The original Dying Light may have come out in 2015, but it feels like it never really left. That’s thanks to developer Techland’s commitment to supporting the game with frequent updates. Dying Light 2: Stay Human is on the cusp of releasing, and Dying Light 1 players are still being catered to with a mixture of free and paid content. The franchise probably wouldn’t be where it is without so many post-launch updates, especially considering the positive reception to its expansion, The Following. The multiplayer suite in Dying Light is now perhaps the most diverse one in all multiplayer zombie games, and the campaign is backed up by plenty of challenge quests and modes to tackle after the open world has been cleared out.
With all this support, it’s no wonder that Dying Light 2 is already prepped to continue the trend. Dying Light 2: Stay Human’s official Twitter account recently posted the game’s post-launch roadmap, and the first four months of its life alone will add as much as some games’ year-spanning season passes. Techland has shown its commitment to keeping Dying Light alive and healthy, and it looks like the torch has been passed to the sequel. Even the hypothetical 500 hours of experiences Dying Light 2 offers could be surpassed once Techland’s five-plus years of support have concluded.
The DLC Lineup in Dying Light 2’s Roadmap
It’s important for there to be a strong start before those five years come to pass, and the first four months of updates detailed on the roadmap inspire a lot of confidence. To begin, there will be some faction-inspired free DLC within a few weeks of Dying Light 2’s February launch. Around the beginning of March, a set of challenge missions will be added, which parallels a similar practice in the first game. These will probably have online leaderboards integrated, and it looks like Dying Light 2’s first set will focus on parkour just like Dying Light 1’s. The second set of challenges will come to Dying Light 2 around the end of April, and more are sure to follow.
Shortly after April begins, Dying Light 2 will begin rolling out its first series of events, this batch being centered around mutated infected. Dying Light 1 took a little while to start its events, but it eventually began running limited-time challenges at regular intervals. These tend to take the form of special challenges or quests, but some, like HyperMode and Halloween, had special rules. There were even some that had unique story content, like the recent multi-part Spike’s Story that follows up the campaign’s ending. All of that will likely appear in Dying Light 2’s future, but before then, players will gain access to its first story DLC around the end of May. It took a year for Dying Light 1’s story expansion to drop, but there was still substantial paid DLC in the form of Cuisine & Cargo and The Bozak Horde by the game’s four-month mark.
What’s Coming in the Next Five Years for Dying Light 2
Like its predecessor before it, Dying Light 2 is going to continue receiving a mixture of free updates, limited-time events, and the occasional paid DLC for at least five years. While most of Dying Light 1’s paid DLC is just bundles of weapon blueprints and cosmetics, there were a few major paid expansions throughout the game’s life. New quarantine zones, a gauntlet, and The Following’s new campaign and map kept players busy for Dying Light’s first couple of years. Hellraid then released long after the planned major DLCs as a repurposed version of Techland’s canceled fantasy action title. If the bigger content drops beyond the story DLC are anything like this, then Dying Light 2 fans will have a lot to look forward to.
While that covers the paid DLC, the post-launch roadmap’s sidebar promises even more content down the line. After the second story DLC, it is stated that there will be new weapons, enemies, stories, events, free and paid DLCs, and much more. Taken as a whole, that description maps to Dying Light 1’s support well, and it leaves the door open for just about anything, no matter the size. One feature that is hopefully in the last two non-specific categories is a Be The Zombie equivalent. Co-op and competitive multiplayer are huge parts of Dying Light’s appeal, and Be The Zombie is conspicuously absent from Dying Light 2’s otherwise packed offering. Hopefully, it will return as a free update like it did in the first game, as all Dying Light 2’s new monsters, tools, and techniques would make it worth the wait.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human will release on February 4, 2022, on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
