The core loop of many zombie games boils down to players hacking and slashing at countless waves of undead on their way to an objective. This isn’t an inherently bad gameplay loop; if the melee mechanics feel responsive and satisfying, and the presentation looks and feels engaging, then players can have hours of gruesome fun just chopping away. But Dying Light: The Beast is aiming to add a little more to that zombie-slaying experience.
The first two Dying Light mainline entries stood out for their unique merging of traditional zombie hack and slash action with lesser-seen parkour mechanics. Despite not being a numbered entry, Dying Light: The Beast elevates this formula to new heights by adding even more ingredients to the pot. Dying Light franchise director Tymon Smektala recently gave Game Rant some exclusive insights into Dying Light: The Beast‘s development, including how the development team is bringing new depth to the series’ combat.
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Dying Light: The Beast Dev Reveals 10 Gameplay Details You Might’ve Missed [EXCLUSIVE]
Game Rant speaks with Dying Light: The Beast’s Techland about gameplay details, hidden mechanics, and world-building touches fans might have missed.
Dying Light: The Beast Is a “Game of Smart Survival”
2022’s Dying Light 2 put a strong focus on melee combat, at least when it first came out. Players could only find and craft melee weapons, and most combat encounters in the day-one version of Dying Light 2 boiled down to launching cleaver-first into an oncoming enemy and hacking away until it fell to the ground. Developer Techland has significantly improved Dying Light 2‘s combat in the three years since release, refining enemy AI, introducing firearms, and improving weapon reactions.
Dying Light: The Beast is not only carrying forward all of those improvements, but adding new layers of depth to combat that haven’t been seen in the series to this point:
“The Beast is a game of smart survival, so even if you look at the screenshots and think, ‘oh, there’s a machete, there’s a zombie in front of it, so this must be about hacking and slashing’… think again. The bloody juiciness is there, but the fights are challenging, the resources are scarce, and sometimes it’s better to use your own set of legs to avoid combat than to run to it mindlessly.”
Dying Light: The Beast is offering players more combat tools than ever before, hoping that the abundance will encourage players to think a bit more tactically about how they approach scenarios. Along with melee and ranged weapons, players will also have access to throwables that can distract enemies, and parkour skills that allow them to circumvent combat altogether if they deem it necessary for survival.
Dying Light: The Beast will also give players a range of “Beast” powers that can be used in combat and during open-world exploration.
Dying Light: The Beast Is Adding New Layers of Depth to Combat
Dying Light: The Beast Is More Gruesome Than Ever
While players are encouraged to think more carefully about the fights they’re picking in Dying Light: The Beast, once they’re in a confrontation, it’s set to be more gruesomely cathartic than ever before:
“We have increased the precision of our weapon arcs—trajectories that represent how the weapon slices—so now it’s possible to cut an enemy’s limbs in more places than ever. And, of course, all of the visual representations of cuts and wounds are rendered in all the g(l)ory of the current gen consoles and PC’s graphical power.”
These new and improved gore details are sure to make every hack, slash, and thump feel more satisfying than any Dying Light experience that’s come before, and it’ll go hand-in-hand with Dying Light: The Beast‘s new and improved zombie reactions:
“We vary the reactions to hits depending not only on the general weapon type—blunt/slashing—but also the weapon weight. It creates a quite unpredictable spectacle of violence in front of your eyes.”
Dying Light: The Beast Has Taken Its Human Enemies Back to The Drawing Board
Dying Light: The Beast is putting its army of the undead at the forefront of gameplay. But zombies are just some of the enemies players will face off against. Returning once again are Dying Light‘s human enemies, and while Dying Light 2‘s human AI drew a lot of criticism during the sequel’s launch, developer Techland has taken that feedback into account and acted on it for The Beast:
“Coming from Dying Light 2: Stay Human, we had tons of feedback regarding the behavior of our melee fighters, and we tried to react to all of it when coming up with the new implementation in Dying Light: The Beast.”
Melee attackers in Dying Light 2 often felt as though they were merely running straight at the player with no plan in mind, so it’s great to hear that Techland has recognized this issue and has addressed it for Dying Light: The Beast‘s human enemies, but the return of firearms presents a more unique challenge:
“For the shooters—we haven’t really touched that topic for close to 10 years, so there was a lot of homework to do… We basically had to build our shooting AI from scratch, but it really was a blast, pardon the pun.”
Dying Light: The Beast
- Released
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August 22, 2025
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, Use of Drugs
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
- Franchise
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Dying Light
- PC Release Date
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August 22, 2025
- Xbox Series X|S Release Date
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August 22, 2025