Throughout the story content, I not only decided with whom I wanted to align myself but also which benefits I wanted to confer upon the city. In my initial preview of Dying Light 2 from E3 2019, I gave my write-up the headline of "Choice and Consequence is Everything." That notion was further confirmed through my first hands-on session with the game last week. Combat also takes into account dodging, blocking, and parrying, but you have to be careful not to deplete your stamina bar.
I experienced this in full force as I charged up a swing with a two-handed mace, then unloaded on a zombie, sending it flying through the air in full, rag-doll glory. While stealth is an option in several cases (I quietly worked my way through one base, similar to how you would in a Far Cry game), combat has been overhauled to make sure weapons feel truer to their weight and power. Through things like timed parkour challenges, players can push the system to the limit, but Dying Light 2's parkour is aimed at giving players an approachable set of moves and enabling them to get better.Ĭombat may be a more straightforward mechanic in a first-person game, but Techland has also made marked improvements on that front. Techland wanted to create a parkour system that is approachable for a wide net of players, yet difficult to master. You don't see the character, but you have to imagine where the character is and how it moves. It's not the simple thing of you pressing a button and swinging a weapon you have to measure distance, you have to time your presses right. "When you come to think of it, parkour – especially in – is a very complex mechanic. "One of our goals was to create a parkour system that would be easy to get into," lead game designer Tymon Smektała says. Not only that, but the team rigorously iterated to ensure that the first-person platforming (which is a unique challenge) feels smooth, rewarding, and precise. To support the enhanced parkour systems, Techland doubled the number of moves available to the player and implemented more than 3,000 animations to deal with all the moves, combinations, and interactions with objects.
While I didn't get a chance to use any of those in my demo, the improvements to the parkour system in Dying Light 2 are evident. In previous footage, Techland showed off moves like riding on doors as they open, using zombies as cushions when you fall from tall heights, and grappling hooks. Parkour has received perhaps the most noticeable upgrade. While I barely scratched the surface of the parkour and combat skill trees, I did unlock moves like wall-running and drop-kicks, both of which greatly enhanced my experience. Dying Light 2 protagonist Aiden Caldwell has a better move set than Dying Light's Kyle Crane, but much of it has to be unlocked through the game's skill tree. With new mechanics, rebuilt systems, and a ton of additional animations, the combat and parkour of Dying Light 2 Stay Human expand on the already fun versions present in the first game.
While you can check out my general impressions and some of my captured footage from the PC version on today's episode of New Gameplay Today, I've distilled some of my key takeaways below. The demo I played at a small in-person event in San Francisco gave me nearly four hours of story and side content to experience on a modern, high-end gaming PC, as well as some extra time on an earlier build running on a PlayStation 4 Pro. It's been a long time coming, but more than two years after that initial gameplay demo impressed me, I finally got my hands on Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
Then, after announcing a December 2021 release dat e, the developer delayed the game one (hopefully) final time, with the title now scheduled to release on February 4, 2022. Sadly, in the early stages of last year, Techland announced a delay to 2021. Those hopes were delivered upon during that E3 2019 demo, and Dying Light 2 skyrocketed up my list of the most anticipated games of 2020.
The game, then scheduled for a 2020 release, blew away my already-high expectations. I enjoyed the original Dying Light, but felt that with a little bit of iteration and polish, the series could evolve into something truly special.
It all started in 2019 when I saw a beyond-impressive gameplay demo at E3. Dying Light 2 has been one of my most anticipated games of the year for, well, three years now.