Shortly after you arrive in the city of Old Verde, a emaciated, desperate man approaches you. He needed to prove his worth as an apprentice artisan and came up with a foolproof plan: use an electric fence to stimulate nearby goats to produce more milk. After a few mishaps and a lethally overstimulated goat, you have the resulting creation in your hands: something cluttered, but still close to splendor.
Dying Light 2 almost. Techland has improved upon the original Dying Light in almost every way, with more thoughtful scenes making it more than just a parkour twist on the zombie genre. Along the way, it will also fry some goats, blurred vision and reluctance to let its unique features shine.
Kyle Crane saves the city of Harlan in Dying Light, and you’ll soon discover that it’s pointless. Global Relief Effort (GRE) – the grim research team of Dying Light ostensibly trying to find a cure for the zombie infection – succumbed to the lure of power and plunged the world into another epidemic. Lucky cities, like Viledo, suffered chemical explosions and fell into anarchy as the first governing body and then the other disbanded and everyone else was scrambling to survive.
The failure of the GRE is a corny zombie trope, but it at least makes Dying Light 2 more meaningful. While the original game’s storyline was weak, it’s clear that Techland has created an interesting world for the sequel, with its own rich backstory. However, the main focus is on Villedor itself. A massive city that is both a prison and home to an infected tribe of humans trapped behind walls and fighting for control of land and resources.
The leap into it all is Aiden, the hero of Dying Light 2 and Techland’s answer to the complaints of Kelklan’s static personality. Aiden has a mission of his own, related to the horrific experiments he and other kids conduct on the GRE, but gets caught up in Viledo’s struggles along the way. The balancing act is a bit confusing, as Aiden’s broader goals are often lost in the momentary drama in the city. However, his character traits and Jonah Scott’s excellent vocal performance make it easy to overlook.
Despite some strong work on the character from the start, one of Dying Light 2’s biggest sins is Aiden himself. We saw Aiden in the eyes, but we never got a chance to know who he was. To the credit of this story — and Scott — as a player, you still feel connected to Aiden despite never really getting to know him. I’d love to see Techland develop more deeply with its new protagonist, and possibly develop him as much as it did with Villedor itself.
The same goes for the wider story and characters – especially in the first few hours you’re confined to the Old Verde. The idea seems to be to introduce you to a condensed version of Urban Struggle and give Aiden a large parkour playground to learn from. The practical result of this onboarding is a slow narrative that has you going back and forth between five identical places in the region — y-sectors to an endless chorus of pings, alerting you to nearby encounters or loot stash. With its shallow quests, illusion of choice, and endless distractions, it initially seemed like the worst open-world filler.
Then suddenly not anymore. After those tedious opening hours, the events that pushed Aiden into the second half of Dying Light 2 and Villedor were surprisingly gripping. When you finally enter the city, the first view of downtown Villedor is stunning – you catch a glimpse of it from the rooftop garden of a skyscraper, then throw yourself off the edge and hope your paraglider works as intended. You can see the game open for you at the moment, which is a shame it took so long.
The layout of the big city is much more interesting, and exploring it during the day is an absolute treat (it’s a tense thrill at night). Once you gain more freedom to explore, the pace picks up significantly, as does Techland’s world-building: factional conflicts become more desperate and destructive, the disturbing truths behind Aiden’s trauma and the fate of the city Inextricably linked, the story ends up going in one direction – though not entirely unexpected – that is still satisfying and well-executed.
As spectacular as the post-game positioning is, this is the quiet moment I’m most impressed with, and makes me wish Techland as a whole opted for a more refined approach to Dying Light 2.
For example, one side quest involves a timid painter asking for help to get the correct shade of red. He admits that he’s been feeding a giant infected, hoping to color it with its blood, and asks you to kill it for him. It’s an odd juxtaposition that speaks volumes about Villedor’s life and the struggles people face, arguably more so than the game’s protracted first-half battle of the water towers.
Nearby I found a rooftop camp where a small group gathered around a storyteller excitedly recounting the legend of a famous nightcrawler who fought for the survivors and provided them with a safe city living place. It’s not even task-related. It’s just a glimpse into the world where Aiden risked his life. However, these moments are few and far between, and even the more rewarding quests have no lasting impact beyond giving you new gear — no changes to how you interact with the city or its people.
Techland has fragments of a fascinating world and one of the most unique works of zombie survival, but never fully utilizes them. I can’t help but hope that instead of focusing on the more standard tasks and endeavors of making the world bigger, the team is focused on making the world special.
Mechanically, Dying Light 2 is also surprisingly conservative — especially compared to the first game — but it does innovate in some key ways. The day/night system is basically the same as the original system. After sunset, the Infected becomes even more dangerous, and the new Growler Infected variant will summon a horde of zombies to chase you around the city until you reach the safe zone. But more interesting are the implications of being in the dark for too long.
Because you’re infected, you can only survive as a human for a few minutes without needing UV light or special items to restore immunity. It’s a smart design choice that will change not only the way you plan quests and exploration, but the way you interact with the city. Areas you would normally overlook—abandoned homes or remote safe areas where UV light still shines—become important stops on your route, often at risk of exposing yourself to the roar.
Broadly speaking, the combat remains the same as the original Dying Light, but some minor tweaks and iterations make it more interesting. Weapon mods have a bigger purpose, letting you install flamethrowers and freeze beams (among other things) to gain a strategic advantage in tough battles. The layout of the city means that most combat is never straightforward; verticality, stealth opportunities, and the now-classic parkour focus intertwine to provide an extra layer of strategy for even the most standard bandit encounters.
Less pleasant are the bugs and glitches I’ve encountered in Aiden’s Odyssey, including some rather problematic ones. Audio cuts out randomly at certain points, usually during combat, and it’s a gamble whether the paraglider will work—probably not the kind of survival tension Techland has in mind. There’s also been some screen tearing on the Xbox Series S and a trend of fast-travel locations disappearing. The developer has released a patch during the review period, and I hope these issues will be fixed at or shortly after release.
Dying Light 2 is messy and uneven. It’s also unique, exhilarating, and a lot of fun to play, and it’s one of the best settings in recent memory — despite the feeling that the game can and should be more important than itself. Techland has come a long way in the sequel, but it’s clear that Dying Light’s future can’t just be building a bigger city to climb. The sequel gave the series a good amount of breadth—now it just needs some proper depth.
