PS4

Dying Light 2: Stay Human - Reloaded Edition

ShooterRole-playing (RPG)

Time to beat: about 50.9 hours

Overview

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a 2022 action role-playing survival horror game developed and published by Techland. The game is a sequel to Dying Light, and was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on February 4, 2022. A cloud version for the Nintendo Switch is in development. It received generally favorable reviews, with praise directed at the combat, parkour system, and open world, but criticism for the story. It sold 5 million units in its first month of release.

Dying Light 2 is an action role-playing survival horror video game featuring a zombie apocalyptic-themed open world. Set 22 years after Dying Light, it stars a new protagonist named Aiden Caldwell (voiced by Jonah Scott), who has various parkour skills. Players can perform actions such as climbing ledges, sliding, leaping off from edges, and wall running to quickly navigate the city. It was confirmed that there are over 3000 parkour animations to give a more fluid free-running experience. Tools such as a grappling hook and a paraglider also aid traversal in the city.

The game takes place after the events of Dying Light; the 2014 rabies-like outbreak in the fictional city of Harran (the setting of Dying Light) ended with the “death” of all of the people in Harran. The international organization called the Global Relief Effort (GRE) was eventually able to develop a vaccine for the Harran Virus, ending the threat of a global pandemic, but the GRE continued experimenting on the virus in secret, intending to use it as a biological weapon.

Dying Light 2 was developed and published by Techland. The team intended to invoke a sense of loss and dread, and also show that humanity was on the edge of extinction. To show the fragility of humanity, the team introduced several layers to the City, in which the temporary structures are built on top of the ruins of the old buildings to accommodate humans, whereas permanent structures and concrete ground are occupied by massive hordes of zombies. When creating the city, the team utilized an internal technology named CityBuilder, which can assemble different building parts like ledges and windows with minimal input from the level designers. The technology enabled the team to create and change the city design quickly.

The game was announced at E3 2018 during the Xbox press conference by Avellone as Dying Light 2 with a 6-minutes demo. At Xbox's E3 2019 press conference, the game was shown again, with an early 2020 release window. Square Enix distributes the game and provided marketing efforts in North America. In January 2020, Techland announced that the game would be delayed out of its 2020 window to allow additional development time, with no new release date given at the time. In May 2021, a digital event was held and a 7 December 2021 release date was revealed, alongside the game's title adding the subtitle of Stay Human.

Dying Light 2 received "generally favorable" reviews, on review aggregator website Metacritic.