Dying Light 2 Bloody Ties DLC review: All tied up

The circus is a strange place, exciting for some and downright terrifying for others. Flame Eaters blow their fiery breath too close to the tent canvas. Clowns are just creepy. When the emcee invites you into the center ring, there’s a nagging fear that you might be the real draw, and at the end of the day, you wonder if it really was such a fun experience after all.

It is very similar in Dying Light 2 Bloody Ties DLC. Zombies spew fire too close to you. When the emcee invites you to center ring, it’s because he wants to extract your intestines in the most painful way possible. And the clown is you, for appearing.

After the lights went down and the excitement evaporated, I was left wondering how much I really enjoyed Bloody Ties, with all its spectacle.

Bloody Ties opens with a rumor about Old Villedor’s underground fight club, and like any good leading man, Aiden heads off to investigate. A few baseball bat-swinging matches and unexpected murders later, and he ends up in Carnage Hall on the blacklist of a strange new villain: Skullface.

Carnage Hall is where glory-hungry fighters and deranged people with a taste for violence gather to fight. Renegades, Peacekeepers, and your average survivor all blend in with no thought of allegiance, a convenient setup that helps separate this DLC from the main story entirely. Your actions don’t matter here, and there are no branching story paths.

While this is an ideal setting to explore the people of Villedor and their daily lives and relationships from a unique perspective, Bloody Ties focuses only on the mystery surrounding Carnage Hall and Skullface’s dedication to murdering people; which marks him out as having an unusual love of death even by Dying Light standards.

The result is a strange mix. Having a focused story after the base game’s sprawling, distraction-filled narrative is refreshing, but it also feels stretched, like a sidequest that goes on too long. Plot developments happen infrequently, and with no substantial side quests or even insight into the characters around you, it relies almost entirely on action to keep you interested.

That said, the final reveal was unexpectedly satisfying, a shocking and gruesome twist on the usual survivor story. These expansions are the ideal opportunity to slow down and let the people and places in Villedor who have no ties to Waltz and his complicated missile plan finally tell their stories about him. Bloody Ties misses out on that opportunity a bit, but sets up a foundation for future expansions to build on at the very least.

The action between plot moments is also a bit of a curious collection. Most of what you’re doing in Bloody Ties is what you were already doing in the main game, just without the freedom of exploration in New Villedor: racing, time trials and the like. As tedious as it sounds, Techland made these some of the most interesting and tense obstacle courses in the series thus far. Night chases start at max rank. Checkpoint challenges take you through a small, enclosed area where clever use of your grappling hook and glider are key to success, and battles take place in bizarre arenas filled with deadly danger.

However, Bloody Ties is not in the puzzle department, and even knows it. During an extended search around Carnage Hall, Aiden ventures into an abandoned power station. Instead of a real wire puzzle waiting for him, though, there’s just a piece of paper pinned to a concrete pillar.

Despite having a fancy new weapon at your disposal, the combat and even weapon customization felt disappointingly similar to the main game. However, that’s partly due to the wide range of weapons and customization in the original. When you can already slam someone into the stands with a baseball bat, freeze them with a makeshift axe, and then shoot flames with a makeshift polearm, it’s hard to top that, at least so soon after the main campaign launches.

Bloody Ties is fun DLC, especially if you enjoyed the side activities in the main game, but it’s hard not to think that Dying Light 2’s first expansion could have benefited from a bit more time, even after the delays, to help it out. to be up to par. all its potential.