these days, is a dialing up of the role-playing mechanics and the introduction of branching dialog story elements. There are a host of other fine-tunings and gameplay improvements, too, of course, but it’s these two features that are at the core of what makes the sequel grander and more ambitious than its predecessor. Dying Light 2’s open-world is still every bit the exciting playground of the original, but there’s a greater context to its existence and a much larger degree of interaction with the story and characters that bring it to life.
The story follows Aiden and his plight to reconnect with his sister in the city of Villedor, a huge but dilapidated metropolis controlled by two major factions: the Peacekeepers, and the Survivors. Both exist in harmony, more or less, but an uneasy tension exists between them as the city’s resources wane in the face of both the deadly infected creatures who roam the streets and the nefarious Renegade thugs who are a law unto themselves.
As Aiden, players are caught in the middle of their feud as these tensions bubble to the surface in one form or another, and one is frequently given the opportunity to side with either in the form of key story decisions. These shape the overall narrative and determine which characters and which factions prosper to a greater extent.
While I wasn’t able to explore the different options too much due to the lack of a manual save option, it’s clear that my choices certainly locked me out of various story outcomes, and absolutely impacted its conclusion. The notion of uncovering different endings and observing different characters’ arcs unfolding gives me the incentive to go back and play through multiple times.
Tying into the narrative decision-making is a city alignment system that governs which territories are controlled by who, and ultimately, which faction Aiden spends more time engaging with throughout the game. Beyond the story, the control of a city territory also has a tangible impact on the gameplay experience as handing control over to one or the other sees different structures built to aid with traversal and combat encounters. Peacekeepers, for example, build offensive weaponry to help Aiden beat back the infected, and it’s fun to see them in action during intense chase sequences at nighttime when things get really chaotic. The Survivors, meanwhile, construct zip lines, air cushions, and other apparatus that make quick escapes and general traversal easier.
City alignment decisions are offered for every Faction Facility Aiden powers up. These are spread throughout the city in the form of electrical stations and water towers, and restoring them involves puzzle-solving of one kind or another. Typically, one is tasked with dragging electrical cables between power outlets and generators, which aren’t too obtuse in nature but do offer sufficient challenge to keep them interesting — as someone who doesn’t normally enjoy puzzle-solving, I actually found them quite fun in combination with the game’s parkour mechanics.
Once you have a Faction Facility restored and have assigned it to either Peacekeepers or Survivors, and Faction Structures you then bring online, such as Windmills (Dying Light 2’s equivalent of a Ubisoft open-world tower) are also brought under that faction’s control. In turn, this offers new side quests and activities concerned with that faction. I really appreciate that while the game allows you to mix story decisions and faction structure assignment bias, the fact that you’re given more in the way of story content for doing the latter ties the two elements together nicely.
Unfortunately, the nature of those additional stories that are unlocked in the process isn’t especially interesting. Narratively, the writing and the dialog itself are decent, but the design of the quests themselves aren’t of the same standard. There is a lot of fetch questing in Dying Light 2, an issue that has and continues to plague many open-world games today but still a problem I had hoped to experience less of — especially with such a heavy emphasis put on questing and storytelling this time around.
The same issue could be said of the main quests, too, which are again well written and feature some great back and forth dialog between interesting characters but are too often underwhelming in design and too predictable in nature. Too many times was I presented with a character who had a problem and needed my help, which then led me to another character who, say, needed something found or collected. It’s the typical, generic open-world quest loop that many acclaimed games are equally guilty of, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. It’s a trope that a developer as talented as Techland should be doing more to beat back rather than include by default.
Still, at least the story itself is fairly interesting on the whole, and it features more than a few twists and turns that make it more compelling than its predecessor’s. The feud between Peacekeeper and Survivors is superseded by a greater threat and common enemy to the pair which ultimately ends up with Aiden and his mysterious childhood at its very center.