With Dying Light 2 coming in less than 2 weeks, gameplay snippets have started to come out. Some streamers were allowed to share some gameplay here and there, and I’ve been crawling through it trying to glean what I can here and there regarding stealth in Dying Light 2. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Dying Light 2’s stealth system features: Confirmed
Note: When I say “confirmed”, I mean I saw direct gameplay from a 3rd party (not Techland), or Techland has explicitly said “this will be in-game”. I will note that things could potentially change right at release, or even after.
- Some enemies are more aware than others. This one was initially confirmed by Techland in regards to people being more “aware” than zombies, but we actually get to see that some zombies will be more aware than others. While I was having difficulty seeing specific details, it appears howlers (the form of zombie that’ll call other zombies to the area) and/or zombies not being lazy bastards will spot you from a surprisingly far distance, even in the dark.
- Stealth features the classic expanding arrow pointing in the direction of where you’re being detected from. This is another one I saw in gameplay videos many times, and it’s just a standard mechanic.
- There is a “second sight” mechanic like Odin’s Sight in AC Valhalla. This second sight is a pulse that originates with the player, and it will at the very least highlight enemies and interactive containers. Of course, many AC games have had this feature, too, but it’s interesting to see it in a non-Ubisoft title
- There are skills tied directly to stealth takedowns. One such skill is called “Stab”, and it allows you to use a knife to stab a foe while doing a takedown (and requires you trigger it with a button press on top of the usual takedown), assuming you have a knife in your inventory.
- Tall grass is there, but limited. One interesting aspect that I hadn’t considered is the tall grass mechanic: While it does exist, I actually didn’t see a whole lot of it, and it was usually in very small portions. This makes sense given how much of the world is broken up by buildings that you’ll be leaping to and from.
- In the case of standard zombies, you’ve got a little bit of time when spotted to deal with your foe before they alert the rest. This one seems pretty standard, but is good to know: Just because you get spotted doesn’t mean the entire world is going to come crashing down on you instantly, as long as you take care of the spotter ASAP.
Dying Light 2’s stealth system features: Educated guesses
While I’m not normally one to perpetuate in rumor, I wanted to share just a couple small items that I saw from gameplay videos that should be of interest to stealthy players.
While you have a flashlight, it appears to not impact stealth (at least in regards to zombies). There wasn’t an instance where I could verify humans would notice the flashlight, so all I can say for sure is zombies don’t seem to care if you’re shining a (standard) light in their eyes.
Sound also doesn’t appear to play much of a role in stealth in regards to zombies. I’d imagine that it will for human foes, but at least for zombies, feel free to smack people around without waking up the basic hordes.. Or at least the lazy ones that are just sitting there.
Finally, after looking at the combat skill tree and knowing what the “stab” one is (which is unlockable early on), the very next one in the tree that you can get after unlocking stab appears to be a knife-throwing animation.. Which leads me to think you can throw knives to perform chain assassinations, possibly (or, at least, long-distance takedowns).
There appears to be a “takedown stab from height” skill as well that’s right below stab, but I can’t say for certain if it is a takedown, or the “slam your weapon for an AoE attack when jumping from height” skill we’ve seen in gameplay videos.
I hope you’re all as excited as I am to play this game! It’ll be out February 4th, and plan on watching me stream it live on launch day.