Dying Light part 2 – A city full of stories
Having now spent over 60 hours in game and finally finished the main quest line, I have to say that any discussion of the story needs to be broken up into the main and side quests. These aspects of the game are so disparate that they feel like two complete games running in tandem. I was often torn between moving forward with the story quest which sits firmly at the top of my journal in an effort to show its own importance, and the side quests that ended up being the most compelling stories about Harran and the struggle of average people in a zombie apocalypse. Dying Light is clearly divided between a mediocre, on rails main story and a bunch of compellingly fun side quests.
The main event
It’s really weird for me to play a game these days where I have absolutely no narrative control, at least in games that feel like the story is important. Being in control of Kyle Crane was often like a surreal dream where I just couldn’t stop myself from making terrible decisions and running straight down the wrong path. By the time I was halfway through the sort of tutorial quests (before the dynamic day/night cycle takes effect), I knew damn well that the Global Relief Effort (GRE) was goddamn Umbrella Corp. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out when you’re told to DESTROY THE MEDICINE THAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM BECOMING ZOMBIES. Really, Kyle? I mean, if there was ever a point in a game that I wanted to be able to make a decision, not dooming the infected survivors of a zombie plague may have been it. So I had to resign myself to the fact that while the game is open world and feels like an RPG at times, I don’t get to have any real agency in the story. I’m just giving this train more steam and seeing where these rails lead.
While the main plot can be somewhat fun at times, it’s also extremely predictable. Tropes and archetypes are thrown at players with wild abandon and most of them have no real depth. Rais, leader of a gang of murderous thugs, is irredeemably evil. The first time I see him, he’s cutting off a guy’s hand for stealing. Later, he’s shooting his own men for not doing their jobs, yet somehow he’s got a small army willing to do whatever he says. Rahim is the young hothead who is clearly going to get himself into trouble. Brecken is the reluctant leader who hates being stuck on the sidelines. Everyone in the main plot is a one trick pony that acts exactly as expected. It’s not bad so much as it’s just a little unimaginative. Frankly, to make it as good as possible, I really recommend playing straight through the main story while only taking time to complete the side quest for Dawud in the Tower. It seems like that would be the best way to maintain the sense of urgency that should exist, but didn’t really happen for me when I started wandering off for a week of in-game time doing other things after being told that I had 48 hours to provide results. Hell, I think I only ended up getting two doses of antizin throughout the whole game. It sort of took me out of the fiction, unfortunately.
Those side quests though
The reason I couldn’t stop doing side quests was because they were the things that fleshed out the world and made it worth running around in. Some characters were quirky, some serious, and some just brought out all of the feels. These were the real human stories that can be told in a world like Dying Light. It’s not about evil tyrants and shadowy corporations, it’s about people who lost everything and then snapped. It’s about people trying to look out for each other, but finding themselves stranded with no way out. And one particular story is about a man just trying to help kids cope with the inexplicable chaos happening while still dealing with his own personal struggle caused by the Harran virus outbreak. I won’t spoil Rupert’s story for anyone that might still be playing through it, but where the fuck was this kind of writing in the rest of the game? These are characters that I actually care about.
Certainly, there were some side stories that existed for comic relief. (Even the uncomfortable story of Gazi and his mother.) Even Kyle can’t take people seriously when they tell him that they’re sure the virus comes from extraterrestrial lizard people called Gadoids. And he knows well enough to get away when a guy decides that surrounding his house with gas torches is a great idea. Even “gasmask man” becomes kind of a throwaway character when the extent of his delusions come to light. I’m not saying that every side quest is notable, but that they’re where I found the most notable stories in Dying Light.
The end game
When all is said and done, Dying Light as a story is enjoyable, but not particularly noteworthy. It excels because of the fun, engaging it experience that is provided mechanically. There is, however, one point that I’ve seen people grumbling about on the net that I feel like defending: the final boss sequence. Without spoiling it, the climax of the main story concludes through the game’s only QTE. While I can understand why this would be disappointing to some people in an action-centric title, I personally appreciate what it manages to do for the story on a more cinematic level. It allows a more complex struggle to unfold than the simple hack, slash, and dodge combat of the game could ever provide. Besides, I couldn’t imagine the problem of trying to design a boss that could be beaten by people that run straight through the main story, while still being challenging to those like myself that have reached max level because I couldn’t stop playing every side quest and challenge that I ran across. I know that the frenetic pace of first person combat can feel far more engaging, but I think they made the right call with this one.
While they’re not quite the same, I think Skyrim works as a good comparison in terms of story. I have never heard anyone tell me how awesome the main Dragonborn quest is. Instead, I’ve heard that the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood quests are amazing. There’s no penalty for ignoring the main story for long periods of time and it ends up losing its value to me the longer I’m off doing other, more compelling quests. Dying Light’s main story falls prey to the exact same thing for me. I enjoy the game immensely and I still have three more side quests and a number of challenges that I can assure you will be finished within days. There are a myriad of cool stories to be told and more easter eggs than I would have ever thought would get thrown into a single game. All I have yet to do is to experience some multiplayer. Perhaps it’s time to go be the zombie.
