“Who would have thought the end of the world could be so peaceful?”
- Spike

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a game of consequence. And not the binary type, either. Rather, Techland’s six-years-in-the-making sequel is a perpetual fork-in-the-road experience; a jaunting vault derived from twinkle-toed choices made as quickly as a burrowed escape route at the alarmist announcement that a “Chase [has] Started”. Parkouring this way and that amidst the decaying ruins and rotting denizens that pockmark the once-thriving city of Villedor, Aiden Pearce, as played by you, heaves a trail of escape and exhilaration all in one.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s greatest achievement is its freedom of movement, and the playground Techland has designed for you to best leverage that is a triumph of what feels like infinite proportions. Oh, and the chaps chomping at your tail while you make good your Chase Started escape -- they’re the bread and butter of Villedor; part economy, part dread, part set-dressing and absolutely required.

At its most fundamental core, at the headiest tine of it all, Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s promise of an open-world with zombies and near limitless freerunning opportunities is delivered to the letter, which is a Guild joke worth many layers you’ll understand once you’ve played the game yourself. But trust me when I say that it’s very funny.


Unfortunately there’s much around those three pillars that simply isn’t delivered to the degree it’s obvious the studio would have liked. Whether it’s in performance, pacing or overall balance, across every system Dying Light 2 has cracks in its seams. And these aren’t helped with the game’s dated sheen, either. In all honesty, while absolutely taking on a far bigger task in the sheer size of the game and its many moving parts, it’s hard not to align it with the 2015 original as far as visuals go, at least on console (PC is obviously better with a top-notch rig). It’s not a bad thing, by any measure, but it’s a stretch to call Dying Light 2 a next-gen showcase. Still, it has many eye-catching things going for it that are easy to lose if you pay too much attention to repetitive assets or flat textures or the like.

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"This is helped in equal measure by some fairly stand-up performances from the game’s two main leads -- Jonah Scott as Aiden and Rosario Dawson as the enigmatic Lawan...”

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Facial animations, for example, throughout the game are very impressive, with a mostly engaging cast of important characters who emote on levels that draw you in as a player in a first-person world. This is helped immeasurably by some fairly stand-up performances from the game’s two main leads -- Jonah Scott as Aiden and Rosario Dawson as the enigmatic Lawan. The game is filled with other characters, of course, and it is a heavily voiced affair throughout with lengthy main missions and numerous side-quests as well as dynamic and repetitive world events.



Early on in its lengthy development Techland teamed up with Chris Avellone (Fallout: New Vegas) to help pen the game’s “New Dark Ages” narrative. And while he was swiftly let go after some fairly damning allegations, his influence on the game is still evident. In fact there’s a very heavy Fallout vibe to Stay Human, which is in contrast to the heavier Far Cry influence that permeated the original game. What this leaves us with is a title that walks a fine line between both series, yet still manages to carve out its own flair and personality. The Avellone stuff exists mostly in the setup, but the more nuanced stuff is Techland, and it shines brightest. Most impressive though, is that the aforementioned personality isn’t wholly reliant on the parkour component so lauded in our intro. Rather, the world of Dying Light as it has been set up is fully realised from a story and foundation perspective in Stay Human, and Techland should be super-proud of the work the studio has done with this.

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"What strikes me as a good aspect to this, however, is that the game isn’t reliant on players finding or completing every task...”

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What lies in wait though is the inevitable conversation around bloat. There’s been no secret made of the amount of activity and content Techland has injected into Dying Light 2, and this reviewer certainly fell victim to it in the game’s opening Old Villedor section. What strikes me as a good aspect to this, however, is that the game isn’t reliant on players finding or completing every task. I did spend upwards of 10 to 12 hours on the first area of the game and regret not chasing the main story path purely because it would have meant having all the key tools at my disposal earlier, but the loops built around how Dying Light 2’s myriad gameplay setups work are disparate enough that it never felt grindy or overly repetitive. In fact, it can be pretty empowering.



And when I finally made it to the Central Loop and beyond I had a finer understanding of how things worked anyway, so I don’t see the option to explore the extra content as a negative at all, and in fact feel it’s a plus for players willing to engage it.

When we talk about gameplay setups, it’s perhaps a bit of a hidden fourth pillar to the key three highlighted earlier. Players are rewarded in two types of baseline activities -- Combat and Parkour, and you flesh Aiden out with specific skills tied to these by levelling each base activity up. And you gain XP simply by performing actions within them. Stringing together a jump and a climb and a ledge grab in succession, for example, will build on the gained XP for those activities, and the more you do, the higher the reward (like a combo system). You gain bonuses for each at night as well, and this is all very much how the first game played, where it worked a treat. So you know, if it ain’t broke and all that.

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"At its heart this is a first-person melee experience, and in this writer’s opinion it’s the best in the business at it...”

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Carried over from the first game also is the weapon modification system. Dying Light features projectile weapons and some shooting, but at its heart this is a first-person melee experience, and in this writer’s opinion it’s the best in the business at it. Throughout the world you gain weapons you can modify with tip, shaft and grip mods (classically colour-coded, too, from Common Whites to Unique Blues and everything else around). And each mod is upgradeable once you have the blueprint for it (the same applies to items such as IEDs, lockpicks and so on). You also manage all of this yourself. Each main settlement features either a Shop or a Craftmaster, and while I feel this is an area that absolutely could have used some bolstering, being in charge of your own micro is more fitting here, especially given the type of character Aiden is.



He’s a Witcher. Well, not quite. But certainly the game’s narrative foundation for him is very Witcher-like (read: Polish). He’s been messed with scientifically as a kid to make him stronger and more resilient (read: mutated, or mutant). He’s chosen a transient life as a Pilgrim -- a nomadic type of people who work and live outside The City walls (where it’s apparently most dangerous), but who go around performing tasks and jobs for people, despite being looked down upon. And he’s pretty accepting of all of this and tends to take the world around him in stride.

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"The sort of character who understands his lot in life is to work as a glorified courier capable of killing zombies and Mad Max rejects...”

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Some colleagues felt Aiden was a bit wooden and generic, but for mine I think he carries a lot of what made Kyle Crane from the first game so endearing -- just the sort of character who understands that his lot in life is to work as a glorified courier capable of killing zombies and Mad Max rejects who get in the way. And, really, as far as jobs in a post apocalyptic world are concerned, you could do far worse.

And in speaking of jobs and the apocalypse, I also touched on “consequence” in that intro if you remember. Dying Light 2 Stay Human features many moments where the player will have to make choices, and often where the outcome of those choices won’t be so evident. The way this works is similar to the rest of the game’s makeup in that it’s different based on the circumstances, big or small. There’s a Faction Alignment model where you choose which faction has control over which parts of the city you liberate, or bring under some form of function. But then there are conversational choices which have sudden time-limits and anywhere between two and six or more options. It can be a little jarring, but it’s incredibly exciting, too. At first it all seemed a little binary, but the more you play the more you begin to realise that almost every little choice you make will add to a greater overall makeup for the world. It’s not quite a meta system, but it’s perhaps the easiest way to describe it.



In one conversation I was given a handful of choices for a character I’d helped earlier. Some choices with this character involved being honest with him, or lying to shield him from a hurtful truth. I chose to be honest as that’s the way in which I tend to play these sorts of games, and that didn’t go over so well. He leapt off a building to his ultimate demise and simply no longer existed in my narrative other than as someone I’d let down. In another instance I was given the location of a child’s keepsake who said if I retrieved it for her, I could sell it because it was worth a lot of money. I did just that, only when I next spoke to her she was incredibly bummed I’d gone and done that and didn’t give it back to her. I was at once heartbroken and embarrassed for myself. And these were choices I couldn’t undo.

In many ways, the choice and consequence side of Dying Light 2 is really very humbling.

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"It’s hard not to think the game could maybe have done with another few months in development...”

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Playing on Xbox Series X and also a little on PC, I’d be remiss to tell you it was a flawless experience. Within the two weeks we had the game for the review period Techland addressed over 1000 bugs (a few of which we reported ourselves), and acknowledged there are many more. It will launch with a Day One patch, but I can’t see it being an initially smooth release across all platforms. Most of the key issues I faced broke some progress, or featured missions that simply reappeared after returning to the game. There’s some audio issues and camera woes in cutscenes that also impact things like mission information and general characterisation. And while I expect as much as possible to be addressed in the coming weeks after launch it’s hard not to think the game could maybe have done with another few months in development. Especially after being content complete (so no new distracting additions).


With that said, however, Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a fun and thoroughly engaging game that misses the mark on a few aspects, but in an overall sense still delivers with a gripping story and some great characters. I found the writing, for the most part, to be excellent and things such as the game’s soundtrack and its creepy AF audio are (still) awesome. And while I lamented aspects of the visuals, it still has incredible lighting, a great particle system and some pretty decent zombie physics holding it aesthetically aloft. Clipping and other nuisance aspects are things you learn to live with, as the greater whole far outshines the nit-picky stuff. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting a bit more polish. Or at least hoped for it.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human will divide fans, as the first game did. With that there’s no question, but for mine it is an incredibly rewarding game that has the best parkour ever seen or experienced in games, and the playground to match it. Plus the zombies. So many (awesome) zombies. On Hard I still found it a little on the easy side, but the length and depth of missions and the world more than made up for it. And if you let the game bite you, as I did, it’ll grab and transform you for more than the next little while.

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