During the Summer Game Fest showcase in Los Angeles, I had the stellar chance to play a 30-minute segment of Dying Light: The Beast. I put together a comprehensive preview, but I also had the opportunity to sit down with Tymon Smektala, franchise director at Techland and one of the creative driving forces behind the evolution of the Dying Light series.
As we spoke, I learned about the stock invested in Dying Light: The Beast, which is impactful enough at Techland that the team is treating it as ‘Dying Light 3’. Having played the game, I can say with an honest certainty that it feels good enough to be a third major release in the decade-old series.
‘We Are Very Confident About Dying Light: The Beast’
I asked Tymon Smektala about the pivot that took Dying Light: The Beast from a moderately-sized DLC for Dying Light 2 to a standalone, self-contained game with more than 20 hours of meat on the bones.
In his words, it’s now fair enough to refer to The Beast as Dying Light 3.
We reset the whole development.
This is a new game. At some point, a few months ago, we basically started treating The Beast as the next entry in the Dying Light series. Maybe it doesn’t have ‘3’ in it, but for us, it is Dying Light 3.
We also realised that with all the experience we got from the first game and the second game, we can make it the best Dying Light game we have ever done.
We are very confident about Dying Light: The Beast. We feel that we have delivered a very interesting game in the universe of Dying Light but also generally as an open world action survival game.
We want to spend the next nine weeks on educating and explaining to people and trying to convince people that they should look at it as the next AAA Dying Light game.
It’s one hell of an evolution from what started life as an expansion to 2022’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human.
The Dying Light series, in Tymon’s words, managed to pull in more than 50 million players by the tenth anniversary of the first game. Techland is still heavily invested in the franchise, and Dying Light: The Beast will lead into more Dying Light games.
Are you looking forward to the launch of Dying Light: The Beast on August 22? Let me know on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Black Ops 7 has been revealed
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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