Dying Light: The Following hands-on – an expansion pack that outshines many full games

Although everyone in the Wroclaw-based team were joyful and showed off their work with much enthusiasm, it is hard not to imagine project leaders kicking themselves for not releasing The Following as Dying Light 2 – there are enough innovations for a full-fledged sequel. Meanwhile, Techland is selling all this content as a standard-priced DLC. The game definitely catches attention with the sheer amount of content for that price, but is it paired with enjoyable gameplay and well-designed game mechanics? This is what we could find out by playing through the beginning of the new campaign and then having fun in co-op challenges featuring the expansion’s biggest novelty – dune buggies. The conclusion? Those who loved the abundance of buildings and urban parkour may feel a little disappointed. Everyone else should be at least satisfied.

Let’s start by discussing a basic question, which hasn’t been really talked about yet – how is The Following linked to Dying Light itself. Although this is not a standalone expansion (you cannot run it without having the original game installed), the new activities are not integrated into the existing open world. The new campaign is listed as a separate game mode in the main menu, unlocked after completing the original tutorial stages. Once you do that you are free to leave exploration of Harran for later and start an adventure outside the city. This is true at least in theory, since surviving in the new location as a low-level character may prove to be quite a challenge. Although the dangers are scaled to the character’s progress, the overall difficulty of the new campaign is higher than before, hence developers recommend playing The Following only when you are somewhere in the middle of the original story or later.

It is worth mentioning that together with the expansion an Enhanced Edition of Dying Light will hit stores on February 9th. This new release will include an upgraded version of the base game as well as all DLCs. These game changes include new parkour moves, expanded character progression system, technical improvements (e.g. new NPC models and better AI), and more – all will be available to the existing game owners as a free update.

Another reason for not playing the expansion earlier is the presence of the main story spoilers – after all, the new campaign concludes Kyle Crane’s story. Interestingly, your progress – including the equipment, experience point, skills, etc. – are transferred between the original game and the expansion. Therefore, you are free to jump from one location to another, uncovering the two plots interchangeably. Note, however, that the narrative does not support such playstyle, which means that immersion may suffer – and you should not treat that lightly, because The Following puts even more emphasis on storytelling than the original. Although Techland openly say they don’t aspire to an award for best narrative in video games, they assure their story – especially the ending – will take many players by surprise. We were unable to verify that after just an hour of gameplay; however, the mystery around the cult of a god-mother and the people immune to zombie virus does evoke curiosity.

A landmark feature of the new story is its partial non-linearity. At one point (after about an hour of gameplay) the story branches out, and the player has to gain trust of the aforementioned cultists in order to learn their secrets. In practice, this boils down to trying to fill a good old reputation bar by doing various favors for the locals. I didn’t manage to check out too many of these missions, but if all are as good as the ones I did try, this non-linearity combined with gaining reputation may be a good reason for giving The Following more than one playthrough. Anyway, even without that the expansion should offer enough content to satisfy all players’ hunger. According to some recent news the expansion grew a little more than Techland originally planned (which resulted in a slight increase of the price of the expansion and Season Pass). Now the developer estimates that completing the new campaign should take about 15 hours (provided that you explore at least some of the side content), but if you want to see everything the add-on has to offer, you may need even 30 hours.

How would you spend that time? First of all, there is a brand new map to explore, which is much bigger than the original game area, though it’s less dense in terms of attractions. Other than fields, grass-lands, rail tracks, farms, and bandit outposts that we have already seen on screenshots, we will also visit mountainous regions, a large refinery, a Mediterranean-like town, and other interesting places. Because open spaces are predominant, parkour loses its significance, but there are still multiple locations that enable play style similar to the original game.

This is how we get to the aforementioned main course of The Following, i.e. dune buggies. Their presence, along with the flatter structure of the world, changes gameplay beyond recognition. The vehicles are the only relevant means of transport in this new area – unless you prefer running through fields and cutting your way through zombies with a machete in hand to cruising off-road and mowing down zombies with a bumper or setting them ablaze with a flame thrower. You get your first buggy within the first hour of gameplay – once you sit behind the wheel, you will never want to leave it.

Initially, however, the buggy is not as great as the above paragraph suggests. The vehicle you get at the beginning has no mounted weapons nor any other special gear, it is rather slow and quickly loses grip when you drive off the beaten road (driving model is a little more realistic than in, let’s say, Far Cry games), and knocking “a pedestrian” really slows it down. In other words, the car needs upgrades – and this is quite fun. While using the buggy you gain experience point toward the new, fourth progression tree (Driver), which lets you unlock more and more interesting vehicle upgrades. You can customize several elements of the vehicle – wheels, suspension, engine, etc. – and mount dozens of parts that alter its performance (e.g. traction, maximum speed). In time you get to add weapons (no more than two at the same time) and customize such frills as charm hangers or paintings.

In short, the amount of customization options is comparable to the recently released Mad Max, so fans of tinkering under the hood should be elated, because the fun gets better and better as the buggy gets more powerful. It’s also worth mentioning that the vehicle is more than just fun – it is also a responsibility. You need fuel to drive (it can be acquired from gas tanks of cars scattered across the world); moreover, the buggy will get damaged and it has to be fixed. Although it cannot be completely wrecked, driving a rattler means lower performance and much more noise that easily draws attention of dangerous foes. Fortunately, a broken car can be easily pulled off the wild and “summoned” to any hideout in order to make necessary repairs.

What other changes does The Following offer? Definitely worth mentioning is the greater significance of ranged combat. Open spaces favor this type of engagements and there are more armed humans among your opponents, so you will need to draw fire weapons more often than before (and they are now much more diverse). One more interesting thing is the new addition to Kyle Crane’s equipment – a crossbow. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t change Dying Light into a Far Cry or Borderlands. Ammunition is still scarce, and because of the noise, gunshots can cause more harm than good. This means pistols, rifles and other guns are still your last resort. On the other hand, using guns may be encouraged by having to fight new types of enemies – as I played I saw a heavily armored bandit with only his head exposed, whereas the developers mentioned a new, more deadly type of the volatile and a four-legged sprinter, whom you will have to chase with your vehicle. However, there won’t be any bandits pursuing you by buggies. Generally speaking, Techland didn’t intend to revolutionize opponents, but they sure are enriching the “bestiary”.

Since we already started discussing predators, we should also say something about nighttime gameplay. Sadly, I had only a moment to play at night, so I can’t give you any far-reaching conclusions. Like before, you should be extra careful when it’s dark, because every type of zombie is much stronger than at daytime, plus there are hunters walking among them – if they notice you, they can cause you a lot of trouble. And it is not enough to hop into your car to quickly get out of danger, because these type of zombies can chase down a speeding buggy and pull the driver out from behind the wheel. Nitro may help a little here, but it’s still not the ultimate solution. It doesn’t mean that the buggy becomes useless after dark – enemies come in separated packs, and a fully-functional (i.e. a moderately silent) buggy draws only little more attention than Crane traveling on foot. Therefore, with some caution and planning of your voyages so as to avoid the locals, you can effectively use your car round the clock.

Of course gameplay acquires a new dimension when you have one or more (up to three) friends playing with you in co-op mode. Buggies are two-sitters – apart from the driver’s seat, there is a place for a shooter – which makes up another gameplay innovation. An especially interesting activity in the co-op are the new challenges for buggies, of which there are about 30, including classic races on dirt roads with obstacles, cross-country rallies, and even ones that resemble Carmageddon series – as you race you have to knock over the undead to gain more time – as well as competitions focused entirely on killing zombies. By the way, it is worth mentioning that the Enhanced Edition is going to introduce a new type of challenges for lone wolves (both in the original game and The Following DLC), although we have no details on that. Note that the expansion offers new attractions in the Be the Zombie mode. No details here too, but we can probably expect a new location for this mode and some gameplay balance tweaks.

Although there are only three weeks until the release of Dying Light: The Following, the developers still didn’t reveal all the secrets of their upcoming title. Both the expansion and the Enhanced Edition hide few surprises, which will be unveiled either closer to the release date or once the game launches. Nevertheless, we know all the key features of the project, so we can now draw some meaningful conclusions.

And these cannot be other than positive. The original Dying Light was a solid game in itself – especially with all the patches and DLCs it has been receiving over the last year – and The Following seems to be even better. Although there are still some wrinkles to iron out (e.g. failing physics, occasional weird behavior of enemy AI), for a game with about a month left to release it is in quite a good shape.

Using this opportunity we asked the developers for their future plans, but Techland weren’t too talkative about that. They revealed that the majority of the Dying Light team is already working on something else (the expansion has a core team of 40 people, plus there are small teams working on the Enhanced Edition, updates, modding tools, etc), but the nature of that project obviously remains secret. Techland was similarly reserved when answering our other questions. Hellride? “We can’t talk about this, but we assure you it’s not dead”. Dying Light 2? “Aw, The Following isn’t out yet, so how are we to talk about a sequel!” In other words, we must wait patiently. One thing is sure though – the next thing the Polish studio is brewing, is worth the wait.

Here I feel it would be nice to say something as cliché as: “fans of the original will be delighted, while all those who didn’t take to the game have nothing to look for in the expansion”, but the reality may look quite differently. As I mentioned in the outset, the change of environment and addition of vehicles notably shifted the gameplay balance. Some weaknesses of the original game were thus eliminated, while others could be taking their place. In order to answer the question if fans of Dying Light will not be disappointed with the expansion, first we have to ask what did they love the game for. If you don’t mind sacrificing some stealth gameplay for more shooting and free-running for off-road driving, then you don’t have to worry about The Following. However, if this raises your doubts… well, for this price the expansion is still worth trying out. I, personally, look forward to playing The Following if only because during my hands-on time with the title I felt a little like I was playing a much prettier version of Half-Life 2…