Pre-order Dying Light 2

The original Dying Light was ostensibly a parkour game, but mostly, that just meant it provided open-ended, forgiving platform action. You were certainly mobile, more so than most game protagonists get to be, and you could move fast when you wanted to, but the parkour was fairly low-stakes, particularly when compared to something like Mirror's Edge.

That changes dramatically in Dying Light 2. You can still climb all over the city like it's a jungle gym, but there's a lot of incidental motion — backflips, forward rolls, somersaults — added into the mix. You can swing on ropes, slide down walls, and grab onto poles. In fact, that mobility is arguably your greatest weapon, since it means you can evade pursuit by taking routes that your enemies can't or won't.

Dying Light 2 is set 15 years after the previous game, in an unnamed city, with an unnamed protagonist (the demo's subtitles list him, when he speaks, as "Player"); the canonical events of the first Dying Light are as yet unknown, but I was told at E3 2018 that if you dig hard enough in DL2, you can find out what happened to Kyle Crane.

In those 15 years, the city's fallen to pieces. By day, it's still mostly inhabited by the bandits and raiders who've managed to survive this long. By night, the infected emerge and take over, chasing anyone brave or stupid enough to stray out from the reinforced or protected zones. You enter this scenario as a wild card and free agent, able to pick and choose between warring factions, and in so doing, shape the city. Unlike the first game, Dying Light 2 features a narrative designed by Chris Avellone, AKA the Fallout 2/Planescape: Torment guy.

The vertical slice shown in DL2's debut gameplay trailer is the same section of the game that was being demonstrated behind closed doors at E3, asking the player to pick between going into business with a couple of guys who've occupied the local water tower, or siding with a group called the Peacekeepers, killing those two guys, and letting the Peacekeepers move in.

In the former case, you get to profit from the partnership, but the guys are selling clean water and letting those who can't pay die of thirst; in the latter, the Peacekeepers take over a few blocks of the city, repairing it and keeping it safe from outside threats, but punish anyone who breaks their rules with dismemberment and summary execution. One's better for you, one's arguably better for the city, but both have up- and downsides, and neither are unequivocally a right answer. Another example, which Techland's designers spoke of at the show, was how you might be able to rig up defenses to chase nests of zombies out of your neighborhood, but those zombies are going to end up somewhere else, and their new neighbors are likely to have a low opinion of you by the time the dust settles.

The general feel of the game right now seems to be more rugged and desperate than the original was, which makes sense, since we're now officially 15 years into the zombie apocalypse and the only people left are, well, rugged and desperate. Melee combat is mostly desperate people flailing at one another with whatever weapons they could throw together out of the landscape, and the addition of javelins means you have options for a ranged, silent takedown. The big money shot of both the E3 demo and the gameplay trailer, the swinging mule kick that knocks a guy off a ledge, is part of how physical fights are now, and how much of a role the landscape plays. This is a game where the city is a playground, but it's been a few years and the place really ought to be condemned. Much like the first game, head-to-head fights are halting struggles that are either lengthy exchanges of parries and dodges, or over in a second in a single bloody countermove.

Dying Light 2 is far from done at this point and has no set release date. This is one of those big E3 announcements that isn't much more than proof of existence and hinting at new features. They didn't show much about the zombies, or about the new world. That being said, even if this simply iterates on the original — if it's just Dying Light: This Time, No One Has A Gun — it's still something I'm likely to play through to completion and argue about endlessly online. Sometimes, a game simply existing is enough for a little hype.