This article contains spoilers for Dying Light and its expansion, The Following.
With Dying Light: The Beast, a continuation of the protagonist’s story from the original game, shambling onto console and PC in the very near future, it’s the perfect time to refresh your memory on Techland’s epic parkour zombie adventure, Dying Light, and its massive expansion, The Following. With ten years having passed since the original Dying Light, you’d be forgiven for being a bit foggy on the details. Lucky for you, IGN took impeccable notes, so here’s everything you need to know about Dying Light’s story before playing the upcoming sequel.
Oh, and this should go without saying, but spoilers lie ahead.
The original Dying Light quite literally drops you right into its fictional Middle Eastern setting: the city of Harran, which unfortunately has become ground zero to a devastating viral outbreak that transforms people into absolutely terrifying, flesh-eating creatures of darkness – also known as zombies. You play as Kyle Crane, an undercover agent for the Global Relief Effort (GRE), a humanitarian organization. You enter the city under the guise of aiding survivors, but your actual mission is to track down Kadir Suleiman, a political figure who has stolen a file critical to the GRE. If you’re already thinking that maybe the GRE is not exactly squeaky clean, you’ve got great instincts. Follow your gut.
Your mission quickly goes sideways when you’re attacked by goons acting on behalf of a warlord, then bitten by a zombie and infected with the virus, all within your first few moments in the city, ‘cause you’re super good at your job. With your cover immediately blown and already experiencing the seizures that precede full zombification, you join up with a survivor enclave called The Tower, led by the only person qualified to be in charge during the apocalypse: a parkour instructor – in this case a really cool one named Harris Brecken. You follow his lead, learning the ways of parkour, and undergoing treatment with an experimental drug capable of staving off the effects of the zombie virus called Antizin.
You also meet Jade Aldemir, a freerunner and fighter who has a heart of gold and would do anything for Dr. Imran Zere, a scientist working on a cure to the zombie virus, and, of course, her brother, Rahim Aldemir, a reckless guy who you can tell right away isn’t going to make it to the credits.
With your crew of allies established, it’s not long before you’re properly introduced to Dying Light’s villain and the man who stole that GRE file. Kadir “Rais” Suleiman is a self-styled warlord who resorts to ruthless tactics and has a tendency to screw over those who make deals with him – all qualities that frame him as the perfect baddie you just can’t wait to punch right in the face. His crew has been hoarding Antizin and controlling Harran’s black market through intimidation and violence, so you and your crew begin to sabotage his operations and rally survivors against him. Naturally, he bites back by killing Rahim (who again, was very obviously going to die) and kidnapping Doctor Zere.
You go to rescue the good doctor, but get caught and thrown into a pit where you’re forced to fight loads of infected. After surviving the battle, Rais reveals that not only does he know that you’re working for the GRE, but he’s got dirt on them that he’s ready to publish. The plot twist? The GRE was complicit in the outbreak and has plans to weaponize it against its enemies. Yeah, see? Your bosses really weren’t very nice people.
You manage to escape from Rais’ clutches and chop off the guy’s hand by suddenly showing off some serious martial arts skills, but Rais manages to escape with his life and Dr. Zere is killed before you can rescue him. Luckily, the fading scientist tells you that he’s given his research to Jade and wants it delivered to a new character, Doctor Camden, in the old part of town.
Now having seen the GRE for what it is, you realign yourself with the people of Harran and the friends you’ve made at The Tower. You learn that the defense ministry, working alongside GRE, plans to firebomb the entire city, then claim there were no survivors to begin with.
You meet up with some new friendlies in old town and concoct a plan to let the world know that you’re in need of help by setting off a series of charges in a skyscraper in the shape of a burning frowny face. But a fighter jet sinks it right away to cover it all up. You then pivot to climbing to the top of a communications tower and sending out a message to let the world know you’re there. This forces the fire bombing plan to be halted, but the GRE contacts you with a new proposal: bring it the cure Dr. Zere was working on, and you’ll be extracted.
Unfortunately, you find out that Rais has kidnapped Jade before that happens – abduction certainly seems to be this guy’s favorite move. You reach her, but find out she’s been bitten and is turning into an infected. Rais gives you a single dose of Antizin and makes you both choose who will survive. Jade insists you take the drug and you’re forced to kill her after she fully transforms into a zombie.
After mourning your loss and getting even with one of Rais’ goons, you bring the cure samples to Dr. Camden, but you still need to get the rest of Zere’s data from Rais. You go after him and learn that Rais, ever the fan of making the worst deals imaginable, has struck up an arrangement with the GRE to be extracted from Harran in exchange for the data. Naturally, you confront the guy on top of a skyscraper, and make him one final offer he can’t refuse by stabbing him in the neck and letting him fall to his death.
The GRE shows up looking for the data, but you heroically turn your back on the opportunity to save yourself, instead giving the data to Camden to save the people of Harran. A cure seems to be in sight, and it’s at this pivotal juncture that the story of Dying Light draws to a close. But Kyle’s story is not over, and things take a turn for the extremely weird in the game’s expansion...
After staying in Harran to help the city’s people, you hear a rumor from a crazed survivor that there are people out in the countryside who are immune to infection. The cure Dr. Camden is working on hasn’t made any progress yet, and Antizin is running low, so naturally, you head out to investigate. You quickly discover that the entire region beyond Harran has become enthralled to a cult called The Children of the Sun, who worship a mysterious figure known as The Mother. They perform bizarre rituals and seem way too comfortable getting up close and personal with zombies, but also seem to live without fear of the undead.
You start working alongside this cult hoping to learn more, and eventually gain the trust of its super creepy masked officers called The Faceless, agreeing to do their bidding in hopes of bringing their cure back to Harran with you. You eventually learn that good ol’ Rais’ band of thugs are operating in the area, trying to get their hands on the cure themselves. You track them to a dam where The Mother is hiding, but by the time you arrive all of Rais’ men are already dead.
And here’s where things get really weird: you finally meet The Mother, and when she takes off her creepy cult mask, you see that she is fully infected – having been transformed into the most dangerous of infected: a Volatile. But bizarrely, she’s not feral like normal zombies, possessing sentience and the ability to speak despite looking like a horrifying corpse monster. She reveals to you that her cure isn’t so much a proper remedy as it is a compromise: she’s able to keep her zombie urges at bay during the day, but at night goes on killing sprees. In other words, she’s a zombie werewolf, more or less. Yikes.
The Mother proposes how you could end the infection once and for all: summon the Sun God. Spoiler alert – she’s talking about a nuclear bomb, which, to be fair, is definitely, technically a cure of sorts. This is where you’re given a choice: agree to help this absolutely insane lich with her plan to kill everyone, or, y’know, not do that. Pretty tough call.
If you decide to side with The Mother, you’ll use her nuclear codes to launch a missile into Harran to purge it clean of survivors and infected alike (dope), but in doing so bring about a proper end to the outbreak. This is certainly the more metal of the two options, but given that The Beast will feature Kyle as its protagonist, I’m gonna go ahead and say that maybe this option isn’t exactly canon. Who knows, though. Knock yourself out, king.
Alternatively, you can tell the monster to take a hike, but she forces you to drink the elixir, turning you into a sentient zombie. You fight and kill her, collect the vials, and escape the dam. After suffering blackouts, you find yourself outside the confines of Harran and come upon a family playing in a park. It’s at this point you realize you’ve been fully transformed into a volatile and let out a scream, hinting at an impending global apocalypse. Whoops.
And that’s where Kyle’s story ends, at least until Dying Light: The Beast arrives. Now, you might be thinking, “how in the heck could they possibly make a sequel to this?” and it’s a fair question. This sequel picks up years after The Following, and you once again play as Kyle Crane, who was apparently captured after the events of The Following by a sociopath called The Baron who experimented on him for 13 years. Now having escaped, he seeks revenge on his former captor and, as the title suggests, has some non-human DNA in him that seems likely to play a substantial role in the story.
I’m not quite sure what Techland will do to address the branching decision in The Following, or how the heck the studio plans to fill in the 13-year gap, but I can’t wait to see the undoubtedly weird direction it all takes when Dying Light: The Beast arrives on September 19.
