My hands-off Gamescom preview of Dying Light: The Beast has me grinning from start to finish. As Kyle Crane – the series’ first hero, now freed following thirteen years of torment – makes his way through the overgrown expanse of Castor Valley in the thrilling dead of night, it feels like coming home. But The Beast is not the game anyone expected developer Techland to make next – least of all, I learn when I sit down with its key production leads, Techland itself. “It started as a DLC for Dying Light 2, but we experienced a leak of the story last year,” explains franchise director Tymon Smektała. As a result, it was a “no-brainer” for Techland to make the upcoming game totally free for all Dying Light 2 deluxe edition owners. “The community was very eager to learn everything about Dying Light, and they managed to dig out some very juicy and very crucial details about the narrative. So this made us think, ‘Okay, what can we do with this?'” Following a week of conversations, the team landed on a striking notion: bring Kyle Crane back for an 18-hour action-adventure, taking us further into the narrative heart of the series and unifying all of its entries so far.Doing it Kyle style What’s done in the dark Supermassive describes Directive 8020 as “The Thing in space,” but even with the survival horror elements, it’s a Dark Pictures game through and throughTaking place after the events of Dying Light 2 and set in a brand new hostile area, The Beast serves two purposes. First, to bring us back to the series’ roots, and secondly, to push one of the best zombie games to new heights in terms of combat, immersion, and storytelling. But Techland needed the help of one very important person to pull the whole thing off.”We weren’t sure if we could get Roger back on it,” Smektała says of the initial idea to bring Kyle back. “Without the man, it would’ve made absolutely no sense.” At this, Roger Craig-Smith – or the voice of Kyle Crane, as you might know him – smiles humbly. If you thought Kyle Crane died at the end of 2015’s Dying Light, you’re not alone. “I was, I think, just as surprised as anybody,” the voice actor laughs. “I was like, ‘but I thought I was dead?’ So I was pleasantly surprised. I was super intrigued to see how we made this happen and what has taken place for us to have Kyle come back. Obviously, I’m thrilled just to have a chance of tying up some loose ends – I can’t say too much, obviously, but I was extremely excited [to reprise the role]. And it’s a very surreal thing, because it’s not something that happens very often in one’s career.”Surreal just about covers it. As I watch the hands-off demo, drinking in a turbo-charged Kyle acrobatically parkouring across rooftops in this decaying urban jungle, The Beast already looks like a gorgeous rendition of everything that Techland does best. I’m talking high-fidelity action, clean combat – though gunplay has been given “a lot of love” this time around, says Smektała – and that sinking moment of dread as Kyle’s digital watch alarm sounds. Day surrenders to night, and along with it, all the horrors that await within. Here’s where The Beast truly shines, as in true Dying Light fashion, we stealth past the hulking volatiles stalking the night.Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
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