Dying Light: The Beast is a full-fledged game that started out as Dying Light 2 DLC

In case you were wondering, Dying light protagonist Kyle Crane has been imprisoned for nearly a decade, dealing with the brutal Baron’s unethical zombie DNA splicing experiments. Yeah. He’s had it pretty rough, but I’m happy to report that Crane has now escaped and is understandably out for blood.

Crane is the titular monster of Dying Light: The Beastan 18 hour standalone adventure that started as story DLC for Dying Light 2Last year the DLC was leaked by hackers, so the developers at Techland decided to create something with even more ambition. Dying Light: The Beast is set in a vast new region, a forgotten forest called Castor Woods where families used to vacation before the zombie apocalypse. Now it’s a playground for an apex predator like Crane, a sprawling parkour-friendly collection of industrial complexes and plazas, littered with raiders and shambling plague vectors. It’s not all bad, though – Crane’s decade from hell has given him new skills, which he’ll need to take on the Freaks (what’s left of The Baron’s other subjects).

Despite the clear ties to the legacy of the Techland series, Dying Light: The Beast is intended as an entry point for new players, a focused experience that captures the addictive zombie-bashing essence of Dying Light 2with added superpowers. A hands-off demo I saw at Gamescom had Crane parkouring through the old city, filled with dilapidated apartments where dust particles hung beautifully in the air. Eventually, he reached a secluded forest and began stomping along mossy ziplines toward a shelter. When the sun finally set, there was a stealthy gait to Crane’s movements, as he ducked into tall grass to drop bait and draw the attention of unique enemies that only appear at night.

The internal encounter environments were well detailed with long-forgotten ephemera, but I was quickly separated from the tense atmosphere by some allusive blood graffiti on the walls of the lair, reading “Don’t Open Dead Inside.” Most importantly, the combat environments are reactive, with poppable fuse boxes and burning pyres offering alternate routes outside the reliability of Dying light‘s “smack and gas” melee. Up close, the combat looked deliciously gruesome. Sideways swings with a baseball bat tore a slit into a gesticulating zombie’s cheek — then a finishing blow accelerated the deterioration of the face, leaving an unrecognizable dent. As Crane secured the hideout in the demo, there were glimpses of a few exploration-based puzzles, standard cable-following fare focused on activating generators and picking locks, with a few fights thrown in for good measure.

Outside, harsh weather conditions brought storms of dynamism to the open world, with reactive encounters to stumble into, like mindless raiders clustered around a loot crate. Elsewhere, Crane used his parkour skills to sprint around the inside of a stone silo and reach an enemy vantage point that doubled as a blooming vista. Crane can leap, climb, and sneak around the open world on foot or, if it helps, hop in a pickup truck for a far less subtle zombie management system.

If you don’t like stealth, you can also play The Beast as a first-person shooter, but while the gunplay looks solid enough, it’s just another arrow in your quiver next to throwing knives, propane tanks, and face-melting beast powers. Gib-friendly gore mechanics sweeten the deal, though. A shotgun blast to the hip bone rips the aforementioned servicemen apart, their entrails dangling in the air while their lower bodies remain on solid ground.

During the cutscenes, Roger Craig Smith’s Crane is cynical and sarcastic, responding to the instructions of his handler, Olivia, with terse tough-guy remarks. He’s not the most likable character in the world – Crane always sounds like he’s gargling pebbles from an aquarium – but his emotional disconnect is to be expected, given the Baron’s decade of deeply unethical psychedelic tinkering.

The big bad didn’t appear in my Gamescom demo, but instead there was one of his creations, Behemoth, a mass of flesh casually studded with horseshoe-shaped metal handles. Crane lured this rebar menace into an ominously shaped clearing to take out one of Dying Light: The Beast‘s boss fights. They’re par for the course, with Crane dodging and dashing to execute machete attacks and outsmart the lumbering hulk. My attention was caught when Crane entered “Beast Mode” halfway through, adding an orange vignette to the screen. In addition to forcing Crane to fight with his bare hands, entering Beast Mode also allowed him to pick up objects in the environment (in this case, a stone stake) and throw them at unsuspecting zombies.

All in all, Dying Light: The Beast seems like an attractive sequel to Dying Light 2especially if you’re nostalgic for Crane’s original adventure in Harran. But I’d expect a renovation rather than a revolution. I’m especially excited about the idea of ​​jumping into Castor Woods in four-player co-op, just like in the good old days of Dead IslandShare progress with friends and see how the systems intersect for some raucous post-apocalyptic fun. I just hope Crane’s slick jokes don’t undermine what the series does best: ragdoll parkour combat comedy.
Dying Light: The Beast is coming to PlayStation, Windows PC, and Xbox. No release date has been announced yet, but as a tribute to the game’s development history, it will be free for those who own the Ultimate Edition of Dying Light 2.