FIRST LOOK: Dying Light: The Beast convinced us the move to a standalone game is warranted

Most developers will likely agree that leaks are a bad thing, but Dying Light: The Beast could be a rare exception.

When developer Techland was handed a large bunch of lemons after reams of information about its upcoming Dying Light 2 DLC was leaked, it decided to get out its juicer (if you still follow this awkward metaphor) and make a big flask of lemonade with it.

Rather than accepting that its DLC was no longer a big surprise, Techland decided to double down and expand its scope even further, to the extent that it eventually justified a standalone release.

As a result, Dying Light: The Beast will no longer be an expansion for Dying Light 2, but will instead be its own standalone product that Techland estimates will take around 18 hours to complete. And if you bought the Dying Light 2 Ultimate Edition, which promised the story DLC as part of that, don’t worry – you still get The Beast at no extra cost.

We were shown around 4% of that 18 hours – or 45 minutes, if you prefer – during a hands-off presentation at Gamescom, and while the game is very clearly still Dying Light at its (par)core, there seems to be a greater emphasis on gunplay this time.

The Beast’s plot revolves around Kyle Crane, the undercover agent who was the main protagonist in the first Dying Light. Based on one of the original game’s multiple endings, Kyle has been infected, but has also been in captivity for the past 13 years thanks to a mysterious chap called the Baron, with all manner of experiments carried out on him. Now he’s managed to escape and… well, he’s been happier, frankly.

Kyle now has to explore Castor Woods, a former tourist destination that’s now been decimated by the zombie infection, in an attempt to find his captors and get revenge for what they did to him. And, naturally, he’ll almost certainly discover some plot twists along the way.

Castor Woods looks like it’s going to be an interesting place to explore. Techland’s developers told us it was inspired by other picturesque forest towns like Hawkins in Stranger Things, or Twin Peaks (at one point in the demo Kyle crosses a bridge that looked identical to the one in David Lynch’s iconic TV series). There’s also more woodland here than there is in the main Dying Light games.

Naturally, parkour remains a crucial string to Kyle’s bow and this new environment still has plenty of conveniently placed buildings and other items designed to let the player swiftly hop, skip and leap over and under them. So far, so Dying Light.

It’s in the game’s use of weapons where the first noticeable change is seen. One of the missions in the demo sees Kyle heading to an area where some of the Baron’s soldiers can be found. Making use of an assault rifle, a pistol, grenades and the like, Kyle proceeds to gun down a bunch of these soldiers in what’s a far more ballistics-heavy sequence than fans of the melee-focused Dying Light may be used to.

“Naturally, parkour remains a crucial string to Kyle’s bow and this new environment still has plenty of conveniently placed buildings and other items”

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, of course – at least The Beast is attempting to do something that changes the tone of the game, rather than being a simple case of ‘let’s take the usual Dying Light 2 stuff and chuck it into a new map’.

Of course, all “the usual Dying Light 2” stuff is still in there. Night still falls, and the zombies still get stronger in the dark, so it’s not like the game has suddenly abandoned all its principles and become an all-out shooter. Indeed, the developers stressed to us during the demo that just because they were showing us a lot of shooting, that didn’t mean it was all the player did now.

You’ve got to imagine melee will still be a preferred choice of combat when fighting the undead because firing guns will attract others. It’s just that the plot involving the Baron and his minions suggests there may be more combat against humans this time, even if it’s not incessant.

We still haven’t addressed the elephant in the room – or, rather, the beast. The game’s most obvious selling point is right there in the title, with Kyle able to transform into a more powerful creature, seemingly at will (though it wasn’t clear from the demo how long it lasts before he turns back).

In the demo we were shown, beast mode Kyle came into play during a boss fight against an enormous enemy that could throw cars at him. With plain old normal Kyle failing to register much more than a scratch with his normal weapons, turning into a beast lets the player do far more damage by throwing similarly large objects back, slamming the floor with a ground pound attack and, ultimately, ripping the boss’s head off.

What we saw of Dying Light: The Beast was enough to convince us that the move from a DLC expansion to a full standalone game was warranted.

Naturally, 45 minutes is nowhere near enough time to judge whether Techland has dished out the more gun-heavy scenes with restraint or reckless abandon in the full product, so we won’t know how much the combat (and, of course the beast powers) will affect the overall flow of the game until it’s ready to be unleashed at an as-yet unknown date.