The virus causes an aggressive reaction of the fight-or-flight response that overrides our rational behavior, but our personalities are still there
The fight-or-flight response is the most primal reaction we humans have, and the virus amplifies it exponentially to the point it overrides our actual personality. However, vestiges of our personality are still there if we know where to look. In virals, who are in the beginning stages of infection, there's still traces of rationality left, with some of them pleading for help or mercy when attacked. In full biter mode, there's examples of zombies haunting places they used to frequent in life, like in one particular case where a former cop demolisher hangs out with other cop zombies. While all these are examples of the fight response being dominant, bolters and screamers are examples where the flight response is dominant. In particular, screamers, being children in life, have a much more developed flight response than fight, and scream out of genuine terror, and they cry like normal children when they are not yet startled. This is substantiated by how you kill them, with Crane cradling and calming them down before snapping their neck. The screamers actually calming down when consoled shows that underneath the virus there's still the child's personality, which reacts positively to Crane's parent-like action. Dying Light happend in the same universe as the Dead Island games
Might be Jossed by Dead Island 2 but:- After the events of Banoi and Palanaï, the GRE was created in case another plague happened. Some of Serpo's ancient team of scientists worked in it and, when the Harran outbreak happened (because one of the five Palanaï immunes were here or something else) those scientists resumed their previous work.
Why would GRE send an agent so prone to disobeying??
Answer with another question: Why would GRE send their best agents to a certain death?? They wouldn't...Crane must be one of the worst, or someone didn't like him, and sent him to a suicide mission.- As the Dying Light wiki points out, Kyle isn't a GRE Agent per se. He's simply be hired by them for this mission. Presumably, he's a mercenary or something similar. It explains why he is so seemingly confused by a lot of GRE actions and constantly refers to the organization as "you guys" or so forth, instead of including himself in the label even early on.
- Also, Crane starts the story as loyal and obedient as one would expect but a major element of his story in the first half of the game is growing disillusionment with his employer. It's clear he isn't thrilled with the dirty work he has to do but before he rebels, he has already gone along with destroying the major Antizin drop and shaking down the locals under orders to get in with Rais. He then balks at delivering Jade to Rais and when he finds out the GRE's true involvement in the catastrophe as well as their apparent willingness to destroy the city and everyone in it in order to skate the consequences, he's had enough.
The spread of the infection is based on each person
Crane was bitten at the very beginning of the game, but he only takes, story wise, two or three shots of Antizin, despite it being made out to being something he needs to take constantly. Meanwhile When Rahim and Jade were bitten, they turned in the first five or ten minutes of catching up with Crane. Does this mean that everyone either turns quickly or slowly?- It's possible that when antizin is taken, between times of antizin shots the infection time is drastically slowed due to some antizin still remaining within the body's system, whereas if someone has not taken any antizin within the crucial window of time they turn much quicker.
The Harran Virus is based on something that was dug up.
Around the museum there are signs for a exhibit about living forever. Someone must have dug something up that had the original strain of the Harran Virus, then the GRE got a hold of it a messed with it further. Antizin eventually stops working.
As mentioned above, Crane takes only like 2-3 shots in his entire stay in Harran, while Rahim and Jade turn not long after their "window" passed. I figure the Harran Virus eventually gains resistance to Antizin, and the longer you have the virus, the more chance you will turn, eventually everyone infected will turn, as the doses become less effective at holding off the infection, like, the dose will hold it off for several hours, but the "window" for taking it after the last dose becomes smaller. The Bad Ending of The Following is canon.
That explains how the virus got out; through Kyle Crane when he gets out of Harran after killing the Mother. 15 years go by and now the world is in utter chaos. In addition, Kyle is still alive and will be in the game or mentioned at some point, potentially as a boss if not the Final Boss. In the Following Ezgi ran away because she's gay/bi
When you reach Ozan's farm in addition to his body you also seem some other girl whose identity we never know, when you see Dara and Ezgi together the two of them are shown holding hands and later after Kyle is forced to kill Dara and questions why she wasn't immune, Ezgi mentions that she wasn't part of the cult because "nobody accepted her" implying that she was gay and her and Ezgi were a couple and she kept it hidden for fear of persecution from the rest of the community. Further evidence is that she never mentions Dara while on her father's farm, so it's likely she was only pretending to be Ozan's girlfriend(and that dead girl on his farm was probably his actual girlfriend)because as much as Jasir hated him she probably thought he would still find him being her boyfriend easier to accept then her being gay/bi. Kyle also notably does not mention Dara when talking to Jasir about Ezgi going to the city, implying he thinks her father might think less of her if he even suspected Dara was involved with her escape in any way. Also all of Ezgi's talk about feeling "trapped" might not just be about the cult and constant zombie and bandit attacks but about her feeling like she has to hide who she really is otherwise she'll become an outcast.