Dying Light 2: Stay Human places a huge emphasis on movement, but depending on the choices they make, players may end up with different ways to get around the game’s massive city. In an exclusive video interview, Dying Light 2‘s lead producer, Eugen Harton, reveals to Digital Trends that some of the game’s key tools will be locked behind quests and NPCs rather than skills.
In the featurette, Harton explains that players will earn these game-changing tools “depending on the choices you make and the people you encounter and the quests you complete,” referencing the game’s branching storyline and multiple factions. It seems that depending on which faction players side with, the game’s world won’t just be littered with different mobile or offensive options, but players will also receive different tools for movement.
Compared to Dying Light, that’s a sizable change. The grappling hook in that game, which would let players traverse the world with ease, was unlocked through a skill, along with multiple other movement-boosting techniques. Harton also revealed that skills would be returning in Dying Light 2, but didn’t specify what players could expect, only saying that there “is a bunch of them.”
However, skill trees won’t be the only way to customize the main character, Aiden, in Dying Light 2. Harton says “there are many more things you can use or build to improve the progression of Aiden as a character.”
That could likely be in reference to weapon mods, which are returning for Dying Light 2. Players will be able to craft mods that change their weapon’s stats or deal new types of elemental damage, and then slot at least three into their melee weapons. In Dying Light, players could craft both weapons and weapon mods, so it seems that crafting is being implemented in almost the same way in Dying Light 2.
Being able to fit three mods onto melee weapons may also be part of developer Techland’s effort to balance the game more in the favor of melee weapons. While guns and other ranged weapons were uncommon in Dying Light, they were extremely powerful. However, Dying Light 2 will only have rudimentary ranged weapons, like bows and crossbows, which are meant to support melee weapons instead of replace them.
Of course, the precious weapons that players build up won’t stay around forever. As Harton says in the featurette: “Unbreakable weapons are a myth.” Weapon deterioration was also a key feature in Dying Light, but players could repair their weapons a number of times before they were totally busted.
Dying Light 2 is currently set to release on December 7 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
