Unfortunately that impact doesn’t extend to the narrative, which is overwrought and overly keen on unconvincing exposition. You will meet any number of quest givers scattered around Villedor, hear them witter and immediately forget who they are as you trot off to their marked waypoint. There is very little showing and a whole lot of telling. A few characters do stick in the mind; the frustrated inventor Alberto, ruthless Bazaar leader Sophie and the Rosario Dawson voiced assassin Lawan, but for the most part this is a cast of post-apocalyptic cliche. Worst of all is Aiden himself, an unsympathetic dullard voiced by a bored sounding Jonah Scott.
But while it can be difficult to care too much about Aiden and Villedor’s plight, going around solving its problems is entertaining enough to compensate. Combat is brutally crunchy, with you picking up duct-taped lead pipes and broken shovels, handmade machetes and throwable spears and explosives. Aiden is lithe too, able to take forceful swings and dodge out of the way. Or counter and launch himself off a staggered enemy and drop-kick another lurking behind. There’s a real wallop to it and there is a neat variation whether you are fighting humans or zombies; the former take a bit more patience and technique whereas the latter take crowd control and instinct.
Combat is a high point, but the star of the show is the parkour. You gallop across the rooftops of Villedor; clambering up drain pipes, jumping from building to building, swinging from dangling cables and hurling yourself to carefully placed mattresses on the streets below. At its best its exhilarating stuff and missions are at their most thrilling when you are racing against the clock.
It dovetails nicely with Dying Light 2’s day/night cycle too, with the need to stay off the streets at night meaning you must take a breath and plan your route, looking out over the city for collapsed architecture to make ramps and the purple glow of UV-bathed havens. Get caught by a ‘howler’ at night, and it turns into a mad dash for one of those safe spots as it shrieks for every zombie in the vicinity.
