The trailer opens up with establishing shots of the ruined, embattled city of Villedor, where infected roam the streets and factions fight for territory and dominance. There’s plenty of post-apocalypse to go around, though Dying Light 2’s protagonist, Aiden Caldwell, is on a mission to bring hope back to the lost city, at least in some form or fashion.
Much like the original Dying Light, parkour here resembles a lot of Mirror’s Edge meets The Walking Dead, where Caldwell jumps between buildings using zip lines and trampolines, wall runs over chasing zombies, dives off of roofs before swinging through busted skyscraper windows, and uses a parachute to glide down and drop kick roving gang members.
There are some intense bits of melee combat shown off, too; Caldwell uses his feet and fists, a crafted axe, and throwables to take down foes in bloody fashion as he uses parkour to bounce between them.
The development team shared more gameplay details in the almost 20-minute Dying 2 Know episode. Senior Game Programmer Kacper Kowalczuk said the team took what they learned about traversal in Dying Light and evolved it into what they hope is a more complex system in Dying Light 2.
Of the parkour elements, he said that “even the highest building is not an obstacle anymore, but a parkour tool to help you get higher.”
Matt Courtois, Lead Technical Gameplay Animator, also shed light on the different ways NPC and player animations affect the flow of combat, where certain moves and even weapon categories sync to create specific combo chains and generate different “reactions.
He said that, for example, “you can stun them; you can trip them over; you can cut off their limbs” depending on the body part you target, weapons you’re using on those body parts, or the direction from which you’re attacking.
According to the game’s weapons team members, Szymon Strauss and Marek Musial, Dying Light 2 also has double the weapons found in Dying Light, coming in at more than 200 death dealers. Of course, there are mods for weapons as well because it wouldn’t be the apocalypse without showing off your engineering skills.
In other Dying Light 2 news, it was confirmed that the upcoming zombie apocalypse game will utilize “real-time ray tracing and DLSS” on NVIDIA-powered PCs. It will feature ray tracing and 60fps modes on console, allowing for a choice between fidelity and performance, just like many other games on next-gen consoles.
There’s sure to be a lot more info about Dying Light 2 in the coming weeks and months as we approach its December 7 release. Catch up on previous Dying 2 Know episode on the official Dying Light 2 YouTube channel.
