The scariest thing about Dying Light 2: Stay Human is running low on mushrooms. I say this having, only moments ago, run straight into a Volatile. But instead of being terrified of being chased through the streets of Villedor by a horde of undead monsters, all of my attention is on Aiden's biomarker.
Despite how much I'm enjoying my new playthrough, I'm surprised by how un-scary it is. It's a bit of a dampener that the thing that made Techland's explosive 2015 original such a novel concept – the dynamic day and night cycles – becomes overshadowed by Aiden's little problem in Dying Light 2. Techland has acknowledged how the game "lost its horror," and intends to rectify that when Dying Light: The Beast taps back into the fear factor this August.
Even as another protagonist fights against his own biology, I'm excited for Techland to balance things out and remind us why this is one of the best zombie game franchises ever – and the first thing to go has to be those darn mushrooms.
Fearless
Where the first Dying Light leverages our own fears against us, forcing the player to weigh up the pros and cons of venturing through Harran by night, Dying Light 2 feels like more of a management sim.
The culprit? Aiden's status as an infected survivor. It dictates everything about moving through the game in his shoes, often pulling focus away from combat encounters if he spends long enough in the dark for the infection to spread.
As a concept, I like it; Aiden's infection does complicate the riskiness of Dying Light's already intimidating night cycles – volatiles stalk the shadows, making agility, stealth, and height mandatory if you want to make it back to base without triggering a chase. Throw in an unstable health condition that needs constant care, a boatload of mushrooms, stabilizers, and a biomarker to track its progress, and on paper, Dying Light 2 should have been a good kind of scary rather than the stressful kind.
But as I mantle a steep overhang while climbing a ramshackle building, I'm unshaken by the shrieking undead on my tail or the sheer drop beneath me. Knowing I have far more pressing matters at hand – my humanity, specifically – makes volatiles less scary and more of a nuisance. Instead, I snarf a handful of mushrooms while making a beeline for the nearest UV light, paying very little attention to what I might run into on the way.
Rather than feeling daunted by the terrors of the dark in Dying Light 2, I simply feel exasperated by a single question: do I have enough stabilizers and mushrooms to get me through the quest un-zombified, even if I did manage to stealth it?
I don't recall being so aware of how Aiden's infection mutes the scariness when I first played it in 2022. But now, right off the back of an earlier replay of Dying Light 1 last year, the difference is night and day – no pun intended.
Animal instinct
Where the first Dying Light leverages our own fears against us, [...] Dying Light 2 feels more of a management sim.
By trying to up the stakes in Dying Light 2, I can't help but view Aiden's predicament as a distraction from the franchise's core values: night time is scary, and you should fear it rather than loathe it.
Kyle Crane doesn't need a biomonitor to make nights in Harran a terrifying prospect. The threats are already omnipresent, and his precious humanity is the thing you're fighting to preserve.
I used to agonize over whether a night time mission was worth it in the first Dying Light, carefully considering the payoff in exchange for what was always a heart-pounding, unpredictable journey. Aiden, meanwhile? I find myself less concerned about his safety. I mean, he's kind of doomed anyway, right?
That might sound callous, especially given how The Beast sees Kyle Crane somewhat changed himself after years spent suffering through human experimentation. But the difference here is in the mechanics. Instead of trying to make night times more complex by adding even more downsides to them – like a guy who's allergic to darkness being exposed to it all the time, for example – The Beast looks to incentivize players to take risks for a powerful reward.
In the latest gameplay deep-dive on YouTube, Techland outlines Kyle's "beast mode" system. Upon dealing or taking damage, he becomes "more agitated" – and if he rages out, he unleashes the beast within. I'm talking tearing throats out with his bare hands, ripping heads off, slashing and punching infected and humans alike thanks to his bio-enhancements.
Not only does this sound like a superpower in a way, it also sounds like its own resource to manage. Picking and choosing when to go into beast mode sounds like a lot of fun to me, necessitating players to either engage or avoid combat accordingly.
There's only a few short months to go until The Beast is unleashed, and until that time, I'll keep trying to fall in love with Dying Light 2 again. Much as I enjoy Techland's brand of zombie-killing chaos, however, I'm still very much looking forward to stepping back into Kyle Crane's familiar (if rather stinky) boots to see how the developer has learned from its past to bring Dying Light back to its roots: scaring people.
Dying Light: The Beast is just one of many upcoming Xbox Series X games on the way in 2025
