Dying Light 2: Stay Human boasts of being one of the longest games to ever fully complete. The game developers said that it would take “at least 500 hours” to complete in its entirety.
Since the game’s development took more than five years, with multiple delays on its release date, it seems feasible that it could take that long for an ordinary person to complete the game.
However, we’re in quite a unique situation here at DiamondLobby, giving us the ability to comment with real accuracy on how long it takes to beat Dying Light 2.
We ran our first ever ‘Trophy Race’, challenging gamers to complete all of Dying Light 2’s achievements in the fastest possible time after its release.
In this article, we’ll go into detail on how long it takes to beat Dying Light 2 – including input from our Trophy Race winner – whether it is a 100% trophy completion run or just the main story. There will be no spoilers, so don’t sweat it and read on.
How Long to Beat Dying Light 2’s Main Story
The story is quite long if you factor in all the available dialogues in the game. There are two main sections to the story and you can finish them in under 20 hours. However, it’s hard to estimate how everyone will play the game. As an average gamer, you can find yourself stuck in certain areas of the main quest, like finding Barney’s Hideout or finishing Let’s Waltz.
You can also die multiple times in hard fights against the Renegades or even a side activity like defeating the Revenant.
If you are completely focused on finishing the main story and nothing else, you can finish the game in 20-30 hours. This includes all the dialogues, cutscenes, inventory management and skills management.
However, if you are purely going for the main story quests, you will be missing out on a whole lot of content. You will not be able to fill up your stamina and health as much with Inhibitor upgrades, and your combat and parkour skills will not be high enough to get most of the perks available in the game.
These upgrades and perks aren’t mandatory to finish the main quests, but it is good to have the flexibility of using them when you play. Plus, they make it more fun.
How Long to 100% Complete Dying Light 2
Getting all the trophies in a game for completionists, trophy hunters, achievement hunters, and collectors gives a different sense of accomplishment. The harder the game is, the more satisfying the trophies are.
After our Trophy Race for Dying Light 2 winner was crowned, we asked for information on roughly how long it took to get the platinum trophy. Our winner, AFAK, took 151.6 hours to complete Dying Light 2 with all the trophies.
After discussing the strategies that AFAK used with them, most of their time was spent running round in circles. Literally. This is because one achievement requires players to travel for at least 960km.
“At least 50 hours were spent purely running in circles, and some playtime was also accumulated while researching, looking up collectibles, and eating.”
By running in circles, you are able to complete the achievement whilst being AFK.
Dying Light 2 has also made it hard for players to get all the collectibles as some of them are locked in specific side quests. Some of these side quests are only accessible once, and if you miss them, you will not have the chance to get the collectibles you have missed without restarting your save.
However, you can have a buddy who has not finished that particular side quest host a lobby and join their session to get the collectibles.
Since this happened a lot during AFAK’s trophy race, he managed to complete all the collectibles he had missed. The real struggle was one bugged trophy/achievement called ‘Boot Licker’. The objective was to max out one of the city alignment factions available in the game, but the trophy wouldn’t unlock.
The cause of the bug was coop sessions themselves, which can sometimes cause achievements to fail to unlock. The only fix was to back up the save files, delete the save files, and start up a new single player game. It took under four hours for AFAK to start a new game and get all seven facilities to finally complete Boot Licker, but took around 15 hours in total.
AFAK is an experienced game completionist, with almost 5,000 fully-completed games under their belt.
With this in mind, it might take a while for an average gamer to complete Dying Light 2.
However, many completionist guides now exist for it. If you can avoid bugs or glitches and have an efficient strategy then you might be able to beat Dying Light 2 in less than 100 hours of playthrough time if you really focus on it. Still, that’s a pretty long time.
There aren’t any trophies that require you to have amazing mechanical skills to finish, so it just requires a ton of research and effort to beat the game. As an estimate, you should be able to get all the trophies for Dying Light 2: Stay Human in around 100 to 150 hours.
If you want to participate in future DiamondLobby Trophy Races, you can check out our upcoming trophy races.
Normal Playthrough Time
As a casual player who wants to experience the game naturally, it can take around 50 hours just to complete the game’s main story. Since the game has a ton of content to consume, apart from the main story quest, you have the choice of exploring Old Villedor and its four districts – without skipping as much dialogue as possible.
You can complete the game whenever you feel like it, but most of the players will want to finish side quests and side activities when they encounter them. Even the alarm on your Biomarker will notify you when a GRE container is nearby. You can eventually lose yourself from doing something else apart from the main story.
You may choose to level up your combat or parkour perks and do some night runs while you are at it. The list goes on and on, and it will all add up to your playtime.
As an average gamer, you will find yourself constantly dying, especially if you are a curious bee. There is no shame in that, but it will obviously set your completion time back. You can find yourself dying and respawning somewhere far away from what you were completing.
Dying Light 2 has a ton to offer, and this is how most of the players will play the game.
Whilst the developers mentioned 500 hours of playtime to experience everything in the game, it’s likely a little bit of an exaggeration for what’s likely in real playthrough.
