Dying Light: The Beast Needs to Learn From Both Games to Recapture the Horror

With Dying Light: The Beast on the horizon, I thought I would play the original Dying Light, something I haven’t done since it first came out. As I was playing it, I suddenly realised I was experiencing something that was severely lacking in Dying Light 2 Stay Human: I was scared. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, Dying Light 2 is a lot of fun, but I never really felt scared as I played through it, even during the night sections. However, I legitimately felt more tension running through the streets in the dark in the original title. There are several reasons for this, so let's break them down.

One of the things I noticed during my first night in the fictional city of Harran is just how dark it really is. Meanwhile, in Dying Light 2, the nights aren’t all that dark; they’re usually just bright enough that you can see without too much issue. Meanwhile, in the first game, you really can’t see much without your torch, which helps to increase the tension of the night. 

I think it is imperative that Dying Light: The Beast returns to the true night. The developers need to make it dark enough that you’re never sure what’s chasing you, and each run in the night feels like a real threat. If they don’t, then the nights end up just becoming an XP grind, which feels like it ruins the point. Thankfully, it seems the developer is aware of this, as the new environment, Castor Woods, has been described as “pitch black” in an Xbox Wire piece. 

It’s not just the darkness that needs to be focused on; it’s also how you get around. One of the new additions in Dying Light 2 was the wingsuit, which allowed you to glide across the city without much difficulty. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a lot of fun, and it added a needed change to the gameplay. However, it came at the cost of the threat posed by the volatiles at night because you can just glide away from them.

In the original Dying Light, this isn’t an option and instead, you have to rely on either running or your very slow climb speed. This had downsides; for one, it was hard to get a sense of flow when you were running around, which often led to the runs feeling clunky. Not to mention, it meant that the city of Harran couldn’t offer many tall buildings, as it just took too long to climb them. 

However, what it did well was create a sense of tension that made escaping from the Volatiles terrifying. You had to be fast, taking corners at a rapid pace with perfect split-second thinking. You can’t just get away, and you can’t just fight them… well, unless you have the right kinds of weapons. However, Dying Light: The Beast is aiming to offer an open world that mixes rural environments alongside lush countryside. If this is done well, then we could quickly adapt on the fly as we flee into the night,  

So, does that mean they should get rid of gliding in Dying Light: The Beast? Honestly, I would say no, if only because it then feels like we’re going backwards. The problem is that the enemies in Dying Light 2 can’t actually hit you when you’re flying (outside of the odd ranged attack), so the sense of threat is minimal. Now, we don’t know if the player will be able to fly in the new game, but we do know that Kyle Crane, the returning hero from the first game, carries both infected and human DNA. 

With that in mind, we can imagine that the player will have a host of new abilities, and those could easily overwhelm the base Volatiles that we know so well. As such, to increase a sense of fear, we need to see these super zombies evolve to better combat all our abilities. For instance, make creatures that advance as you do, to help avoid the player becoming simply too powerful.

While Dying Light: The Beast might have been delayed recently, I am still excited to see if the title to bring back the horror. Hopefully, the game manages to capture what’s great about the other two titles, rather than ending up like a mess of different, contrasting ideas. Keep your eyes open for our preview and eventual review when the game launches on September 19th, 2025.