About a month ago, the team at Techland announced they were pushing back the launch of Dying Light: The Beast to September 19 to allow more time for “polishing work,” despite overwhelmingly positive previews from the press.

Tymon Smektala, Franchise Director for Dying Light: The Beast, said there wasn’t any specific criticism that led to the decision.

“We just understand how important it is to stick the landing of the game—especially in our highly competitive release window,” he said. “We just have one shot to prove we’re releasing a game we feel is the best we’ve ever made, so we decided to spend these four extra weeks tweaking and improving all of the last-minute details.” 

Smektala said these tweaks and improvements touched wide swathes of Dying Light: The Beast.

“The time recognition of volatiles, the scripts that define the ragdoll of hit biters, the removal of unnecessary frames in some of the animations, the clearing of obstacles in level art that may block the player if he approaches a ledge from a very specific angle,” Smektala elaborated. “Most of these tweaks relate to the balance of the difficulty and the under-the-hood systems that govern combat and combat physics.”

The team also dug into the nitty-gritty of Dying Light: The Beast's user interface, focusing mostly on “quality-of-life” aspects. "How long does a specific icon stay on the screen? Or what’s the order of showing different messages or HUD elements where they start appearing at the same time?” said Smektala. “We were also going through all of our UI elements and reiterating for the last time which are really needed in the default setting. We aim to deliver a highly immersive game, so any element on the screen that’s not intrinsic takes away from that.” 

Smektala also said the team is fine-tuning the game’s physics to the very end to make sure they are as “close to expectations as possible.”

“The expectations are that they will feel weighty, grounded, and realistic no matter what,” he said. “This is the biggest challenge with physics in games—they tend to work well, but start being wonky from time to time, in some very specific moment, when a very hard-to-repeat combination of forces and angles happens.”

Of course, the mention of physics has me immediately thinking about Dying Light's glorious dropkick—a feature I (and a lot of players) really love in the series. Smektala said not to worry about the flying double-legged kick being watered down because the team knows how iconic it is to players.

“It’s powerful, true, but it’s not so overpowered that it allows you to get away from any situation,” he said. “It balances itself quite well, even because of the characteristics of the move—yes, it can send enemies flying, but it leaves you on the ground. Classic risk versus reward!”

In the weeks since the announcement of Dying Light: The Beast's delay, the team has highlighted changes coming to the game’s gore as well. Compared to Techland’s previous titles, the devs have increased the number of wounds visible on enemies' bodies by more than 50%. They also increased the variety of the wounds and almost tripled the number of finishers, and improved the way blood renders to make it as realistic as possible.

“We treat brutality and gore very seriously,” said Smektala. “This is one of the ‘core features’ for a game like ours.”

As the game approaches its September 19 launch date, Smektala asked fans to continue to support the studio and Dying Light: The Beast.

“We spent a lot of hard, honest work on building a game that pays respect to the legacy of the series and Kyle Crane, and that support will mean a lot to us. Kyle Crane is back—it’s time to get excited!”

Dying Light: The Beast releases September 19 on the Epic Games Store, and is available to pre-purchase now.