The first Dying Light game was made famous by its parkour and combat, with the former being a mechanic rarely seen in first-person games, and the latter being an improvement on Dead Island’s combat. Now, with Dying Light 2 on the horizon, it’s clear that the sequel will evolve even beyond the original, as Game Rant learned during a hands-on Dying Light 2 preview.
It’s striking how much effort has gone into overhauling the combat and parkour mechanics as they were in Dying Light. All around, parkour has become a lot floatier and entertaining, while the combat has been married more closely to it. That’s not to say that Dying Light’s mechanics were bad, but they were far more monotonous than what Techland is doing now.
Faster, Floatier Dying Light Mechanics
Dying Light was a solid game, but it didn’t have much of an identity. Dropping players in the middle of a generic city with an equally generic protagonist, it was easy to get caught up in simply mindlessly thwacking away at zombies. That’s something that developer Techland wanted to address in the sequel, Lead Designer Tymon Smektała tells us during an interview. The changes camr based on “players’ feedback, media feedback, and our own internal feedback,” all of which helped the studio narrow down what needed to improve with the sequel.
Eventually, the team decided that it wanted to “combine combat and parkour together,” breaking up the cycle of running and stopping to attack enemies that players could get caught in while playing the original. Based on our time with our demo, that’s something that Techland has managed to do well. While there’s still the core Dying Light DNA to be found, Dying Light 2 feels a lot different. The fighting is a lot more frenetic, and it can be chained together with some of the parkour moves.
As an example, Smektala tells us players “can stagger an enemy, jump on it, use it as a springboard to kick another guy, jump off another guy, then maybe do a ground-pound and land on the rest.” We’re able to pull off similar feats during our gameplay demo, running along and bouncing off of walls to take down enemies with surprising gusto. It breaks up the cycle of swinging at an enemy’s head multiple times to take them out, which goes a long way to make a more enjoyable experience.
Plus, the world has been peppered with obstacles for players to climb around on as they parkour throughout Dying Light 2. It’s here that it sees its biggest improvement, as there are plenty of ziplines, billboards, and other objects to help players move around the city. It’s all in service of better verticality, which Dying Light 2 seems bent on providing players.
Dying Light 2 Has Deeper Human Enemies
While humans were a threat in Dying Light, they’re also on the receiving end of an overhaul. According to Smektala, “the day is for humans and the night is for infected.” During the day, human enemies will be roaming the streets in greater numbers, ready to smack down the player whenever the need arises. There will be more zombies hidden away in certain areas too, pushing players to explore the city streets.
On the flip side, the zombies that are typically hibernating during the day will wander out into the streets at night. The caves they typically inhabit will then be easier to explore, and host to some of Dying Light 2’s best loot. While players might be tempted to skip the night as some did in the first Dying Light, the valuable loot and more robust night objectives should force more players out into the wilds at night, balancing the day and night cycle split.
The marrying of parkour and combat, along with a more diverse selection of enemies, sounds exactly like what the Dying Light formula needs. It should be enough to please returning fans, while making things a bit more approachable for newcomers to the franchise.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
