The Fault In Dying Light 2’s Design

I think it is quite fair to say that I particularly enjoy Techland’s sequel to their zombie parkour ’em up, Dying Light 2: Stay Human. I think beyond superficial bugs I experienced and one that killed me in a funny way, it had charm despite not being very complex or refreshing. I don’t think it is faultless, as the title today suggests, but there was something to it that was fun and engaging while also eye-rollingly bland.

That seems to be what a number of people had a grievance about when it came to its release, at least beyond the bugs. The 2019 Xbox showcase where Dying Light 2 was revealed, with the help of Chris Avalon (he who shall not be named) doing his best Peter Molyneux impression. It promised several systems that would lock off specific options in-game and have the opposing faction rioting in the streets if you didn’t provide water. Unsurprisingly, following Avalon’s recent series of allegations, those systems aren’t so much as present but shadows of themselves as according to the description in the E3 demonstration.

However, I think there is more to the design that is at fault than just that. Primarily the fault lies with the entire faction system, the tutorial, the save system, and how the whole game generally works. Not that I am reneging my opinion that it’s fun, energetic, and worth your time, it absolutely is. My point is that those systems make the moral choice redundant, even before you know all that Avalon spoke of was removed or hardly ever there at all. I ran through the main quest because I was doing the reviewer thing with little extracurricular nonsense, and even I’ll say, it was a bit long-winded and dull to ever return so quickly.

Lethargic from the outset, I think it is unquestionably a fault to not have a skip tutorial option or button. The trouble there is that half the game will be missing by that point. The whole first city, the one with the Parisian rooftops you leap for with your chin, is basically the entire tutorial with the second one being where you get a large portion of the cool and interesting movement mechanics. Alongside story elements that set up the reason for X, Y, and Z in plot convenience, it all has a sense of sluggishness to it. That makes it something that isn’t compelling to trudge through once more after playing it.

This is why I’ve argued for years since playing the likes of Far Cry 3 or games that lock you into one save-file, pushing you ever forward and never allowing for inFamous-style save-scumming. It shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point to find that Dying Light 2 has one of those Mass Effect 3-style “what ice cream do you the most?” questions hanging over it. Though it also has a Shatner-esque moment where you have to hear “Aiden!!!!!!!” shouted, and it doesn’t have the same effect with a bland character’s name as it does when you put something like Khan in there.

Anyway, like all games, Dying Light 2 is a lot of things, but also boasts the idea of alternate endings that “so totally change the world, you guys.” Call it a fault of design, a fault of timing, or a fault in my level of apathy being ridiculously high, but I don’t think anyone cares so much about the alternate ending when in less than a month later From Software are releasing a massive fantasy RPG that will take a good few days to fill a wiki to no longer be a stub article. Dying Light 2 might be something fun, interesting in terms of gameplay, and energetic to a fault in the ways you get around, but some of us don’t have the 500-hours a day to find out that other ending.

With an inability to save when you like, skip the very dull tutorial sections, and a lack of any great pace to get beyond the sedentary portions of the entire game, why would I, or anyone else, purposefully attempt a second playthrough within the first six months? The moral choice system and alternate ending phase of gaming has been a particularly long and annoying one for several reasons, the least of which has often been themselves. Dishonored did it well, allowing you to have multiple save games and multiple playthroughs, all alongside gameplay working with you in that regard.

Something like Dishonored and its two options of kill everyone or kill no one, with the slow and methodical game put against the fast and frenetic clanging of blades, is much more pleasurable. In that, there are two entirely different playstyles. With Dying Light 2, there is the dull combat that I complained about lacking a meaty punch, or there is the fun parkour that everyone is here for. So all the good and bad endings amount to little more than a forced prance around the world and its people again. I wouldn’t mind, if only not for the massive flaw that because of this binary good or bad ending option, everything comes off a bit bland.

Kyle, I mean, Aiden has about as much personality as a brick with a particularly pensive face drawn on it. The general idea of the pseudo-fascistic authoritarians countered by the generally mild-mannered nutters doesn’t add to that, and the overall story lands like Aiden on cobbled streets. In a perfect world, there would have been more character to Aiden and possibly a better impact on the overall plot, but since 2019 the majority of the game would have been locked in. Of course, you can’t entirely fault the game for what it isn’t, but you can for what it is, and that is something attempting ambition without flexibility for gameplay.

I’d like to say that there is something more that could be done. However, as I said towards the beginning, Dying Light 2 from the ground-up is flawed by design. Hampering the story with this inflexibility for those of us bored of the story after one sitting, but also the gameplay with a moral choice that mounts to fascism vs nutters. The videogame du jour for your two moral questions, which is only a tricky option when the fascists have the toys that make the game more fun or easier to play. They don’t, you get the paraglider and grappling hook anyway, and the nutters make those more fun.