The Beast Devs Go All-In on its Gameplay Direction

The upcoming action survival game Dying Light: The Beast focuses on returning protagonist Kyle Crane, who has not been seen since the events of the series’ first entry. Returning alongside Kyle are plenty of fan-loved features, but that doesn’t mean fans should expect the same gameplay out of Dying Light: The Beast. Techland has poured as many resources into this game as you’d expected out of a proper mainline game.

Game Rant recently sat down with game director Nathan Lemaire, franchise director Tymon Smektala, and executive producer Bruno Guerin to discuss how Dying Light: The Beast cranks the franchise’s gameplay up several notches with its iterations. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Breaking Down Dying Light: The Beast’s Core Gameplay Loop

Game Rant: Can you break down the core gameplay loop of Dying Light: The Beast? How do you, as developers, envision this loop?

Lemaire: Players will start as a Kyle weakened by years of captivity and experimentation. He is still the Kyle who survived Harran, but he needs to get his strength back. This is the main idea behind our overall gameplay loop. Players will start with improvised weapons they find in the environment, but they will need to look for better ones to survive more durably. At the same time, exploring the world and scavenging for parts will allow them to expand their gameplay possibilities and, progressively, face threats that are more and more dangerous.

Game Rant: What role would you say vehicles serve in the overall gameplay loop?

Guerin: Dying Light is known for its parkour, but sometimes it’s better to move faster using the roads and off-roads. As players move through the game, they’ll find abandoned Ranger cars scattered around. They are perfect for crossing long distances, outrunning Volatiles, or hauling heavy stuff when needed. But players have to remember that fuel can run dry when they need it most, cars can get damaged by running over zombies… and a roaring engine can bring a lot of trouble. To stay on the move, it is good to keep searching for wreckage and canisters for fuel.

Check Out Parkour in Dying Light: The Beast

Game Rant: What kind of enemy AI improvements have been made, and how does this affect general gameplay?

Lemaire: We have introduced new types of enemies. First, our Chimeras, heavy modifications of our iconic enemies with unique move sets and memorable gameplay experiences. We also added Firearms users, so players will have to watch out for them

Smektała: There are three main areas or directions for the AI improvements in Dying Light: The Beast. Firstly, we looked at our existing enemy archetypes and introduced a number of tweaks based on our own observations and player feedback from previous games. Volatiles got their senses rebalanced to make their roaming and sniffing more fair to players. Spitter’s attacks are feedbacked better, with higher clarity. Biters are tougher, standing firm when hit. There are a number of examples for this sack of improvements, and all of them are aimed at targeting and upgrading the part of experience known to players.

Second, we looked at the firearms and how they factor into the gameplay. This means we added another layer of behaviors to our enemies—both zombie and human—to make their reactions meaningful and properly balanced towards a player that uses guns. We also created a complex logic for our shooting human enemies—looking at things like group behaviors, taking cover, mixing firearm use with other accessories (e.g. grenades).

Third, we introduce the Chimeras, big, hulking enemies (with some twists!) created by Baron, who are our way of introducing more boss battles to the game. The whole package of Dying Light: The Beast enemies is a nice mix of proven, improved and new.

Game Rant: Dying Light has a fun history with guns. On your end, can you talk a little bit about the franchise’s history with guns and the choice that they are included, day one, in Dying Light: The Beast?

Lemaire: Guns were always a tricky topic in the franchise. For Dying Light: The Beast, we consider them to be powerful tools coming with trade-offs. The first one is about the scarcity of ammunition. Finding ammo requires players to focus on certain types of activities; it does not come for free. The second is about the noise. Using firearms in the open may attract more zombies, which in the end might end up in players using more ammunition than they would have liked for a given encounter. For us, it is important to allow players to expand the amount of toys at their disposal, while making sure we don’t turn the game into a shooter.

Smektała: We also decided to have some fun with weapons that are—more or less—ranged but aren’t your “old war veteran grandpa” guns. We’re introducing a flamethrower for close-combat zombie frying—a classic, iconic zombie fiction weapon which, for some reason, we didn’t have yet. We’re introducing a grenade launcher, great for bigger zombie hordes and encounters with the Baron’s army. And we have a sawblade launcher, a great, portable, gory tool that allows you to launch spinning saw blades that cut enemy limbs in an instant. I guess we’re as hungry for Half Life 3 as any other player on the planet!

Game Rant: Is it still a viable option to play through Dying Light: The Beast purely using melee weapons, or are guns more of a necessity?

Lemaire: While playing, players will still come across familiar weapons—from the trusty machete to the heavy two-handed weapons that players know and love. But we also wanted to push beyond that. We still focus mainly on melee weapons, but firearms are one of the distinct elements of the game. They’re more present than ever before, introduced earlier, and with greater variety.

Survival is at the heart of Dying Light: The Beast, and that philosophy is reflected in how we designed and distributed weapons. Melee weapons have durability, and if you use them too much, they’ll break. However, you can repair them directly through the weapon wheel or inventory, provided you have the necessary resources. Lower-rarity weapons tend to break more often but are cheaper to repair, while higher-end weapons last longer but require more resources to maintain.

How Dying Light: The Beast Balances Action With Survival Horror

Game Rant: Action survival horror is hard to pull off. Can you talk a little bit about how Dying Light: The Beast walks the balance between the speed of action with the tension required of survival horror?

Lemaire: In Dying Light: The Beast, you need to approach each encounter carefully, because they are all different and things can quickly become hard to manage. The most basic pack of Biters can turn into a hard moment if you attract other zombies while fighting, overwhelming you beyond what you were expecting. This is why we teach players to think about when and how to fight. Sometimes, it is better to avoid a group of zombies using Parkour or find another path. This is an opportunity to find new parts, as avoiding zombies in the city often means going through quiet interiors. Combined with our crafting and weapons loop, it offers a balanced experience where each fight is visceral, but comes at a cost.

Game Rant: Kyle Crane gets to “unleash the beast” in this installment. Can you talk a little bit about the design philosophy of this gameplay feature?

Smektała: It’s actually more complex than you might think. On the surface, it’s just a “fury mode”, something players know from a number of other games. Beast Mode can be charged by dealing and receiving damage, but we also have a number of small mechanics hidden under the hood which allow it to be triggered in situations where it can create powerful, memorable moments—e.g. during a chase. Classic stuff, but it gets more interesting. For example—at the beginning of the game, players have limited control over when the Beast triggers, so it can surprise you and trigger in moments where you don’t really expect it.

Later, players grab the reins themselves so it’s easier to use some of the Beast abilities, and then you discover there’s a number of them centered around traversal, which helps you to solve environmental puzzles and reach locations which are hard to get when in human form. But that’s still not all. Remember that Dying Light: The Beast aims to be a survival game—maybe not the most hardcore on the market, but definitely one that treats the topic seriously. So how do you inject these moments of almost untamed, explosive power into the gameplay loop? It really took us a lot of time to balance all the parameters of the Beast Mode in a way that keeps the experience demanding yet gives players these overpowered moments of cathartic release.

Game Rant: How does Kyle Crane’s Beast progress throughout the game? Can you talk a little bit about the abilities he can utilize when enraged like this?

Lemaire: There’s a nice narrative explanation for it, but in simple “game terms”—Kyle kills Chimeras, which gives him Beast skill points, which he can spend on new Beast abilities to use in Beast Mode. We have both combat and parkour abilities to support our core pillars. The agency players have over Beast Mode also evolves. At the beginning, it is something Kyle cannot control. By harnessing the DNAs of Chimeras, he will eventually be able to, changing the whole perspective on how players will use it.

Check Out This Takedown in Dying Light: The Beast

Game Rant: Dying Light: The Beast also features co-op. From your perspective, why is this an important feature for the game, as opposed to a fully single-player campaign?

Lemaire: Dying Light: The Beast is a great and open playground. Playing the game with friends is creating a different kind of experience, full of anecdotes and emerging stories. Offering co-op is also a way for us to allow players continuing their experience by joining their friends or other members of the community.

Smektała: Looking at historical data about 25-30% of Dying Light players are playing the game in co-op. This means that even if we focus most on the immersive, narrative-driven, single player survival horror part of the experience, there’s a very significant part of our community that’s interested in a more free-for-all, “let’s have fun with friends on a Friday night” approach to the game. We’re all for that, as many of us were raised on classic co-op experiences from the X360 era like Army of Two. There’s definitely something special about facing a horde of zombies with your buddies.

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