Still going to have narrative limitations and swimming based stamina (I assume there are some progress gates with that). But holy crap the number of times I tried to enjoy Dying Light 2 and just hated that I couldn’t scale a wall or even effectively run away at night.
I assume a mix of testing late stage balancing for the new one and realizing that “Aiden Chase” from DL1 is not the legendary video game protagonist they thought he was and that they have to actually remind people that DL can be GOOD with a good game.
I thought DL1 protagonist was Kyle Crane? Was Aiden even in DL1? I’m a little confused by what you mean.
Eh, whatever. They’re both the same personality-less void with a buzzcut who will probably be played in an adaptation by Jai Courtney. Although Jade was way cooler than whatever the hell Rosario Dawson was doing.
Its just hilarious how much the marketing has tried to portray (I’ll take your word on it) Kyle as some amazing protagonist that we all missed and that the only problem DL2 had was that it wasn’t about Kyle. And… it is telling that basically every big press release was like “The hero you have all been missing, the protagonist of the good Dying Light, Kyle Crane!!!”.
And don’t get me wrong, I think that playing as a human/zombie hybrid who is powered by energy drinks, zombrex, and the magic pseudo-African tribe (that lived in the Middle East) is a REALLY interesting premise in the same way that the console only Far Cry 1 was.
But it also very much speaks to the mess that DL2 has been and how much of that game’s life cycle has been just undoing all the risks they took. Like, take the guns for example (DL2 sure did!). The excuse for why there were no guns in the entire world was half-assed but… anyone who played DL1 can tell you that they kind of broke late game once you could walk around with full purple AR ammo at all times.
Or, getting rid of the… kind of an obnoxious dipshit callous super spy protagonist who sort of learned to care about others just in time for said tribe to fuck his shit in. So… basically like half of zombie movie protagonists who learn to love just in time to sacrifice themselves heroically. In exchange for someone who more or less grew up in this zombie world and is more focused on a personal story (I think. Never made it much into act 2 of 2).
Totally agreed. Kyle Crane is pretty forgettable, I had to look his name up, in fact I had to look both the protagonists names up.
The funny thing about the Kyle Crane stuff is that for anyone with even a passing interest in media other than video games… you’ve heard Roger Craig Smith’s voice everywhere for over a decade now! He’s one of the most prolific and easily forgettable voice actors there is! Not only was he the voice for Sonic the Hedgehog in a litany of cartoon and video game iterations, but he’s just in nearly anything you can think of that requires voice acting. He literally was in 122 episodes of Cartoon Network’s Regular Show playing about 170 different characters, including Thomas, a character whose entire arc is based on a joke about how shows add new characters and then focusing on them so they constantly avoid focus on Thomas and make him ridiculously boring! In fact, episodes where he played Thomas were airing during the time that Dying Light released.
I don’t know how they ever thought Roger Craig Smith was going to be remembered as the action hero everyone loved. I mean, I love me some Roger Craig Smith, but way more for being a fucking goofball than being a gritty action hero.
Credit where it’s due, around the time Dying Light 1 came out, Roger Craig Smith was lending his voice to Chris Redfield, one of the more iconic zombie guys from Resident Evil.
My favorite Redfield moment was when, without a shred of irony, he talks smack about the villain acting like a comic book villain. Then in the same breath, he punches a six-ton boulder into submission.
Dying Light also really kinda shook up the zombie slaying dynamic with parkour. It seems like a fairly minor thing now, but that freedom of movement was a pretty big deal at the time, even if it was pretty janky.
Narratively, I agree that Crane isn’t a very strong character. He’s a dime-a-dozen government goon turned idealist. I don’t even remember how the story ends, or even most of the major beats except for a couple of major characters.
But at the time, to kick zombie butt while scooting around the rooftops and listening to Chris Redfield quip one-liners: those were special times even if it was a decade ago. They’re probably trying to recapture that magic, but I don’t know. It was lightning in a bottle and you can’t always get that back
DL1 spoilers, I guess
spoiler
You are a super secret agent for FEMA or something and are going after a rogue agent named Rais who I guess has secrets that show the zombie outbreak is at least partially UNATCO’s fault? You meet sexy olympian parkour lady named Jade and hang out with her parkour friends. Then you get Jade’s little brother killed so she is pissed at you but also you want her to step on you. Then the government agency you work for wants you to team up with Rais or some shit but you say no and betray them and decide to hang out with your cool parkour friends. Jade gets killed but you kill Rais and then you say some nonsense to the CDC. Then we have the DLC where everyone is out of water and zombrex so you go outside to drive dune buggies with a vaguely racist pseudo-african tribe (right outside generic Middle East city). You get double infected and turn into a super infected and every one of your parkour friends in the city die from lack of supplies.
The story was ridiculously forgettable but the gameplay was REAL good. It was everything we wanted out of Dead Island (except for the ridiculously emotional beats) but also actually fun to play. And REAL good grappling hook.