Dying Light: The Beast throws series protagonist Kyle Crane back into the spotlight
8.21.2024
By Laura Kate Dale, Contributor
Dying Light: The Beast began life as DLC for Dying Light 2: Stay Human (and will be free for owners of Dying Light 2: Stay Human Ultimate Edition), but after watching an extended hands-off gameplay demo behind closed doors at Gamescom 2024, it’s easy to see how it transformed into a lengthy spin-off.
The game brings back Kyle Crane, protagonist of the original Dying Light, returning after an extended in-universe hiatus. A mysterious figure called “The Baron” held Kyle captive and experimented on him for more than a decade. After escaping captivity, he now wields new beastly abilities. His parkour skills have improved, with the demo showing him leaping huge gaps with ease and running up the curved interior wall of a water tower. These new powers are more obviously exemplified by "Beast Mode," a transformation state in which Kyle’s vision glows orange and his combat style completely shifts.
In this new form, Kyle leaps around the battlefield, throws large objects with ease, fights huge hulking enemies with his bare fists, and tears enemy creatures' heads off as part of a finishing animation reminiscent of God of War's Kratos. His beast abilities are also upgradable, although today’s demo did not get into the details of how that works.
In terms of general game flow, while The Beast is still very much a Dying Light game—with individual zombies posing little threat, but crowds of them quickly overwhelming you—the new title stands apart due to a change in environment design and improvements to its visuals. Rather than being set solely in a city, the demo gameplay showcases an entirely new open-world map, including a plaza area reminiscent of a Spanish village, forests, industrial estates filled with factories and silos, and a junkyard. These areas pair with revamped weather effects (such as improved rain and storms) that help this spin-off feel like it’s taking a step forward.
Dying Light: The Beast introduces new enemy types to fight, most notably a new subset called “freaks.” One of these is the Behemoth, a large Hulk-like beast that can throw cars, charge at high speed, and slam its fists down for huge area-of-effect damage. In the hands-off demo, we saw players deliberately luring the Behemoth out to an encounter, which involved collecting special gas into the back of one of The Beast’s new drivable vehicles. The stolen 4x4 shown was strong and sturdy enough to drive through zombies without too much issue, but will eventually need repairs, maintenance, and fuel to keep it functional.
While it’s clear that Dying Light: The Beast is still not designed to be played primarily as a shooter, with the game encouraging you to hide, sneak, or run past most enemies, guns have received a notable upgrade. In our demo session, things were running a little behind schedule, so the developer piloting the session grabbed an assault rifle off a downed guard and gunned through an area to save some time. Watching him mow through enemies, it became clear that it’s a more viable approach than it has been in the past for those players more interested in running in guns-blazing for certain encounters. The developers made some really nice additions to seemingly encourage this shift in playstyle, such as the ability to see the world go into slow-motion as you leap sideways through the air mid-gunfight.
The Beast is still an open-world game, but it feels like this shorter spin-off contains a higher density of authored single-player content than Dying Light 2. If you’re looking for a place to jump into the plot and lore of the setting but are put off by the series' scale and scope, this might be a really nice place to take the plunge.
Wishlist Dying Light: The Beast on the Epic Games Store today.
Keep up to date with our Gamescom 2024 coverage, including all the reveals from Opening Night Live and more.