In the recent Dying Light 2 AMA it published, developer Techland made one thing very clear. The world we know today is totally gone in the game. There’s no way that we’re going to return to it either. Dying Light had some form of normal society because the wider world wasn’t totally gone. In Dying Light 2 though, it seems like it definitely is. This is something that’s been made pretty clear, but I think it’ll be confirmed in the game’s opening. Even by the end of the game though, there’s no way that a form of today’s society can return in Dying Lguth 2, it’s not something Techland wanted us to see.
The reason that today’s society, government, and technology is firmly in the past in Dying Light 2 is that Techland thought it would be a boring thing to rebuild. I have to agree with them if I’m honest. We know all about today’s technology, and it would be too easy to simply have it all come back. In an apocalypse though, certain things aren’t just going to be that easy to put back together. Unless you have some prior knowledge, you can’t rebuild a computer, or set up the internet. Some things are basically gone forever.
Instead, Dying Light 2 will have a different sort of future for players to build. As you make decisions throughout the campaign, you’ll form the world around you. This is old news, but Techland is really insistent that this is the only way you’ll see the future start to form. The technology people begin to use will be what they’re stuck with for a very long time. There’s absolutely no incentive to push beyond it while there are still infected hassling them every night.
Once again, we can see Techland sticking true to its vision for this world here. Dying Light 2 is a full sequel, set years in the future from Dying Light. It’s got a lot going on, and society is one of those things, it’s just not very pretty. I can’t wait to see how the norms of today’s world have changed. I suspect will mostly be for the worse.