The Dying Light games have never been super upfront about their lore. Yes, Dying Light 1 had an overarching story and established a lot of individual concepts, but there was still so much left unexplained or left up to individual interpretation.Well, Dying Light 2 is similar in that it lets fans come to their own conclusions, but it does add a lot of new stuff to the pre-established lore. So, let's go over the largest examples now.
10 The Concept Of Biomarkers
Biomarkers were not a thing in the first Dying Light game. If someone was bitten, they could fight it off with Antizen for the rest of their lives, but no one could tell if they were about to turn or not outside of a sudden lust for flesh.
But, in DL2, the concept of Biomarkers is introduced right away. These are wristbands that keep a constant gauge of their wearer's condition. This way, the residents of Old Villedor can always know just how close they are from progressing in their infection past the point of no return,
9 What Even Are The Inhibitors?
The Inhibitors that Aiden takes in DL2 are not a widespread form of medication. In fact, Hakon says right away that most people don't survive the initial dose, and their survival chances decrease with each subsequent dose. Fans are left to assume that Aiden can only handle so much thanks to the experiments performed on him by Waltz as a child.
In any case, these Inhibitors weren't really a thing in the first game. Instead, there was just the Antizen that the GRE would drop into Harran.
8 98% Of The Population Gone In The Fall
It's sort of glossed over in the summation of events at the beginning of the game, but wow, did a lot happen between Dying Light 1 and 2. In the 15-18 years since the events of DL1, Harran was destroyed, the Harran virus was cured, the GRE created another virus, that one got out into the world, and the majority of humanity on Earth died as a result.
To be more specific, about 98% of all humans on earth are either killed or Infected and turned in The Fall. That's right — only two percent of the entire world's population remains during the events of Dying Light 2: Stay Human, and most of them are within Old Villedor, the last remaining "large city" on Earth with absolutely no guns to defend themselves.
7 The Infected Now Have "Life Cycles"
In Dying Light 1, the way THV (The Harran Virus) worked was relatively different from how the new strain works in Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Depending on how they lived their lives as a human, the type of Infected they would transform into would change. Hyper-muscular people would become Goons or Demolishers, larger people might turn into a Bomber, and so on. But, in DL2, this has changed and there is now a "life cycle" to the basic Infected. Here are all the stages:
- Viral: This is the first stage of actually becoming an "Infected." They're fast and hyper-aggressive, but extra sensitive to the sun.
- Biter: Biters are the sort of the standard zombies who slowly wander around reaching out to any meat nearby.
- Degenerate: The final stage of evolution — basically the decomposing stage for Infected, as there are pieces of their flesh literally falling off of them.
- Volatile: A side path of evolution for the Infected. Basically, if an Infected manages to avoid UV rays at all costs, they slowly become Volatiles. They're by far the most dangerous and hardest to kill, even with a co-op partner, but also the weakest to UV rays.
6 There Are Harran Survivors!
When the events of the first Dying Light game finished, it wasn't exactly a happy ending. The base game's story ends with the GRE abandoning Harran, with the threat of the city being bombed into oblivion being an ever-present possibility. Then, The Following endings most players saw along with the Platinum edition of the game either have Crane blowing up Harran with a literal nuke or turning into a Volatile himself and attacking a family outside of the Quarantine Zone. So, either way, both Harran and the world itself are doomed. But, Dying Light 2 has a bit of hope, as it's shown that multiple people from Harran actually survived and made it to Old Villedor.
The most obvious example is Spike, seen within the first few minutes of the game, but there's also an Easter Egg later on that proves that Gazi, one of the more beloved NPCs of the first title, has also made a home for himself in Old Villedor.
5 UV Light Is Now Much More Important
This is likely the first and most apparent difference between the Infected Virus in DL1 and the virus players see in DL2. There are a good number of differences between the two strains, but the big change is how much more impactful UV light is in fighting the Infected — something beginners to the franchise will quickly learn the importance of.
Now, people can literally fight off the virus itself, keeping it in a dormant state at stage one just by keeping themselves in UV light. Though, they do have to keep a constant eye on their Immunity, as they'll soon become a fully-fledge Infected if it ever runs out.
4 There's More Credence Towards The "Crane Is The Night Hunter" Theory
To sum this one up, there was long-running fan speculation during the days of DL1 that Crane, the protag of DL1, was actually also the "Night Hunter," a playable Volatile in the "Be The Zombie" multiplayer mode. It was never confirmed, and Techland never even said if this multiplayer mode was technically canon, but fans still dug around for any evidence they could find regardless.
And, while Dying Light 2 doesn't directly prove this theory one way or another, it does give it more room to be proven true. There's no mention of Crane bombing Harran in the intro cutscene, and it's not totally clear how the virus spread a second time. Maybe it was purely from the GRE, or maybe the Volatile version of Crane had a hand in it as well.
3 The GRE Made A Second Virus & Were Severely Punished For It
Whatever happened to the GRE? Thankfully, one of the NPCs late into the campaign, Veronika, actually clears this up. Once it came to light that the GRE was responsible for both viruses, they were done for. After all, they were responsible for the 98% loss of life around the globe.
The government apparently rounded up everyone in the GRE, all of its staff, and put them all to death — brutal, but not the most surprising thing, given how much evil this group released into the world.
2 The Infected Variants Are Now Due To The GRE Chemicals
Once again, the way Variant Infected are created in Dying Light 2: Stay Human is not the same as it was in the original game. Once the world was suffering from the second strain of the virus and the GRE's misdeeds still hadn't come to light, Old Villedor was struggling. The GRE, comic book villains that they were, then basically "bombed" Villedor with an absurd amount of chemicals, calling it "medicine," to fight off the virus.
These are the yellow chemicals found throughout DL2, and it's these same chemicals that cause the Infected to mutate to all the different Variants seen throughout the game. It's not entirely clear just how these GRE Anamolies came to be, though.
1 Children Can't Be Infected
Last up is another neat little tidbit of info that Veronika tells Aiden. For anyone who remembers, the first Dying Light game holds an odd title as being one of the few video games in recent memory where some of the enemies players can take out are literal children. The Screamer-variant Infected are zombie children, and this is a canon fact.
Itseems like Techland didn't want to toe this line again in the sequel, as it turns out the new virus has no effect whatsoever on young children, according to Veronika.
Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022, and is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
