Techland’s upcoming sequel to Dying Light is finally getting released soon, and more details about the open-world zombie game have regularly been revealed.
But one piece of tidbit revealed through Twitter was a rather misguided one, and proved unpopular enough that multiple follow-up tweets have been issued to walk back the claim.
The Dying Light Twitter claimed that to “fully complete” Dying Light 2 Stay Human, you need at least 500 hours.
A quick glance at the replies and quote tweets show a good chunk of gamers replying not in favour of a 500-hour game. For a single-player game with optional co-op with RPG elements, 500 hours in 2022 is maybe way too much to the point of off-putting and daunting.
The crazy hours of playtime are usually reserved for more systems and mechanics-heavy games that’s designed for repeat plays (think survival games like Minecraft, 4X games like the Civilization series, and multiplayer games like the many shooters, MOBAs and battle royales). Dying Light 2 Stay Human isn’t the sort of game you expect to sink that many hours in.
The Dying Light Twitter posted a reply and a quote tweet stating that “it’s about 100% completion rate.” And now posted a revised version of the claim stating that Dying Light 2 will require 20 hours to complete the story.
The tweet also claims that Dying Light 2 will require 80 hours to complete the story and all side quests, and 500 hours to “max out the game with all main and side quests, choices and endings, checking every place on the map, every dialogue and finding every collectible”.
The story has since sparked a conversation about how long a video game should be, and how many games that gamers have actually spent almost 500 hours playing.
The lesson here is that lengthy playtime is not a big selling point for video games in 2022, and any other video game should be careful with touting big numbers as it’s not necessarily “bigger number means bigger selling point”.
That all said, 20 hours to complete Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s critical path is a decent length, and surely the most hardcore of post-apocalypse parkour fans will maximise the playtime further to reach the previous claim of 500 hours.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human will be out on February 4, 2022, for the PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S as well as Nintendo Switch (via cloud gaming).