Announced at this yr’s Opening Night Live keynote at Gamescom, Dying Light: The Beast is bringing the primary sport’s protagonist again with a model new set of talents. I sat down with the sport’s developer, Techland, for a behind-closed-door preview of the sport housed in one of many cooler cubicles I noticed on the online game present, a small room embellished to seem like a post-apocalyptic bunker, much like what you’d discover within the zombie-filled world of Dying Light.
Kyle Crane is again, the unique hero of the primary Dying Light title, alongside together with his authentic voice actor, Roger Craig Smith. The sport is ready in a brand new open world area, far bigger than the earlier two video games. And get able to parkour your means round this setting too: swinging, leaping, and mantling over obstacles all make a return right here and the builders on the sales space assured that it will stay a key part of the sport. As somebody who has solely performed the primary Dying Light, it is exhausting for me to inform which parkour talents have been new to The Beast and which have been launched within the second sport, however Crane was capable of soar to extraordinarily distant rooftops this time round.
Kyle Crane.
Our demo began simply because the solar was setting and we parkoured our means by way of a run-down city. The Beast’s visible high quality in its environments seemed extraordinarily good right here, particularly whereas all the pieces was bathed in a good looking sundown. Players wanted to find a secure home because the solar set and the world shortly turned to nighttime. As earlier than within the sequence, venturing out at night time is far more harmful. Not solely is visibility extremely diminished however the extra deadly Volatile zombie enemy sorts are quite a few — it is typically smarter to cover and keep away from them as an alternative of preventing. Players can use stealth, like hiding in tall grass, as they work their means across the creatures and may proceed transferring.
Parkouring over rooftops.
As we entered the secure home, we discovered it was overrun with zombies and the facility had gone out, rendering the UV lights ineffective. UV lights are essential within the DL universe since they hurt the contaminated and supply secure zones for survivors. This is the place the franchise’s signature melee fight got here into play, and it felt simply as visceral as I remembered. Using a modified baseball bat, we crushed a number of zombie skulls and cleared the room of threats. It was very violent and fairly gross.
Fighting zombies at night time.
The subsequent objective was to show the facility again on and this resulted in a kind-of environmental puzzle. Searching the constructing, following wires, and crawling by way of ducts have been key to getting into the basement space, which was additionally stuffed with zombies. As we surveyed the room it was clear the ground was lined in gasoline, which ignited in flames when shot with a pistol. With the zombies on hearth, taking them down was a lot simpler. From there we have been capable of choose a cupboard’s lock to discover a new fuse to exchange within the breaker and restore energy and security to the constructing, permitting us to sleep till morning.
This started the second a part of the demo, a raid on an experimental enemy base. The compound was stuffed with human enemies in riot gear, all working for Baron, the sport’s antagonist. After quietly taking out the snipers on the rooftop, we went in weapons blazing. Techland made be aware that it “nonetheless needs to deal with visceral melee and in-your-face fight” and that it hasn’t turned Dying Light right into a shooter, nevertheless it looks like each might be viable choices. Once we cornered the final remaining scientist he instructed us that the Freak, a brand new and highly effective enemy kind for The Beast, that they had in captivity had gotten unfastened. It was as much as Crane (and me) to lure it out and kill it.
Shooting human enemies.
Finding this specific Freak enemy, known as Behemoth, kicked off a boss combat. It was simply the most important enemy we had seen, not less than twice the scale of the already big Volatiles from earlier than, and had highly effective assaults together with throwing complete automobiles on the participant. But gamers have a brand new ace up their sleeve, as we have been launched to Crane’s new beast-like talents. Similar to Dead Island 2, one other post-apocalyptic zombie sport, after sufficient time and injury taken, your imaginative and prescient will go crimson and you may unlock highly effective talents and stronger assaults. Kyle Crane was capable of elevate enormous rocks and throw them at enemies and rip aside the weaker, customary zombies together with his naked palms. We killed the Behemoth by finally ripping its head off, and that ended the demo.
The Techland builders talked about that the sport has round “18 hours of journey” nevertheless it wasn’t clear if that was particular to simply the story or not (as an open world sport, I might assume there are dozens of aspect quests and extra content material out there). One very fascinating level was that they defined how The Beast began as downloadable content material for the second Dying Light title. From there, it shortly expanded till they made the decision to show it into a wholly standalone sport. However, because it was speculated to be part of the Dying Light 2: Stay Human roadmap of content material, anybody who bought the Ultimate Edition of the sport will get The Beast totally free.
Dying Light: The Beast has no set launch window however is coming to all present consoles and PC, in addition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
