Dying Light 2‘s developer has published a second AMA video addressing a number of questions from the community. One of those relates to the ending of Dying Light The Following, or the endings if we’re getting specific. One of these endings is canonical, but Techland hasn’t confirmed which. The developer has also hinted at the fact that Crane, the first game’s protagonist, is too well known in the world to have been missed out in the sequel. So the question is which ending is the real ending, and what happened to the world or Crane? Spoilers for the endings, because I’m going to discuss them next.
The first ending for The Following is the one in which you decide to detonate the bomb. This wipes out a lot of the infected, but it could have dire consequences in the future. You don’t know that the detonation didn’t trigger a reaction around the world. It could have caused a nuclear winter and ruined the climate. This may be why the world of Dying Light 2 is so bleak. People are crammed together into cities because they can’t survive anywhere else. I think this is a likely option as an ending because it would mean that everyone knows the name of Crane because he destroyed and doomed the world.
The second ending sees Crane kill the Mother but become infected himself. He still retains his mind, but he’s a monster that no one can understand and fears. Something that a developer said makes me think that maybe, just maybe, there is a small cult of infected living somewhere in the world of Dying Light 2. I think they’d be intelligent, but they’d have to hide because they can’t control what they do at night. Part of the GRE involvement in the game could even see players find a way to help this small collection of infected living under the first game’s protagonist. It would be a nice callback, and could even shape the decisions you make regarding what parts of the city are destroyed and which ones remain untouched. I think this would add a lot to the game, but we’ll just have to wait to see which ending actually counts.