Dying Light 2 Announced

For the past few years, Techland has been pouring its support into the open-world adventure game Dying Light, with a number of consistent updates to keep fans happy as they bashed the heads of thousands of zombies in with awesome weapons. But it looks like the time has come to move on to the inevitable sequel; but it's going much bigger and better than expected.

Announced today during Microsoft's E3 press conference, Dying Light 2 is taking a huge new direction over the original game. Narrative designer Chris Avellone explained how this is going to be done, as your decisions actually have an effect over the course of the game. No, not dialogue decisions. Actual decisions that you make during your run through each stage.

For instance, there's one point within the game where you can help free up a water control point to gain some allies, rather than forcing them to turn against you just because you don't want to help them. What happens next can differ greatly, either with more enemies on your tail because you didn't help; or having people support you and make things a little easier. "Each player's game experience will be unique," Avellone explained.

The game's trailer also highlights a few changes over the original game for the better. For instance, the graphics are much improved over the first Dying, with a faster frame rate and a much more realistic looking city. Plus the creatures look better than ever; and your parkour stunts look much more visceral than ever before. Oh, and then there are the creatures that come out at night, and, well, let's just say they don't really look that friendly.

We'll be getting a much closer look at Dying Light 2 as E3 goes on, but it's already shaping up to be a big step forward for the series. Whether Techland will support it in the long-term as they did the first game has yet to be seen, but we don't see why it wouldn't be.

You'll be waiting a little bit longer for it, though. Dying Light 2 isn't anticipated to release until 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. That's about all we know on the date of arrival, but hopefully we'll get something more specific as the year goes on.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer above!