This article contains major spoilers for Dying Light and its expansion, The Following.
With the story of the original protagonist set to continue in the upcoming Dying Light: The Beast, now is the perfect time for a refresher on Techland’s celebrated parkour-zombie adventure. A decade has passed since the release of Dying Light and its expansion, The Following, so here is a comprehensive recap of everything you need to know before the sequel arrives.
The original Dying Light drops players into the fictional Middle Eastern city of Harran, ground zero for a viral outbreak that transforms people into ravenous, flesh-eating infected. You play as Kyle Crane, an undercover operative for the Global Relief Effort (GRE), a humanitarian organization with a hidden agenda. Crane’s mission is to locate Kadir Suleiman, a political figure who has stolen a sensitive file from the GRE.
Crane’s mission immediately goes awry. Within moments of arriving, he is attacked by thugs, bitten by an infected, and forced to seek help from a survivor enclave known as The Tower. His cover blown and the infection taking hold, he begins working with the group’s leader, parkour instructor Harris Brecken. While receiving treatment with Antizin, a drug that suppresses the virus’s effects, Crane also allies with Jade Aldemir, a skilled freerunner, and Dr. Imran Zere, a scientist dedicated to finding a cure.
It isn’t long before Crane confronts the man who stole the GRE file: Kadir Suleiman, now a ruthless warlord known as Rais. Hoarding the city’s supply of Antizin, Rais controls Harran’s black market through violence and intimidation. Crane and his new allies begin sabotaging his operations, prompting Rais to retaliate by killing Jade’s brother, Rahim, and kidnapping Dr. Zere.
During a failed rescue attempt, Crane is captured. Rais reveals that he not only knows Crane works for the GRE but also possesses proof that the organization helped cause the outbreak with plans to weaponize the virus. Crane manages to escape, severing Rais’s hand in the process, but Dr. Zere is killed. Before dying, Zere reveals he passed his research to Jade, instructing her to deliver it to another scientist, Dr. Camden, in Old Town.
Disgusted by the GRE’s deception, Crane fully aligns himself with the people of Harran. He learns that the defense ministry, in collaboration with the GRE, plans to firebomb the city and claim there were no survivors. To prevent this, Crane climbs a communications tower and broadcasts a message to the outside world, proving survivors exist and forcing the ministry to halt the bombing. The GRE contacts him with a new offer: bring them Dr. Zere’s research, and they will extract him.
Before he can act, Rais captures Jade. Crane finds her, but she has been bitten. With only a single dose of Antizin between them, Jade sacrifices herself, forcing Crane to kill her after she transforms.
Vowing revenge, Crane delivers Zere’s research samples to Dr. Camden but still needs the rest of the data from Rais. He learns that Rais has brokered his own deal with the GRE, offering the data in exchange for extraction. In a final confrontation atop a skyscraper, Crane kills Rais and secures the complete research. When the GRE helicopter arrives, Crane refuses extraction, choosing instead to give the data to Dr. Camden to save the people of Harran. The base game ends on a hopeful note, with a cure seemingly within reach.
The Following
The story continues in the expansion, The Following. With Antizin supplies in Harran dangerously low and Dr. Camden’s research stalled, Crane investigates rumors of a community in the countryside that is immune to the virus. There, he discovers a cult called the Children of the Sun, who worship a mysterious figure known as The Mother. They appear to live without fear of the infected, and Crane begins working with them to uncover their secret.
He eventually tracks The Mother to a fortified dam, only to discover a horrifying truth. She is a sentient Volatile—the most dangerous form of infected—who retains her human consciousness during the day but becomes a feral monster at night. Her “cure” is this partial transformation, which she offers to Crane.
The Mother then reveals her final plan to end the plague: detonate a nuclear warhead to cleanse Harran of both the living and the dead. This presents Crane with a critical choice.
In one ending, he can agree to her plan, launching a missile that obliterates Harran and ends the outbreak for good. This grim outcome is widely considered non-canon.
In the second, more likely canonical ending, Crane refuses. The Mother forces him to drink her elixir before he fights and kills her. Crane escapes the dam, but as he travels beyond the quarantine zone, he blacks out. He awakens to find himself near a mother and her children in a park. As he realizes he has transformed into a sentient Volatile, he lets out a scream, signaling the start of a global apocalypse.
Dying Light: The Beast is set years after these events. Kyle Crane, having been captured and experimented on for 13 years by a sociopath named The Baron, escapes to seek revenge. Now possessing non-human abilities, his story will explore the consequences of his transformation and the 13-year gap since the conclusion of The Following. How the sequel will address the original expansion’s branching endings remains one of its most compelling mysteries.
