Dying Light: Beast It’s a classic example of making lemonade when God gives you lemons. Or take Techland, which revealed the news behind closed doors while previewing the game at Gamescom 2024. In a small room, attendees were spending 30-40 minutes playing the upcoming Dying Light 2 spinoff. It’s the result of some hard work and creative thinking after a pretty serious data leak caused some Dying Light 2 DLC plans to be abandoned.
Rather than proceed with the plan that everyone knows about now, the Techland team decided to move on to making The Beast, a compromise between a standard DLC and a whole new game. It’s definitely shorter than the full game, and still has Dying Light 2 at its core, but it’s a brand new map, a returning character, and some nice new gameplay features that should sweeten the deal.
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Kyle Crane from the original Dying Light is back, and he’s as grumpy as you’d expect. He’s been locked up in a lab for the past few years, but now he’s escaped and is hunting down the people who kept him there. To help him find answers and a little revenge, he’s got a new partner to chat with over the radio, and some beastly powers to help him stay alive. It’s a cool spinoff concept – think Dead Rising 2: The Secret Records, but swap the funny for a more serious, stoic attitude, and you’re getting the overall vibe here.
He brings some new features, including a bunch of guns you can mess around with, thanks in part to a greater focus on the human guards and thugs that stand in your way. You’ll even be able to drive a car with storage space in the back for carrying heavy mission items and other junk. But perhaps the biggest highlight is Kyle’s beast form. In the trailer, he’s depicted as a lone stalker, darting out of the trees to take out armed guards. In the gameplay demo we saw? More like he put on his rubber Hulk hands, punched zombies, and hurled giant blocks of concrete within a limited time frame.
I chuckled when I saw it, and honestly, I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of someone beating up a poor zombie with a fistfight in the middle of some scrapyard. It doesn’t help that Kyle has to be pretty crazy to use it first. This is Hulk Mode, and while being able to rip the head off a monster – a new giant zombie boss-style enemy – is certainly cool. Kyle is positioned as a lone werewolf with a machine gun who can fend for himself with his survival skills, but he also has a darker, feral side. This either sounds cool or will undoubtedly make you cringe, and you have to use your intuition to make the distinction.
Ultimately, Dying Light: Beasts is an admirable improvement over the base game, and adds enough content to warrant its own standalone status. I love that those who buy Dying Light 2 Ultimate Edition can get Beasts for free – after all, it’s not their fault that this became a standalone game. But with Beasts on the horizon, I find myself wanting Techland’s next big thing. Dying Light 3, an all-new adventure. The team has done a great job with the game, and has taken the base work in cool new directions.
Dying Light 2 was only released in February 2022 (I know, it feels like ages ago), and Techland has managed to do a lot with it since then. It released a million different bundles, a reloaded edition, and various updates. Watching The Beast, I felt like it was a great ending. Bringing back the old protagonist, giving him a proper sendoff, and then leading the entire series off into the sunset or new horizons, perhaps? Now is the time.
So if you want to celebrate Dying Light, Beast seems like a good choice. While there were endless questions about the subject at Gamescom, there is no release date or pricing yet. Keep an eye out, especially if you’re a Dying Light fan.
