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There’s a spiritual Mirror’s Edge sequel awaiting in Dying Light 2Gravity’s runbow

Gravity’s runbow

The player follows another character parkouring across a rooftop in Dying Light 2

Interview With David Belle — Dying Light 2 Stay HumanWatch on YouTube

Interview With David Belle — Dying Light 2 Stay Human

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There are a couple of fun additions, too, which you can engage with or not depending on your commitment to reality: a 180-degree midair turn, and a ‘dash’, comparable toMirror’s Edge Catalyst’s ‘shift’, which gives you a brief second wind when activated on a long straight. Here, though, it’s more involved - pulling energy from your stamina bar, which might be better saved for an upcoming climb. Though the sense of flow is transportive, even meditative, this is parkour as spatial puzzle - constantly engaging your brain as a kind of environmental scanner.

The player paraglides across a grassy rooftop in Dying Light 2

The player looks down over a grassy urban roof scene in Dying Light 2

The best place to do this kind of compositional running in Dying Light 2 - to become Miles-Walked Davis - is in the game’s parkour challenges. There, Techland deletes the zombies from the map for a few minutes and, let’s not pussyfoot around this, completely rips off the running genre’s best format.

The player jumps in mid-air on an abandoned overpass in Dying Light 2

Of course, Dying Light 2 isn’t only its parkour trials. It’s an Everything Game, stuffed with mechanics beyond counting, gleaned from the AAA industry at large. Some of those systems wind up impacting the running in significant ways. Theparaglideris one example; thegrappling hookanother. You might say that they subtract from the parkour, since they encourage you to spend less time running, and don’t really allow you to opt out; many challenge times are only possible to hit with a chunk of airtime.

Hakon leans against a grassy building in Dying Light 2

There’s real joy to be found in folding these tools into your existing catalogue of leaps and bounds, such that each enhances the other. Sustained momentum from a jump can propel the paraglider across greater gaps, and on the other end of your flight, a smooth landing can power you forward yet again. There’s nothing like cutting your canopy as you come through a gaping tenth floor window in Villedor’s central district and hitting the dusty office floor at a sprint. Get it right, and protagonist Aiden will let out a gleeful cackle. I know, mate. The post-apocalyse is ace.