After spending four hours with Dying Light 2 last week, I met with lead game designer Tymon Smektała to ask him about some of the game's defining mechanics, returning features, and his philosophy about some of the sequel’s biggest changes. He also offered a definitive answer to whether or not Dying Light 2 is a strand game. Here’s everything you need to know about Dying Light 2, straight from one of the men who made it.

Technical Features

Smektała confirmed that DL2 will have HDR support, ray tracing, and the ability to switch between performance (60fps) and quality settings on the next-gen console versions. Like the original, Dying Light will have ultrawide (21:9) and super ultrawide (32:9) support, but no eye-tracking implementation this time around.

Open World Map

Dying Light featured two separate open-world maps, the Slums and Old Town, but Dying Light 2 has one continuous map with fast travel options via subway terminals. The prologue mission takes place in its own smaller map, but after that the rest of the game takes place in the City, a large open world metropolitan made up of smaller interconnected boroughs. “There are no loading screens after the prologue,” Smektała says. “You can move however you want [around the map] without loading screens.” Smektała clarified that the fast travel system will utilize loading screens, but that it's possible to move freely anywhere in the map without encountering any loading screens. There are 12 zones in the City that can be controlled by one of two opposing factions - Peacekeepers or Survivors - depending on who you side with in the story, with seven of those zones physically changing to reflect the faction that’s in control. Peacekeepers add traps to zones they control while Survivors add things like ziplines and airbags that improve your ability to do parkour.

Related: Dying Light’s Halloween Event Was Everything I Want For Dying Light 2

Returning Mechanics

Smektała confirmed that the buggy from The Following expansion will not be making a return - in fact, there are no driveable cars in DL2 at all. There also won’t be any children, aka Screamers, this time. “The Screamers developed and changed into the Hollowers,” Smektała explains, “Those are the Screamers of Dying Light 2, there are no screaming children.”

Dying Light’s Canonical Ending

The Following ended with two choices. Crane could detonate a nuke and blow up Harran to destroy the infected, or he could leave the city, turn into a zombie, and presumably, spread the infection further. Dying Light 2 starts 20 years later during a second outbreak. Sometime after The Following, a cure was invented and the virus was eradicated, but the GRE continued its experimentation until another, more dangerous virus eventually got out and spread across the world. Smektała says one of those endings is canonical to Dying Light 2, but it won’t be easy to figure out which one it is. “You will learn which one is canon when you play the game,” he says. “You will need to explore the game a lot [to find it]. It won’t be obvious.”

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Parkour Stamina Bar

One of the big changes in the sequel is the stamina bar, which now impacts your ability to climb rather than just how much you can fight before you get tired. Smektała says this change was made to add additional challenge to parkour and allow for more character progression. “We wanted to make a game where you think when you parkour,” he says. “We wanted to create a space where it's important to pay attention. When you just run through the city and climb buildings you don’t need to really pay that much attention to stamina. But there are places - scripted places, quest places, inside open world activities, where you actually do have to look at that and manage your stamina.” Smektała says when players find themselves stuck without enough stamina for a difficult climb, they may need to find or craft potions to gain a temporary stat boost.

Block And Improvements To Enemy AI

While the kick and melee swing are still your primary combat abilities, Dying Light 2 also introduces blocking to the series. Smektała thinks this mechanic will help make melee more tactical, particularly against human enemies. “Unlike the infected, humans think when they fight you,” he explains. “They require you to use blocks, they require you to look at them constantly, they also have some group behaviors that will make you have to focus more.” Smektała says that human enemies are capable of learning in DL2. If you spam the same attacks at them, they will learn to avoid you and force you to learn different tactics. The block helps move the combat away from overly simple hack-and-slash gameplay.

No Weapon Crafting Or Repairing

While the weapon modification system is a lot more robust, individual weapon crafting and weapon repairing is gone. Smektała says this was done to encourage players to explore the world and discover its secrets. “This supports our looting and exploration loop,” he says “We want players to go out, explore The City, and scavenge stuff. We also want players to go out at night when they can find the most valuable stuff and the most powerful weapons.” Smektała says the flexibility of the new mod crafting system will allow you to craft the weapon you want with the materials and blueprints you find.

Night Won’t Be As Difficult

Perhaps the biggest change from the original is the effect that night has on the game. Rather than running away from ultra-powerful zombies called Volatiles, DL2 allows you to explore at night more freely. The new Immunity Meter tracks how long you’ve been out of UV light, and if it ever drops to zero, you instantly die. Smektała says that night time was simply too hard for a lot of players in Dying Light. “We got a lot of data from the first game saying people were basically skipping the night part because it was too difficult for them, too scary for them, and they didn’t have the incentive to go out during the night,” he explains. “I think we kept the scariness, but we gave you more tools to overcome that scariness.” New areas like the Dark Hollows, which are filled with zombies during the day but empty out at night, give players more incentive to explore in the dark.

You’ll still find Volatiles in some areas of the game, and they’ll even appear at night if you make too much of a ruckus. “If you want to see them instantly, the easiest thing for you to do is to start making a lot of noise and get a Chase Level 4, that will cause Volatile to appear instantly.” Smektała describes the Chase Level as a system similar to the Wanted Level in Grand Theft Auto.

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Changes To The Physics

Dying Light players will immediately notice that DL2 is more floaty than the original, almost as if it has moon gravity. Smektała explains that this was an intentional decision the developers made in order to make the sequel more approachable. “We wanted to make it a little easier,” he explains. “Parkour is a very complex mechanic, especially in first person. You have to measure distance, time in correctly, and create body awareness in your head that you don’t have since you see through the eyes of the character. We wanted more players to get introduced to it. [Dying Light 2] is easier to get into, but as you get more skills it actually creates more space for players that want to master it to get even better at it.” Smektała says you can really see the difference between experienced players and newbies when it comes to the new parkour challenges. “There is space to master the parkour,” he says.

Streamlined Character Progression

Dying Light had four different skill trees - five, including driving in The Following - but Dying Light 2 only has two (Combat and Parkour), as well as a collectible-based system for upgrading health and immunity. Once again, Smektała says this was done to make Dying Light 2 easier to get into. “You can create ten skill trees but it doesn’t make it easier for people,” he says. “We wanted to make it a little bit more accessible.”

Smektała believes that the new skills are “more of a game changer” than the Dying Light skills, which included more incremental stat increases. Dying Light 2’s skills are almost all active skills, meaning their new abilities you’ll be able to use in combat and parkour.

Addressing The Delays

Dying Light was announced at E3 2018 for a 2019 release date. Smektała says some of the delays were pandemic related, but the team also faced challenges due to it being their first time working on a non-linear story. “Suddenly we’re realizing that we’re basically polishing not just one game but a few games that run in parallel.” he says.

Smektała says that despite the delays, Dying Light 2 hasn’t changed much from the original vision. “At the start of the project we created what we called ‘the player experience video’ which was kind of like our target for the vision of the game,” he explains. “Using assets from the first game we created some playable sections, added some cutscenes, and some animations. The idea was to show to the team to explain to them what kind of game we want to make. I watched this video a few weeks ago and it is the same game. Of course everything is more polished with new assets, but it is the same game. All of the elements [in the game] today were present in that video.”

Post Launch Content

One of the big new additions in Dying Light 2 is the gear loadout system, which allows you to equip armor with individual stats and perks into six different slots. Each piece of armor is designated with an associated class like Medic or Ranger to help players select the best gear to use that fits their play style. Smektała says this class system is useful for individual players, but it does have some utility in co-op. “It would be good to have a Medic that can heal other players or a player that’s focused on two-handed weapons who can take more damage,” he explains. Smektała says the version of the class system in the game at launch is the “lite” version of it, but that they have plans to develop it further.

Dying Light is well known for the wide variety of post-launch content that Techland continued to release years after the game first launched. Smektała says he wants players to expect the same kind of long term support for Dying Light 2. “But for now we are focusing on the release,” he says. “Any plans that we might have only make sense if the game is a success.”

Is Dying Light 2 A Strand Game?

Dying Light 2’s PlayStation blogpost from this past May described the main character, Aiden Caldwell, as “a wandering pilgrim, serving as a connection between the scattered settlements.” Of course this begs the question: Is Dying Light 2 a strand game?”

“Absolutely not,” Smektała says. “Though you have to ask Hideo Kojima, he will tell you. Actually it would be very nice if Hideo would play our game and have his say about it. I would really like to hear what he has to say about the game.

Your move, Kojima-san

Dying Light 2 is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on February 4, 2022. Check out my full preview of Dying Light 2 here.

Next: Dying Light 2 Preview - Parkour Some More