Dying Light 2 Story Length (Playtime)

Are you wondering how long is the Story in Dying Light 2? Depending on chosen difficulty and playstyle it can vary quite a lot between 12-35 hours.

Dying Light 2 story takes an average of 20-25 hours to beat.

This assumes it’s your first playthrough, you focus on only the story with minimal side activities, and watch all cutscenes and dialogues. There are 22 Main Story Quests, which take about an hour on average. Some are shorter, while others can be up to 3 hours. If you were to skip cutscenes and dialogues, e.g. on a 2nd playthrough, you can split that time almost in half. My speedrun on easy difficulty with skipping cutscenes/dialogues and doing only story quests took me 12 hours. But of course that’s not how most people will want to enjoy the game on their first run. The game does have many choices and faction quests that cancel out each other, meaning there is good replay value. So on a 2nd playthrough if you just rush through and skip everything it’s quite doable in about 10-12 hours.

Dying Light 2 Story Length Estimates:

• 12 Hours Speedrun on Easy Difficulty, skipping all Dialogue & Cutscenes, ignoring all side activities.
• 20-25 Hours on Normal Difficulty, listening to all dialogue and cutscenes, focusing strictly on story only (no side tasks or exploration beyond what the story demands).
• 35 Hours on Normal Difficulty, doing side quests as they appear.

Most players will fit into the 20-35 hour range depending on how thorough they are with side quests along the way. Many side quests become missable when advancing the story, so it’s always a good idea to do them right away when they appear.

100% Completion / Side Content / Platinum Trophy / 1000 Gamerscore:

• To get 100% Completion in Dying Light 2 it takes about 50-80 Hours (excluding all Endings) – Story: 20-25 hours, Side Quests: 10-15 Hours (recommended to do them as they appear), Points of Interest: 10 Hours, Collectibles: 10-15 Hours, if you follow the Dying Light 2 Collectible Guide. Points of Interest are the (“?”) question marks on the map (90 total plus Dark Hollows and Convoys). There are another 250 Collectibles in total, some of which are tied to side quests. The 50-80 hours estimate means doing 100% of everything that is possible in a single playthrough. However, going for all different endings would require many more playthroughs so it would take over 100 hours if you wanted to do that. Siding with one faction also locks you out of some of the quests of the other faction, so you cannot do all of them in a single playthrough, unless you join someone else’s Co-Op session.
• Platinum Trophy / 1000 Gamerscore takes about 50-80 Hours – Platinum is basically the same as 100% completion plus getting 1 Million Money (only takes 30-60 minutes with Duplication Exploit). You also need to save 50 Survivors from random encounters, do a number of skill-specific kills and some miscellaneous trophy tasks, but these can be done along the way and don’t take much extra time if you focus on them from the start. The only thing you don’t necessarily need for trophies is Dark Hollows and Convoys. You also technically don’t need every single side quest, but because so many collectibles are tied to side quests it’s best to just do them all, and they also give you XP and useful items. So overall, Platinum and 1000 Gamerscore are about the same as the regular 100% completion. You can skip some Dark Hollows and Convoys but need to do some other extra trophy tasks. See the Dying Light 2 Trophy Guide & Roadmap.

You can also still free-roam after the story, however lots of side quests, collectibles, and story areas will be inaccessible by that point. You can still join someone else’s co-op game to grab things there, except for the Prologue which cannot be replayed in co-op. There is also no New Game+, meaning 100% must be obtained in a single playthrough.

How long did it take you to finish the Dying Light 2 story or to gain 100% completion / platinum / 1000 Gamerscore? Leave your times in the comments below.

For more Dying Light 2 info, check out our full Dying Light 2 Wiki & Strategy Guide.