If there's any one thing you should know about Dying Light 2 it's this: Your choices can change the world. That's a design decision that sits at the heart of Techland's latest open-world action game, but it will also come with some side effects. Namely, you're not going to be able to see and play through everything Dying Light 2 has to offer the first time through it.
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In fact, as Dying Light 2’s producer Kornel Jaskula explained to GamesRadar in a sweeping feature, there are so many different branching and divergent paths in Dying Light 2 that Techland isn't actually sure how many currently exist. The idea is that, as you play Dying Light 2, every decision that you make in a critical path story mission and side quest can have some kind of reaction – changing the composition of the city, the way you interact with the world, the citizens that inhabit the urban space, and even the gameplay opportunities that present themselves to you over the course of the game.
To accomplish this – and to keep you busy while you are traipsing around the city – Techland has had to create a lot of content. Like a, frankly, pretty ridiculous amount of content. “It’s almost like we are creating several games worth of content right now," Jaskula tells me. “We are designing the game with the foundation that some of the players will miss content and we are okay with that."
Techland is okay with it because it's confident that players will keep coming back for more, be it on their own or with other players in the returning co-op mode – where the potential for each player's city to be completely different is a very real possibility. "Thanks to the variety of stories, missions, content and assets, we believe that it will make players want to play the game again and again or try to play with other players in co-op to see their worlds. That’s something that we established as a foundation at the very beginning [of development], it’s one of our design goals, and it’s something that we still keep in mind.”
The studio is confident that this is a game that you're going to be returning to time and time again. Techland is confident that Dying Light 2 will – through its wealth of divergent paths, its shapeable world, and wealth of content – be something that keeps players engaged long after it eventually releases.
Stay tuned to GamesRadar+ for more news and coverage of Dying Light 2 later this week, or check out our guide to the best new games of 2019 and beyond.
