It’s been quite some time since Dying Light: The Beast‘s original September 2025 release date, and many of us have already spent plenty of time in the game’s fantastic open-world. While developer Techland has provided plenty of post-launch support with a number of free updates, there hasn’t really been much of a reason to return to the game… until now. The studio surprised just about everyone by announcing, and shortly afterwards, releasing the Restored Land update for Dying Light: The Beast, and rather than being just another patch that brings in maybe one or two new quests, the update has a lot more to offer.
Headlining the update is the eponymous Restored Land mode, which is meant to be a new way to experience Dying Light: The Beast all over again. When enabled, the mode introduces a way for players, once more taking on the role of Kyle Crane, to restore Castor Woods to something at least a little closer to its former glory. Zombies killed in Restored Land mode won’t ever respawn. On the other hand, resources you’ve already looted won’t come back either, which introduces an interesting double-edged sword. That means you have to be much more careful when moving through any given area. Sure, you can eventually clear out a place well enough so that zombies can’t ever come back. But at the same time, you also end up losing the easiest way in the game to get your hands on basic resources like crafting materials: the zombies themselves.
The balance is skewed even further against the player thanks to resources being a lot more scarce, and repeatable activities that often tend to be a great way to grind out more materials can only be completed once. When it comes to actually playing through the mode, these limitations create some genuinely great moments where I had to stop and think through my next moves. Sure, I could always use some extra crafting materials, and I was certainly strong enough to take on a certain Dark Zone. But then I had to ask myself: “Do I really need those materials right now, or would I be better off waiting instead of draining my already-limited flashlight battery?” Restored Land mode, for all intents and purposes, turned Dying Light: The Beast—otherwise a pretty fun power fantasy—into a much more cerebral experience.
While the update also added more ways to ramp up the difficulty, like a One Life mode that results in permadeath, I chose not to use them, since I was already having a hard enough time trying to survive as it is. I haven’t finished a full Restored Land playthrough yet, so I can’t really comment on the usefulness of the rewards, but doing so will likely take me much longer than my first playthrough, since it encourages a slower pace thanks to resource constraints. I did find the act of taking out all zombies in an area quite rewarding, however, and it was a lot of fun to take a leisurely stroll through these zones without having to worry about anything. My only real complaint with the whole experience was the fact that co-op—one of my favorite features of the game overall—isn’t available in Restored Land.
"When it comes to actually playing through the mode, these limitations create some genuinely great moments where I had to stop and think through my next moves."
The update also brought with it one of my favorite new side-activities—Roadkill Rallies. Strewn around the more open parts of Castor Woods, the Roadkill Rally activity revolves entirely around your driving skill and rewards you based on how many zombies you can run over from point A to point B. While simple in concept and execution, Roadkill Rallies become a fun way to compete with friends on a leaderboard. And as an added cherry on top, you don’t have to be playing in Restored Land mode, which also means you can take on Roadkill Rallies in co-op.
Aside from Restored Land mode itself, the update’s meatiest additions are a host of new event-based side quests. Rather than seeking them out on the map and making your way to them, however, these new quests tend to pop up depending on the area you’re passing through and what route you’re taking. These new quests largely revolve around telling small stories about what might have happened to nearby survivors. The studio has noted that these quests were added in an attempt to “make the journey between main quest moments more engaging,” and I think these new quests achieve that quite well. They feel like a natural part of your journey as you parkour or drive your way through Castor Woods, and can often add to the sense of place that the setting has always excelled at.
What helps even more is the fact that these quests don’t even tend to be particularly long. They tend to be relatively simple affairs, often revolving around a single fight or a couple of conversations before you return to your journey. They can be quite varied, ranging from a simple inter-faction battle over a truck full of useful resources, to finding new outposts set up by the Baron’s forces. These aren’t really meant to tell any deep and emotional stories on their own. Rather, they act more like quick encounters that help flesh out the world of Castor Woods, and their relatively dynamic nature also has the added benefit of making the open-world game feel more alive.
"These new quests largely revolve around telling small stories about what might have happened to nearby survivors."
I’d also be remiss not to mention the many improvements Dying Light: The Beast has received through its extensive post-launch support. My favorite of these has been the added depth to the parkour systems. Rather than making any single, sweeping change to the traversal, however, the studio instead added a range of smaller improvements through additional animations that are only really obvious to those who may have already spent some time with the game. This has resulted in on-foot traversal generally feeling a lot smoother. Additions like Legend Levels for level-capped players also provide more excuses to just hang around in Castor Woods to take on some of its tougher challenges.
Generally speaking, Techland did some fantastic work with Restored Land, breathing new life into the already-fantastic Dying Light: The Beast. Thanks to the plethora of new content, new players have plenty to sink their teeth into, while those of us who had already considered ourselves “done” with the game have a great reason to come back: its headline new mode for fresh playthroughs. The new event-based side quests also offer some fantastic new opportunities for environmental storytelling depending on how you approach them and where they appear, and Roadkill Rallies are yet another great way to make traveling between faraway points more interesting.
When it comes to PC performance, Dying Light: The Beast already ran very well, and Restored Land hasn’t slowed it down one bit. With most of the visual settings cranked up to max, I was able to maintain steady frame rates of well over 60 FPS while playing at a resolution of 2560×1440. This was on an upper-mid-range PC featuring an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM.
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