Dying Light 2: Stay Human has a lot of the things you’d expect from the sequel to Dying Light: Zombies, parkour, civilization on the brink of collapse, and so on. However, you might be surprised to learn that it also features tall tales told at campfires.
While you’re playing, you might see a book icon appear on your map. If you follow it, you’ll end up at a campfire, and if you sit down at the fire, you might be regaled by a longwinded, rambling tale of past glories.
I’ve noticed this won’t happen at every campfire, but I did encounter this particularly verbose fellow:
Perhaps this is the 500 hours of content Techland was talking about?
Now, for some reason, there aren’t in-game subtitles for this story. But because I transcribed some of the longship songs in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I figured I’d give this one a whirl as well. The full transcript is below, in case you’d rather just skim this tale instead of listening to the full three-plus minutes of Slow-Drawl Steve here.
He’s asked about Pilgrims by the woman sitting on my right, and that’s when he begins his tale:
“I’ve seen many Pilgrims, but only known one. People say they’re criminals: no conscience, no principles. You’ll have to be the judge.
“In ’23, Berlin fell. All of Germany was lost. My friend Bernard got work for us in Dortmund. The plan? Take a year doin’ jobs others wouldn’t; spend every penny on medication. We’d return with the medicine and set up our families for life.
“I’m not proud of what we did, but we did it. At the end of the year we went home. When we got to Leipzig, it was surrounded by bandits and slavers.
“One day Bernard returned with a woman who claimed to be a pilgrim. She agreed to see us through bandit territory for a bottle of Antizin, already very valuable at the time. She knew every path, hiding spot, bandit camp for miles, knew how to avoid the infected. She kept us close to the Elbe River as if she was tracking something.
“Finally we reached the crossing, and we were very close to home, but the Pilgrim, she insisted that we wait until morning. I was restless, so close to home. Something moving in the camp woke me in the middle of the night. I saw the pilgrim slinking into the woods with our meds.
“But before I could wake Bernard, slavers attacked the camp and overpowered us. They threw us into their ramshackle boat moored nearby. We were a prize, as the other slaves on the ship were children, and they were tipped off by the Pilgrim, who made a double score — us and our meds.
“We were about to set sail when the boat sprang a huge leak.”
At this point, the woman interjects and says, “Knew it!” I’m not sure why; this is a really random place to say something like that.
But the man continues as if nothing happened. “Now, I’ve seen a lot of good fighters in my life, but her? She was… phew, something else. It was like watching a dark angel perform a deadly dance. Could barely see her move. But soon enough, all the slavers were dead or drowning in the river.”
The guy to my left, who was mostly quiet up until this point, decides to say, “This is why I don’t trust Pilgrims.”
Again, the storyteller pretends to not notice this at all and continues his tale. “After making sure all the slaves were safely ashore, boat scuttled, the Pilgrim approached one girl. The child recoiled, but recognition dawned in her eyes. They embraced and cried softly. It was a moment of peace.
“Every night, I dreamed about reuniting with my daughter.”
Then the guy on the left says, “Family is the first community.”
The storyteller isn’t done yet, though. He must explain the Pilgrim’s plan: “She used us to get the slaver ship to come ashore to rescue her child. She apologized, then told us where she’d hidden our meds. I asked her, ‘Do you expect us to thank you?’ She looked to her daughter. ‘No, she’s all I need.'”
And the guy on the left feels like he needs to have the last word, so he says, “Good story, mate.”
And he’s right. That is quite the story, I suppose.
But look, man, it was a yes or no question.
Oh, and if you want to see more Dying Light 2 campfire stories, this one about pest control is a real doozy as well.
