Dying Light: The Beast – First Preview
Blog Andrew Joseph 07 Jun , 2025 0
The melee leading design of the series is shown by many dying light. Its effects can be seen in the damaged system, which causes its weird zombies to crash with every slash of the blade, as well as weapon making, which turns household tools into fun, unrealistic killers. And, of course, it affects parkour movement, which allows you to stay away from your teeth and grippers.
So, what happens when you add a gun to this close-range formula? I mean not a rusty pistol or two, but an entire arsenal of shotguns, assault rifles and abundant ammunition. This is the problem with the next game in the series, Death Light: The Beast. The answer is not obvious. Instead of turning into a regular first-person shooter, Guns turned Techland's latest creation into something closer to Crysis or even (if you're a little toss) shamed. They are another layer of an increasingly diverse tool set that ensures that each encounter is a sandbox that is solved according to your own rules.
For this month's IGN, I was able to start playing an hour-long mission from the dying early beast: the beast. This means the battle boots of the protagonist Kyle Crane who entered the return of the original dying light. Taking the hostage and experimenting with a dark figure named “Baron” for 13 years, I joined Kyle for a few hours. In the new, more rural castor forest, I infiltrated one of the Baron's factories. And, standing on the roof of the facility, I realized that my choices were more diverse than the last time I played dying light.
Using Kyle's enhanced “survivor” senses (which is the benefit of all the experiments he endured), I was able to emphasize the patrol members of the Baron's militia. Some are marked orange, while others are red. Indicates who are armed with melee weapons or guns respectively. This is a color-coded threat level that can help me develop an action plan. Yes, it's all Batman: Arkham.
I started with a happy Bowman before me. I approached silently, and I made a melee with the wet tiger I made, much faster than suffocating him – and then slide the bow from his body. Of course, the bow and arrow were dying 2 in the dying 2, but it was unreachable until the second half of the game. Their earlier introduction in The Beast promises greater engagement options throughout the sport, especially given its remote stealth potential.
I figured out the arrows, Bowman's companions, including snipers wielding rifles on the roof opposite. No one heard him fall on the floor, so I was free to go through the run code and add his gun to my collection. My chances of engagement have expanded again: no longer limited to firing single arrows and drawing speeds that last long, I can pull out a paid set of melee enemies before they get into amazing range…though everyone around me will know exactly what’s going on. Then, it can also be made a wonder.
I dived into the roof below, two other riflemen, a bunch of brawlers and – delightfully – a bunch of explosive gas tanks waiting. Diving triggers a slow motion effect. It's hardly a smooth bullet time for Max Payne and the ancient game of fear, more like you suddenly pass through sticky air than being John Wick, but it still succeeds in highlighting Kyle's military background.
With this expanded toolkit, the encounter of dying Light has gradually become a sandbox similar to the island's crisis and the island's crying. Using Kyle's survivor senses, you can methodically remove enemies from the competitive environment with a gun, and then toe them with less dangerous enemies. The burst from stealth evacuation to silent headshots to the shell engine gave me control over this space than I expected than the typical cluttered 2 (combined with Parkour, which makes it possible to find some cheap strategies here, some cheap ones here, and some less, but also less – equally elegant strategies. My hope is that besides the boundaries of this demonstration, there are some strong ways to encounter them.
I have reason to be hopeful. As I explored the Crestor Forest, I encountered a zombie wearing a battery pack that detonated when touched, sending out electric forks through the tribe. Another man wore an explosive jar on his back – only a good shot would turn him and his partner into a barbecue. Speaking of barbecue, I later got a flamethrower. Obviously there are a lot of toys to try, and I hope Techland is fun enough to use these elements to lure players into clever ridiculous solutions to clean up the undead and deadly solutions.
It is worth noting that Techland has also improved the game in terms of stealth. Bows, wipes and tools like throwing knives are naturally very good at sending human opponents silently, but now there is a way to quietly avoid zombies. Take more than a few pages from The Walking Dead book, and you can now apply yourself with your undead intestines to cover up the human scent and then walk through the tribe casually. It's a simple stealth tool, but it's incredibly shockingly the dying light of the novel.
But Kyle is not special because he can use a gun or take a shower inside the zombie. Those above-mentioned experiments turned him into a titular beast. This is similar to the backstory of Aiden Caldwell, who is the protagonist of Dead Light 2, but where Aiden's infection brings him some zombie-like superhuman abilities, Kyle has become closer to jumping balls. Beast mode triggers at will after taking and dealing with enough damage, allowing you to tear regular enemies apart with bloody animations similar to Doom Kill. Thundering ground pounds violently throw enemies at seven types of winds – using it indoors is actually a screen wipe attack that causes zombies to splash onto walls and ceilings. All of this comes in handy with the final boss of the demo, a towering “chime” zombie known as a behemoth that is able to throw engine blocks and concrete boulders in the arena. Behemoth has many easy-to-identify attack patterns, but the challenge lies in its resilience, and the number of small slaves behind you. With the participation of Beast Mode, I was able to easily remove these mobs and cause huge damage to my boss.
But while it was fun to have with another beast toe, I was actually more interested in the practical aspects of the Kyle mutation. Techland told me that PlayTesters used Beast Mode's extended leap capability to bypass the entire parkour challenge. So it's an unconventional use of these abilities, they promise to join people like guns and camouflage them with courage to make sure the beast feels like a meaningful upgrade to its predecessor.
The scope of this demo is very limited – in fact, this is largely the version of the playable version I've seen Last year on Gamescomso it is almost certain to see it in time. But being able to wander around this small part of the world in my own time has allowed me to enjoy some smaller details. The world feels like a substantial upgrade to Death Light 2, not in terms of horizontal design (although I like the old town part of Villedor Returns), but in the atmosphere. The new weather effect system is excellent, with the storm soaking the landscape with heavy rain, and the wind breaking trees, bushes and grass into madness. When the sun sets, the lights are indeed dead. In witch's time, it's almost invisible, forcing you to rarely use a flashlight to navigate between more difficult nighttime horror patrol roads. Long-term fans who hoped that the more terrifying night in Game 1 should get the full effort.
When I leave I appointed last year at Gamescom's TechlandI am skeptical of how guns affect the establishment of the dying light of the core idea. Naturally, the studio wanted to showcase its new toys, and that demonstration that stood out was largely played as a shooter. But I had the opportunity to play myself, I had agents to choose when and where the gun was deployed, so I quickly learned that guns were just part of the dying light: the beast, not the main attraction. Their complement, along with many trademark DIY melee solutions from the Bow and Arrow series, makes the demo encounter richer and more textured. Each battle scene feels like a dozen solutions problem, rather than the melee mud I usually find myself while playing Dead Light 2.
The question now is how all this evolves in a wider range of games. There are several tools and weapons I haven't gotten a wide range or any time, like the aforementioned flamethrowers and strange weirdness like throwable vibrators, so I want the beast to keep adding weapons with unique utilities in the toolbox. Then, of course, your mutations; every chimera you kill can inject more weird DNA into the veins and unlock the skill tree. I can only hope that the further you go, the more you are capable. And explaining that the event continues to provide interesting challenges to encourage the use of abilities and tools, then I think the beast may be more interesting than it initially seems.
Matt Purslow is an advanced feature editor for IGN.