The original Dying Light featured one of the finest parkour systems seen in a game to date, but (spoilers!) Techland eventually turned protagonist Kyle Crane into a makeshift Spider-Man with the introduction of the grappling hook during the story’s final chapters. This allowed players to whip across the heights of Harran with ease and, while it’s somewhat undermined the rhythms of the manual freerunning, it quickly became a fan favourite tool for endgame traversal.
With the reveal of Dying Light 2, many players are wondering whether the infamous grappling hook will be making its grand return, especially since the sequel takes place in a city that's 400% larger than Dying Light’s total landmass. Speaking with 12DOVE, Techland’s Lead Game Programmer Bartosz Kulon has indeed confirmed what we’ve all been waiting to hear; the grappling hook is back for Dying Light 2, and this time, it’s functional. Kulon revealed the small detail when talking about the development of the grappling hook’s first iteration, which - as it happens - was the result of a computational error.
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“There’s this space for us to experiment at Techland, and sometimes that leads to really cool things”, Kulon tells 12DOVE. “For example, in the first game the grappling hook was a coding mistake on my side! I was developing the algorithm to detect the ledges, and for some reason the algorithm let teleport from ledge to ledge like a superhero. So I thought maybe we could do something with this… and suddenly Scorpion from Mortal Kombat came to mind and he has this grappling hook. So I implemented it in Dying Light quickly just as a prototype, and it made it into the final game!”
“We love it and hate it at the same time, because for us it was like “Oh my god, now the player can go everywhere!”. But this grappling hook overrides the whole parkour movement system, so we give it to the player at very late stage in the game. There was some complaints in the reviews as to why we gave it so late because it’s so cool, but we wanted the player to learn the freerunning move-set first and then gain this tool as a reward. But there will be a grappling hook in Dying Light 2, and we are working to make sure it won’t actually break the movement this time!”
So there you have it. You can look forward to whipping around the Central European urban jungles of Dying Light 2 when the game releases on PC, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in the future (Techland have yet to announce an official launch date after pouring cold water on those 2019 rumours). For those who’d prefer to leave the grappling hook behind for a more purist freerunning experience, well, the stairs are that way.
Stay tuned to 12DOVE for more news and coverage of Dying Light 2 later this week, or check out our guide to the best new games of 2019 and beyond.
