Techland Has Good News for Fans of the Original Dying Light

In celebration of the game’s tenth anniversary, Techland is gearing up to release a major new Dying Light patch known as the “Retouched Update.” The update will be released for free on June 26, but Techland wants fans to understand that this is not a Dying Light remaster or even an overhaul; it’s an update that aims to squeeze as much out of the ten-year-old game as Techland possibly can.

After releasing the first entry in the series back in 2015, Dying Light has become one of the Zombie genre’s most iconic series. Seven years after the success of the original game, Techland released a sequel in 2022: Dying Light 2 Stay Human. The sequel received generally favorable reviews from critics and continues to receive new updates three years later. However, one divisive factor between the two games was that its sequel did not continue the story of Kyle Crane, the original protagonist from the first Dying Light. But after ten long years, fans will soon continue Crane’s story in Dying Light: The Beast, which is scheduled to release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 22.

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The Dying Light series has built a strong identity for itself, but Dying Light: The Beast could forget a core part of that identity with its setting.

Dying Light: Retouched Update Coming June 26

Before fans jump into The Beast later this year, Techland is giving fans a great reason to jump back into the original Dying Light. In a new blog post, the studio revealed Dying Light‘s upcoming Retouched update. While the update isn’t a remaster like many had hoped, it does include some fantastic visual upgrades. “We started increasing texture quality of surroundings and upscaling them to create a sharper, better look in the game,” Techland said. Dying Light‘s Lead 3D Artist, Krzysztof Knefel, “spent a lot of time manually adjusting and tweaking assets, squeezing out every last bit of visual quality.” Techland also explained that the update involved improving the game’s lighting and physics-based rendering.

Alongside some new visual improvements, the studio says it has “made some smaller tweaks and changes” to the game’s code that will have a big impact on details around Harran. Dying Light‘s new update will increase the level of detail range from 260% to 340% in the game’s options, which means those on higher-end systems can increase the distance of highly detailed assets being loaded into the game. However, it is floors and cement walls where players will supposedly see the biggest differences. Techland says it will be introducing new 8K ultra shadow quality and improvements to lighting options on many surfaces, which will give them more depth and less flatness to really make them pop.

The highly anticipated update will roll out on June 26 and will be completely free for all Dying Light owners on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Techland has also made a point of noting that all of these changes also won’t affect the system requirements for PC users. “It was a delicate balancing act, but we cracked it…it’s finally ready,” the studio said.