After seven years of waiting, Dying Light 2: Stay Human is finally out. The sequel to the sleeper hit open-world zombie game is finally in players' hands, and many are rediscovering why they fell in love with the parkour-focused gameplay in the first place. Many routes through the new walled-off City exist for players to scramble over, sift through, and discuss with a new cast of characters. Several factions exist within The City, and siding with them can have enormous ramifications that can change the face of a given playthrough. To make things even better, Techland has promised that Dying Light 2 will receive at least five years of support just like its predecessor.
That's great news for fans and those currently on the fence. However, Dying Light 2 has to walk a fine line with how it handles its DLC and assorted updates and live events. There needs to be a concerted effort in playing to the game's strengths and pleasing fans, as well as a degree of openness and regularity in the updates. Judging by the roadmap of the first four months, fans shouldn't have anything to worry about, but the presence of another recent open-world game that bungled its DLC can't be ignored. Cyberpunk 2077 is still struggling to catch up with where it said it would be ready at launch, and Dying Light 2 needs to avoid similar setbacks.
How Cyberpunk 2077 Messed Up Its Post-Launch Support
The story of Cyberpunk 2077 needs little introduction. CD Projekt Red revealed the game in 2013 to much celebration. The hype only grew when the game resurfaced several years later with a promising trailer. While the excitement for Cyberpunk 2077 may have created unattainable expectations, it still fell well short of more reasonable standards once it came out in December 2020. The game was a broken mess, and very few of its advertised features worked properly. The PS4 and Xbox One skews were particularly bad, and remain inferior to the PC, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X versions.
Of course, CD Projekt Red quickly got to work on fixing the game, as is the norm for major releases. Many patches have been released to fix bugs and even improve the PC version to a relatively stable state. However, outside a Q1 release date, there is still no telling when the next-gen ports and promised expansions will come out, or if they will bring many fixes with them. CD Projekt Red promised that the game would receive a large amount of free and paid DLC like The Witcher 3, including a multiplayer mode that will sport microtransactions. Thus far, only a single free DLC pack has been released, and it only contains a few cosmetic items. All the quality of life features and Witcher-tier story DLC are beginning to seem ages away.
Dying Light 2 Must Learn From Cyberpunk 2077's Example
The Dying Light 2 launch has gone relatively smooth thus far. It is fairly buggy, and the story has proven to be a turn off for some players, but the core parkour gameplay of Dying Light is still intact. This isn't out of line with how the original Dying Light was released, and much like its predecessor, it will also receive plenty of patches over time. Bugs will be squashed and quality-of-life features will be added, and likely with more haste than Cyberpunk 2077. Dying Light 2 feels like it roughly hit the mark of what it wanted at launch, and its post-launch support needs to continue giving that impression.
Already, Dying Light 2 has a much tighter roadmap than Cyberpunk for major post-launch content. In its first four months, Dying Light 2 will receive two free challenge packs, its first live event series, and part one of a paid story expansion. The game does not have any glaring omissions like Cyberpunk 2077, and it needs to stay that way. Still, Techland needs to make sure that it can keep these promises.
This qualitative support needs to continue, preferably with a few more Dying Light 2 roadmaps to clue players in on when major additions are coming. Dying Light 2 should keep a steady flow of bug fixes, free content drops, game improvements, and paid DLC going for a while, and when the game is in a good state, it can slow things down. With any luck, Dying Light 2 will be the game that Cyberpunk 2077 looks to for inspiration when it comes to its own post-launch support.
Dying Light 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
