At Gamescom 2018 I got to see a 1-hour behind-closed-doors live gameplay of Dying Light 2. It was led by two of the developers, they played it for a group of press / media (not a hands-on but it was live, not pre-recorded). In this Preview I will share what I have learned from this event, what was shown, what’s new and what stands out.
Dying Light 2 is set 15 years after humanity succumbed to the virus that turns people into infected monsters. Not many people are left. It takes place in a fictional European city, filled with infected and bandits. According to the developers, the world is supposed to be 4 times bigger than Dying Light 1. What makes this one different is that it’s set up as a “Narrative Sandbox” with a non-linear story. What that means exactly will be illustrated throughout the Preview.
The gameplay started off on the city streets with some basic parkour. They now have dynamic physics objects, meaning the parkour objects react to your movements in a more realistic way. For example, if you jump on a box hanging from a crane, the box will start swinging according to your movement, the impact of your jump, the angle at which you jumped on it etc.
There were a few single zombies on the streets but they don’t pose a threat at daytime. Just like in the first Dying Light, the real bad monsters only come out at night. They don’t like the sunlight so they usually stay indoors. Do note that while technically they look and move like zombies, the game calls them “infected”.
All the dismemberment you know from Dying Light 1 is still in the game. Decapitated heads and limbs are flying over the screen in bloody fashion.
We went to an infected hideout, a place where it’s always dark. There were probably a hundred of them in there. The trick is to be quiet, don’t shine your flashlight in their faces and don’t get too close. We did some climbing which they heard and all of them were instantly coming after us. We quickly escaped through a window and parkoured away – the sunlight kept them from following.
Next stop; a water tower overlooking the city – it was one of the harder parkour sections. Here we had to climb inside the tower and balance on narrow pipes on the tower’s exterior. On the top floor, we encountered two goons “Jack” and “Joe”.
Here the story choices started to show. We can either side with the goons or we can kill them and thus side with the peacekeepers. What’s interesting here is that your choices and factions greatly impact the game world, that’s what the devs mean by “Narrative Sandbox”. We choose to fight the goons, thus siding with the peacekeepers. This results in free water being made available in the city for citizens and yourself, which we can use for free healing. They will clear the buildings of infected, eradicate bandits from the streets, set up ropes for easier world exploration, but also enforce their strict laws which might turn against you one day. Had we sided with the goons, they would have started selling the water for money – which means no free water and healing for us, but we would have gotten a kickback from the water sales, thus making continuous free cashflow. Then the streets would stay filled with bandits and infected, and a black market shop would open up to provide us with powerful weapons and suspicious substances for sale.
There are many other factions, for example a gang that produces drugs. If you side with them you can use drugs to enhance your combat, but enemies will also be able to use drugs to get stronger. You will encounter all these different gangs over the course of the story.
Our attack on the water tower goons resulted in a mini boss fight. The first enemy wasn’t big trouble, the second was much better at blocking our attacks and it was harder to find an opening to attack. What stands out here is that the human AI can now change their aggression and attacks mid-combat. We finished by kicking him off the tower, you can actually use parkour to jump enemies and knock them down.
Lastly, we got to return to the safe area and saw the peacekeepers giving out free water. The city also got much greener. Then we were shown the alternative future, had we sided with the goons. They were selling the water on the streets and everyone was thirsty. The city didn’t get greener, it looked barren and dead, infected and bandits were roaming the streets.
It seems at certain story points you get to decide between 2 factions at a time. That means the game will be interesting for multiple playthroughs so you can side with the factions you previously didn’t. In how far this affects actual story is unclear but it certainly changes the game world, impacts the people in it and grants yourself different benefits (gameplay modifiers so to speak).
The biggest change is how your decisions affect faction alignments and thus overall gameplay. I don’t see this as a big positive, nor is it negative. It could make it more confusing but could also add replay value. Remains to be seen how this plays out. I remain cautiously optimistic for this game. The first one couldn’t be completed when it shipped because of a serious glitch with a side mission, platinum trophy and 1000 Gamerscore was thus unobtainable, and lots of trophies/achievements in general were glitchy, unlocked way later than they should have and the collectible trophies glitched for many players (myself included, collected everything twice and it was still glitched). Techland needs to do better bug testing this time, the first Dying Light had good gameplay but the bugs were unacceptable and apparently nobody bothered trying to complete their own game before launch. Let’s hope they do a better job with Dying Light 2 and take the time to test it more seriously.
Verdict: Hype Level 8.5/10
The gameplay looks great and the fact that your choices carry impact on how the game plays out is the biggest new addition. I remain cautiously optimistic, the first Dying Light was extremely buggy and couldn’t be completed on day one. If Techland gets it right this time and delivers a bug-free game, we could have a really enjoyable gore fest on our hands here.
This Preview is based on a 1 hour hands-off gameplay at Gamescom 2018, led by two of the developers.