Dying Light 2 is alive!

 Don't count me out yet!

Zombies are shaping up as something of a dying art in today's age, at least on the AAA gaming stage, because just like Hollywood they went and oversaturated the trend and now no one gets to have the undead fun they once wanted to because it's haplessly pastiche at this point. Things have become so overplayed that now even Resident Evil can't be bothered to do Zombies anymore; RE8 was about vampires and werewolves and Resident Evil 4 Remake is about that most terrifying of Lovercraftian horrors: eastern Europeans. But somewhere out there are those lone heroes that never gave up on the zombie horror genre, even when they themselves are partially responsible for that oversaturation problem I mentioned earlier. Those who have been pumping the world with their special brand of zombie game all along and were just about getting somewhere interesting before the world did a sickie for a year. Well guess what- they're back and they bought their game with them. Yes, I'm referring to Techland's Dying Light.

You see, a long time ago Techland were famous for an entirely different zombie game in Dead Island, the campy survival-esque romp where you trounced around an island resort and stomped on zombies with glee for the first two hours and then sort of glided through the rest of the game growing increasingly frustrated with the mechanics and setting being just inadequate enough to keep you unsatisfied. I swear I was so close to liking Dead Island for it's entire runtime, but I just kept getting dragged down again and again by the ceaseless backtracking through narrow streets, hordes that respawned with every area change, boring NPC's that always bog down these zombie games, and just the raw gameplay that grew stale way too quick. Maybe I was just ruined by Dead Rising and it's seemingly endless zombie murdering fun, but Dead Island just didn't do it for me. And then came Dying Light.

Dying Light took Dead Island and did what everyone wanted that game to do, it opened up the world into being something wholly more engaging to explore. Now a true open world, Dying Light let players parkour over buildings, objects and even zombies themselves as they raced around an open world characterized by speed and mobility. Improving the flow of traversal naturally lead into improvements to combat, which made the entire loop feel fresher and ended up propelling Dying Light into one of the longest-living Zombie titles of all time. I mean that to say I know people who, even years after the fact, will keep that game on their hard drives because they just like to stomp zombies every now and then. Techland have nurtured that love with a well-received DLC story cap, patches and updates, a separate battle royale spin-off for some reason, and the constant promises of Dying Light 2; oh Dying Light 2...

For a long time it looked as though this mythical sequel was going of the way of all long awaited sequels; nowhere. Just like Beyond Good and Evil 2, or even Deep Silver's sequel to Techland's own zombie game, Dead Island 2, this was just a game that kept getting the pause button thrown onto it. Either that meant good things and that the game was being cooked until it was good and done, or terrible things in that the game was going through development hell and would be lucky to make it out alive. I'll be honest, years of seeing this has tainted me into a bit of pessimist, so I personally did not believe this game was coming out. Even after seeing the 2019 reveal (which was alright) that 2020 of complete silence just sealed my opinion. "It's been dropped, nothing to see here." But seems I was a little too early, and a lot too presumptive, because whatever kinks the year of plague introduced to development has been worked off and Dead Island 2 is back, baby! ('Stay Human' is it now? Kind of cliche and forgettable, but I guess I can dig it)

I wasn't a believer, but with the recent Dead Island 2 features trailer that has been released even I have to admit that I'm a little bit tempted. Originally (In 2019) the promise of a supped up gameplay loop alongside that ever meaningless marketing buzz point of "Meaningful choices" turned me right off. Hearing them talk about how your choices would change the city, and then just showing how different colour banners fly from some fort somewhere, gave me flashbacks to the whole "change the skyline" pitch for Saints Row 3 which amounted to three or four Fleur De Lis' getting stamped onto nowhere buildings. But this time around we're seeing things that actually look interesting, switch ups that even look comparable to the impressive leveloutions that Battlefield pioneered and then mysteriously abandoned. (I get that it must have taken a lot of development time and effort; but it was so cool! Go back to that!) However it ends up, I must say that this is the way that you handle visual world shifting consequence: show giant swathes of the city be levelled by some falling tower, make me care and remember!

As for the raw gameplay, it's hard to judge from looking alone but everything has been tweaked to look very good. Suspiciously good. As in, "I kind of don't believe that all the 'gameplay' sections are actually gameplay". I mean there's some interactions where it's obviously gameplay, but that shot of the protagonist leaping all over the place and jumping up using a zombie looked a little staged. (or if not staged, just incredibly unlikely to actually pull of oneself) There's just this visual fluidity that rings untrue to my eye, but maybe that's just because they've nailed it so well, I can't say. On a much more positive note, I love how it seems the amount of gore and dismemberment enjoyed by the zombies is being extended to human enemies, as traditionally human enemies are the weakest parts of any self-respecting zombie game. These human enemies, though we've seen but glimpses, somehow still give off the impression of being as dumb as rocks, but maybe being allowed to brutally slaughter them will improve my general opinion on them.

Finally there's the factions and the world that Dying Light 2 wants to build, essentially the reason why you're going to have multiple choices in the first place. This is a highlight video and one that clearly didn't focus on them, but even then I have to say that they look bad. Really uninspired, confusingly so. With the amount of detail thrown into the environment, the animation, the glorious models of the zombie themselves, it's actually quite head scratching how the 'distinct' two factions the game has managed to dream up are rigidly brutal authoritarians versus anarchistic bandit-types. (There's also the nightrunners but I suspect their role will be ultimately inconsequential for taking control of the world space) Even Fallout 76 managed to inject more colour into their binary faction system. (A little more; they made the cops 'builders') maybe this is just the simple veneer and there's some deeper colourful story that fleshes out these people and what they represent beyond the bleedingly obvious, but if so then the writing will be doing the supreme heavy lifting because the visuals aren't selling it. (And even if that is the case; that makes for poor visual storytelling.)

So overall I'd say that Dying Light 2 honestly looks exciting, which is saying something for someone who wasn't excited for Dying Light 1, wrote off 2 ages ago, and thought he was done with zombies for at least another four years. State of Decay overdosed me on zombies to the point where I get nauseous even thinking about another rotten-flesh expedition; but if it's wrapped up in gameplay this cool looking, I think I can get through it relatively unscathed. If Techland remains half the team they were before Dying Light 2 entered full development, then theirs are hands fully safe to entrust this project into and I'll remain genuinely excited for tomorrow. Call the team 'necromancers' because they're bringing the undead trend back to life singlehandedly. (Oh, I guess Zach Snyder has a part to play too. Kinda.)