Developer Techland wants to focus on “fun” more than anything when it comes to the upcoming Dying Light: The Beast. In an interview with GamesRadar, franchise director Tymon Smektala spoke about how the game isn’t trying to be “the most ambitious series, narratively,” and is more focused on players having a good time. To that end, Smektala has explained that the studio wants to focus more on the gameplay in Dying Light: The Beast rather than philosophical storytelling.
“It’s much easier for us – and kind of more meaningful – to expand and grow on the gameplay side,” he said. “I don’t think we need to be the most ambitious series, narratively. I think what we need to do is we need to deliver kick ass characters that are facing tough challenges, where the plot line has its twists and turns, but we really don’t need to be overtly philosophical.”
When compared to narratively ambitious titles like Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series, the stories in these games often tend to present heavier questions for their players. Smektala said that the studio doesn’t want to present these kinds of questions to Dying Light players. In fact, he brought up the fact that the Dying Light series isn’t really well-suited for that kind of storytelling to begin with.
“We don’t really need to be asking players about morality and all of that stuff,” he explained. “We are making games which are first and foremost about really cool gameplay, cool characters. I think overtly serious will not work for Dying Light as a series so I think we’ll continue on that path. I think it makes more sense for us.”
Back in June, Smektala had spoken about how, for Techland, Dying Light: The Beast serves as more of a proper sequel to the series rather than simply being a spin-off. He also spoke about the feedback Techland got about Dying Light 2 Stay Human, and acknowledged that the sequel had lost something when compared to the original.
“Dying Light 1 was a game for our core community,” he said. “It was a hardcore survival horror, open world, action adventure with very strong survival aspects. For Dying Light 2, we forgot about it. The game was a commercial success, but the players who should be closest to our hearts said we kind of lost the edge, we lost the threat, we lost the horror, we lost the tension.”
As for Dying Light: The Beast’s origins as a DLC for Dying Light 2 Stay Human, Smektala said that, “for us, it really is Dying Light 3.”
“Maybe the project started with a slightly smaller ambition, but we got so excited about Kyle Crane returning. We got so excited about, actually, what we can do with this new iteration of the engine, how confident we feel about the gameplay mechanics.”
Dying Light: The Beast is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 22. Leading up to its release, Smektala has confirmed that the story will take players around 20 hours to finish. He also mentioned that there was “additional stuff” that could add another 20-30 hours of gameplay.
