Dying Light 2: well firstly let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

The Development Hell of Dying Light 2

When Dying Light 2 was first announced in 2018, hype went through the roof. The original Dying Light (2015) had built a loyal fanbase thanks to its fluid parkour, brutal melee combat, and excellent post-launch support. Techland promised that the sequel would be bigger, bolder, and more ambitious, with deep narrative branching, complex choices that would reshape the city, and RPG-style depth never before seen in a zombie game. On paper, it sounded like the evolution of the genre.

But the reality was a long, messy road that left scars on the final product.


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The Ambition Spiral

Dying Light 2 was pitched as not just an action survival game, but a full-on immersive RPG with city-shaping consequences.

Techland promised that your decisions would drastically alter the environment — entire districts would rise or fall based on your choices.

This scope-creep ballooned expectations and made development a constant game of catch-up.



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Internal Struggles and Turnover

Reports surfaced of chaotic leadership inside Techland. Creative direction shifted constantly, with visions being thrown out and restarted.

Key narrative leads and developers left during production. Writer Chris Avellone, who had been brought in to craft the branching storylines, was cut from the project after harassment allegations. His departure gutted much of the original “your choices matter” depth.

Morale inside the studio reportedly tanked — employees described the atmosphere as toxic, with poor planning and constant pivots.



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Delays and Broken Promises

Originally slated for 2020, the game was delayed multiple times (COVID didn’t help). By the time it launched in February 2022, fans had waited nearly seven years since the first game.

The marketing promises (deep story choices, drastically different cities, advanced AI factions) had to be dialed back. What shipped was far shallower than the E3 showcases had suggested.



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Why It Failed at Launch

1. Buggy and Unpolished

At release, Dying Light 2 was riddled with glitches, performance issues, and game-breaking bugs.

Animations clipped, co-op desynced constantly, and the world felt unfinished in spots.



2. Shallow Narrative vs. Big Promises

The much-hyped “your choices shape the city” mechanic turned out to be mostly cosmetic.

Instead of truly branching storylines, decisions boiled down to minor changes in side missions or which faction gave you different parkour perks.

The story itself felt generic and lifeless compared to the unique survival narrative of the first game.



3. Weak Combat and Parkour Progression

Parkour, the core of Dying Light, felt sluggish at the start because key moves were locked behind hours of progression.

Combat was clunky and repetitive, with weapons breaking constantly but offering little variety in how you could approach fights.



4. Tone Problem

The original Dying Light balanced gritty survival horror with fun traversal. Dying Light 2 leaned into a weird mix of serious “faction politics drama” and cartoonish dialogue, leaving players with tonal whiplash.



5. Overshadowed by Expectations

Because Techland hyped the game for years as a “genre-defining RPG,” players expected something like The Witcher with parkour. What they got was a decent zombie parkour game trapped under the weight of overpromising.





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The Aftermath

To Techland’s credit, they didn’t abandon the game. Post-launch patches fixed many bugs, quality-of-life updates improved combat and traversal, and expansions slowly fleshed it out. But first impressions matter, and Dying Light 2 became a cautionary tale:

Don’t promise revolutionary systems if you can’t deliver.

Don’t let vision shifts and leadership chaos derail the spine of your game.

And most importantly, don’t forget what made the first game special — fans wanted that core, not a watered-down experiment.



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👉 So in short: Dying Light 2 failed at launch because Techland overpromised, underdelivered, and struggled through years of development hell that gutted its story and systems. The bones of a good game were there, but buried under mismanagement and hype.

So now time to give a brief summary plot and then talk about the ups and downs rather than the gameplay.

So in this game ur no longer playing as the character from the first game, no now ur playing as Aiden, this loner who’s looking for his sister who’s gone missing.

So u find yourself in this town which has nature growing out of the land and buildings.

Humans are living in the buildings in different factions. They are trying to rebuild themselves.

Kinda, because living in factions and stealing for one another while preventing from getting robbed isn’t what I’d call normal.

Anyways just like the first game, u will be finding yourself parkouring across buildings, walls, and ledges.

But this time they added an upgrade that gives u a glider to glide down safely since ur in a town with tons of tall buildings.

So will Aiden be able to find his sister? All will be revealed in the spoilers.

But first, let’s talk about some Negatives and Positives.

Negatives: this game at launch was a complete mess, the base game lacked in

A proper nighttime (as in the nighttime looked bright out for some reason) (luckily they fixed that later)

There were no Volitials in the game at first, which was a massive downgrade (luckily they fixed that later on)

The NPCs were slightly dumb (luckily they fixed that)

Also, this one is less of a negative but it’s more of an idk I’m split, in this game they introduced the game mechanism of making ur own choice.

Meaning when an NPC asks a question, the game gives u a couple of choices of dialog to pick from, this game is essentially an RPG. This is weird because the first game wasn’t an RPG.

Hence why I’m mixed on that one.

Positives: the game looks gorgeous, no that’s really it that’s all the Positives I can think of.

Killing zombies is somewhat fun, if you haven’t become bored of zombies at this point though.

❌ Con – Factions, Humans, and Aiden’s Snooze of a Story

One of the biggest problems with Dying Light 2 is how much of the game isn’t about zombies at all. Instead, the spotlight is on endless factions. And not just one or two — it feels like every street corner has its own miniature society with banners, politics, and side squabbles. Who the hell are these people? And why are there suddenly so many of them?

The result: way too many human enemies. It turns the game into The Walking Dead syndrome — more time brawling with dudes in capes and armor than surviving against the infected. Compare that to the first Dying Light, or even other zombie titles (World War Z, Left 4 Dead), where humans are occasional spice, not the main dish. Those games understand the point: the zombies are the threat.

Then there’s Aiden. Who is this guy? Why should we care? He’s just… there. A random drifter with no charisma and no depth. His whole character motivation is “find my sister.” Sounds simple enough, but here’s the problem: we don’t know her. We don’t know what she’s like, what she means to him, or why we should give a damn. She’s more MacGuffin than human being, and after hours of chasing this paper-thin motivation, you stop caring altogether.

And if the weak motivation wasn’t enough, the dialogue becomes torture. Almost every conversation boils down to:

NPC: “We’ll help you find your sister, if you help us with our faction problem.”

Aiden: “Okay, but I really need to find my sister.”
Repeat. Again. And again. And again. By the time the second act rolls around, you’re just groaning every time he opens his mouth. The repetition kills any emotional weight the story might have had, and instead of rooting for Aiden, you’re just wishing he’d shut up and let you bash zombies in peace.

Now let’s get the rating out of the way….overall I’m definitely disappointed in this game, it feels like a step down from the first game….so overall I’ll give this game a solid 5/10. Warning ⚠️ spoilers ahead y’all have been warned.
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Time to spoil the 3rd act and any revelations, eventually Aiden does find his sister who was being experimented on in a laboratory, yayy happy ending right? Yeah, not really no because unfortunately now Aiden has to try to prevent something catastrophic from happening.

For u see this woman he met named Lawan is gonna launch missiles which will lead to the destruction of the town.

His options are either to stop the missiles from destroying the city of Villedor, which would likely lead to the death of Lawan, or to let the missiles launch, saving the city but sacrificing Lawan.

Either way unfortunately his sister dies from her injuries, so there’s no happy ending any way u try to approach this.

So ur screwed either way, anyways the end.

Anyway hope y’all enjoyed this review, still have more to come, see y’all then.