Kris Wall reviews Dying Light: The Following…
Every now and again, a game comes along that completely takes you by surprise and Dying Light was that game for me in 2015. After Dead Island, I wasn’t expecting much from Dying Light, which carried on through my first few hours with the game, a grueling and almost off-putting grind to survive that looked nothing like the awesome trailers we had been shown, showing off incredible acts of parkour acrobatics and zombie decimation. I persevered and stuck with it and suddenly the game just clicked, I started leveling up and getting to grasps with its parkour system, crafting crazy weapons out of salvage and cutting down hordes of the undead, the game was exactly like the awesome trailers we had been shown. Apart from an underwhelming story, I absolutely adored the game and it ended up in my top 3 games of the year, you can read my 8/10 review here. I’ve been eagerly awaiting Techland’s expansion, The Following with high hopes and high expectations, and now it’s here, it’s time to return to the ill-fated land of Harran.
The Following begins with protagonist, Kyle Crane, learning of a possible cure to the viral outbreak, as well as a way out of the quarantined city of Harran. The catch, as there always is in these situations, is the potential cure resides within the grasp of a group of cultists that occupy the countryside surrounding Harran. With the tower that the survivors have made their home running desperately low on the precious life extending drug, Antizin, Crane is forced to venture beyond the walls of the city and out into the vast countryside to investigate, a journey that soon brings him into contact with The Children of the Sun and their mysterious leader known only as, The Mother.
The first thing that strikes you about The Following, the story is so much stronger here than it was in the first game. As much as I loved the original Dying Light, the story was probably its weakest point as it boiled down to little more than point A to point B fetch quests. The idea of a cure for the outbreak hangs over The Following’s story like some kind of mythical artifact, and the many characters that Crane encounters in the game speak of The Mother as an almost supernatural presence, keeping the virus at bay with the power of unwavering faith. The first time you encounter a member of The Faceless, the upper echelons of The Mother’s Children of the Sun, keeping a horde of zombies at arm’s length with the power of prayer and worship, you’re just as shocked and dumbfound as Crane is in that moment, and I really enjoyed the science vs. religion angle that Techland have weaved into the story. The Following’s story is excellent and really cements the potential the first game had, had it been given a strong narrative arc. It all builds to an absolutely superb ending that pulls the rug from beneath the player while delivering a sucker punch of a twist.
The second thing you’ll see with The Following is the size of the content here. From the moment you emerge on a cliff side outside of Harran, The Countryside is twice the size of the original city of Harran, a vast open world built to accommodate Dying Light’s big new inclusion, driveable buggy’s. While there’s much less of the original’s urban cityscapes to clamber over, the open fields, winding roads and epic jumps are just begging to be explored and torn up with the buggy. This new land is also filled with a ridiculous amount of story quests, side quests and activities for you to get lost in and sidetracked by, everything from locating missing persons from billboards, to some incredibly tense attempts to sneak into the deadly volatile hives to destroy them from within, and even some really fun challenges and races for the buggy to take part in. There’s enough content here to make The Following almost feel like a fully fledged sequel rather than an expansion.
The buggy is the biggest inclusion to Dying Light and the new map has clearly been built around it so its inclusion feels essential to traversal of this land, rather than a gimmick. While it means that the parkour elements of the original take somewhat of a backseat to the driving in The Following, you won’t really care as while you’re ripping up the land across the countryside in a customized buggy that wouldn’t look out-of-place in Death Race 2000.
Like everything in Dying Light’s world, the buggy is open to modifications and also to deterioration, as well as coming with its own skill tree of abilities. Everywhere you drive in The Following, every zombie you mow down and every jump you make earns the buggy EXP which can in turn be used to reinforce the vehicle with strengthened armour, ram bars and turbos to name but a few upgrades. You can locate new blueprints to craft and upgrade the wheels, suspension, handling, turbo and engine of the buggy, turning it from a rust bucket into a death-dealing road warrior. You can even customize it with paint jobs and little bobble heads that can be found in the world to give your buggy that personal touch.
However, the parts are prone to wear and tear, every time you slam into a zombie or take the buggy off-road, the parts deteriorate through stress until they break. Seeing your parts breaking down while you’re trying to escape from a pack of volatiles is a genuinely nerve-wracking experience, making a risky jump and feeling your suspension give out and your buggy struggle as they get closer and closer, even more so if your wheels and traction blow out too, leaving your buggy effectively crippled . It’s incredibly exhilarating and the feeling of care you come to foster for your vehicle’s durability to withstand these encounters makes The Following an even more rewarding experience.
The buggy can be repaired with screws which need to either be salvaged from the cars littering the countryside or purchased from merchants and quartermasters. Screws quickly become more valuable than money and bullets in this land as they’re used for upgrading, as well as repairs, and they never feel plentiful. On top of all of this, the buggy also needs constant fuel management, there’s nothing worse than being stranded in the middle of nowhere because you’ve forgotten to fuel your ride and have to run and jump across zombie strewn fields to start siphoning fuel from abandoned cars and truck, while a gas station soon becomes the equivalent of an oasis in the middle of a desert. The fuel management mechanic has been implemented far better in Dying Light than it was in last years Mad Max, while I never particularly struggled for fuel in the game, I certainly ran out of it much faster and had to keep it on my mind, as well as the general durability of the buggy to ensure I wasn’t stranded.
The handling of the buggy starts out difficult in its basic form but the more it levels up and the better the parts you put into it, it’s just so much fun to drive and race around in and the first person perspective lends the driving as visceral (there’s that word again that I keep using for this game) thrill as you feel every bump in the road, every crushing impact into a group of zombies and every jump as soar through the air, hoping and praying your suspension doesn’t give out upon landing while trying to make your escape. While it’s a shame that there’s not as much parkour here as there was in the original, the buggy is just as much fun as the running and climbing ever was.
Given The Following starts immediately after events of the first game, Crane enters into this land as a near super powered zombie slayer, providing you’ve leveled up from the original game. So the Following has to find new ways to challenge you, which it does by making a slight shift towards gun based combat against more human threats, as well as the inclusion of new types of zombie, including the colossal Demolisher, which will take all of your skills to take down, as well as new volatiles . The game has invested new Legendary Levels into its EXP system, 250 of them to be exact. These are in addition to the selection of new abilities that Techland have added to the pre-existing skill trees so hardened Dying Light players will have plenty to be working towards as these legendary levels take some serious grafting to achieve. The difficulty can still spike tremendously, especially when it comes to attempting to take down the volatile hives (even during the night-time), but you’re usually having too much fun to really care.
An interesting new mechanic that has been introduced into The Following is the Level of Trust meter. Seeing as Crane is an outsider to this cult, he’s perceived as a potential threat which makes the members hesitant in talking to him and revealing more about the cure. The more side quests that Crane takes on, the volatile nests that get destroyed and the more he helps people in the random encounters throughout the countryside, the more Crane’s profile and tales of helpful bravery spread throughout the cult, allowing him to rank up, learn new information and get closer to The Faceless, and then to The Mother. It’s a smart addition that makes the side quests feel compelling to Crane’s quest, rather than additional content padding.
The Following looks fantastic, everything from the scale of The Countryside to the horrifying detail on the different zombies and the havoc you can wreak on. Setting the game outside of the city in the countryside also means there’s a higher variety of brighter colours, straying from the greys and browns that were the original’s signature urban decay, making The Following pop more visually with its lush greens, beautiful vistas and distant horizons. The day-to-night cycle manages to cast a strange beauty over a world that has gone to hell, a brief moment of respite before the horror’s that lurk within the night come out to hunt you down.
Also returning is that wonderful score that is probably the best thing to be inspired by John Carpenter and George’s Romero’s zombie classics, it’s a wonderfully atmospheric score that adapts to the situations on-screen. From the moment you first set foot into The Countryside, there’s just an ominous sense of dread and foreboding lingering in the score, near unbearable tension when sneaking into the hives and pulse pounding beats during desperate escapes from hordes of the undead and trying to race away from the volatiles.
I had been excited about The Following since it was revealed and couldn’t wait to get back to the world of Harran. What I wasn’t expecting was the sheer size of the content that The Following contains, all of it built around a gripping story that ends on shocking sucker punch of a twist. The Following has managed to exceed my already high expectations on pretty much every level. If you haven’t played Dying Light at all, I urge you to go out and grab the Enhanced Edition which includes the original game as well as The Following and all of the DLC in-between. For fans of the original, The Following builds on the great potential of the original game with a truly essential expansion that delivers on just about every level. Dying Light: The Following is already a front-runner for the most fun I’ll have playing a game in 2016.
Pros:
+ The buggy is great fun
+ Great story with a killer ending
+ Parkour is just as fun as it ever was
+ Legendary levels
+ Lots of content
+ Great score
+ Fun Co-Op
Cons:
– Difficulty can spike
Final Score: 9/10
Kris Wall – Follow me on Twitter
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