Dying Light 2's improved parkour system

gamedeveloper.com:

Techland's Dying Light games have stood out in a sea of zombie apocalypse titles thanks in part due to their parkour-inspired first-person traversal systems. Players aren't just rugged survivalists, they're freerunning enthusiasts who navigate an urban wasteland. There's an incredible amount of freedom in navigating these open worlds, since players can grab onto any ledge and vault over any object.

As lead gameplay programmer Bartosz Kulon and colleagues wrote in their deep dive of the first Dying Light's traversal system, that wasn't always the plan. Though simulated parkour was always in the picture, being able to go anywhere anytime was not.

But with the success of the first game's "Natural Movement system," Kulon and his colleagues had a chance to go into Dying Light 2 knowing exactly how their movement would work. So what new challenges come up when you want to do the same traversal system, but "better?"

Here's our (lightly edited) chat with Kulon about the challenges he and his colleagues ran into with Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

Game Developer: To get started, what were the biggest changes the team thought it needed to make to the Natural Movement system?

Kulon: In the first game we were experimenting a lot. This was our first take on giving the player so much freedom of movement, so we tried to do it as best as possible. I think we managed to do something really special.

For the second game we really tried to fix the things that we felt could work better, and then build the best, most natural movement system possible. We didn't have any compromises, and could use everything at our disposal. 

We hired a bunch of experts in parkour (i.e. David Belle), built an amazing mocap studio so we could record the most complex moves,