The circus is a strange place, exciting to some and downright terrifying to others. The searing breath of the fire eaters was a little too close to the tent canvas. Clowns are just creepy. When the tour leader invites you to the center ring, you’re constantly worried that you might be the real attraction, and at the end of the day, you wonder if it was really such a fun experience.
it’s largely the same Dying Light 2 Bloody Ties DLC. The fire-breathing zombie is a little too close to you. When a performer invites you to the center ring, it’s because he wants to pump out your bowels as painfully as possible. The clown is you, because you really show up.
After the lights go out and the excitement wears off, I wonder how much I really like Bloody Ties, as spectacular as it is.
Bloody Ties begins with rumors about old Villedo’s underground fight club, and like any good protagonist, Aiden begins to investigate. After a few baseball bat games and an unexpected murder, he’s blacklisted in the halls of massacre by a strange new villain: Skullface.
Carnage Hall is where glory-hungry warriors and violent deranged come together to fight. Renegades, Peacekeepers, and regular Survivors are mixed together with no allegiance in mind, which is a handy setup that helps keep this DLC completely separate from the main story. Your actions don’t matter here, and there are no branching story lines.
While it’s an ideal setting for exploring the people of Villedor and their daily lives and relationships from a unique perspective, Bloody Ties only focuses on the mysteries surrounding Carnage Hall and Skullface’s dedication to murdering the people; Also stands out for having an unusual love of death.
The result is an odd combination. It’s refreshing to have a focused story after the base game’s sprawling narrative is full of distractions, but it also feels tense, like a side quest that’s been going on for too long. Plot development happens so infrequently, with no substantive side quests, or even insight into the characters around you, that it relies almost entirely on getting you into the action.
That said, the final revelation is surprisingly satisfying, a shocking and terrifying angle on the usual survivor stories. These expansions are an ideal opportunity to slow things down, allowing Veridans and places that have nothing to do with Waltz and his intricate missile conspiracy to finally tell their stories. Bloody Ties somewhat missed that opportunity, but it did lay the groundwork for future expansions, or at least build upon.
The action between plot moments is also a bit odd. Most of the things you do in Bloody Ties you already do in the main game, just without the freedom to explore in New Villedor – races, time trials, etc. Sounds tedious, but Techland has set these up to be some of the funniest, most tense obstacle courses in the series to date. The night chase starts from the full level. Checkpoint challenges take you around a small enclosed area, where smart use of your grapple and glider is key to success, and combat takes place in bizarre arenas filled with deadly dangers.
Bloody Ties is so lacking in its puzzle department, though, and it even knows it. On a protracted quest around the area around Carnage Hall, Aiden ventures into an abandoned power station. What awaited him, however, was not a real jigsaw puzzle of wires, but a piece of paper pinned to a concrete post.
While you have access to a fancy new weapon, it’s disappointingly similar to the main game in terms of combat and even weapon customization. That’s thanks in part to the original’s extensive customization and range of weapons, though. When you can already whack someone into the stands with a baseball bat, freeze them with a jury-equipped axe, and shoot flames from makeshift polearms, it’s hard to top that, at least so soon after the main campaign rolls out.
Bloody Ties is a fun piece of DLC, especially if you like side events from the main game, but it’s hard not to think Dying Light 2’s first expansion could have benefited from more time – even after the delay – to Help it live up to its full potential.