Dying Light The Beast puts the focus back on the zombies, promises punishment

It feels like there's a checklist that every videogame has to adhere to these days. Does it have a solid, emotion-driven narrative? Is the world seemingly endless? Is it 50 hours long? Videogames just keep getting bigger, but I consistently find that they lose their sparkle as a result. Dying Light 2 was, in some ways, one of those games - the zombies didn't feel like the focus until the introduction of Tower Raid. Dying Light: The Beast, however, promises to go back to the series' survival horror roots, with franchise director Tymon Smektała telling PCGamesN that it's trading out human politics and factional conflict for good ol' fashioned zombie slaying.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with Techland's zombie game franchise, Dying Light: The Beast is a brand-new experience set in the Castor Woods, once a tourist destination, now a zombie-infested hellhole. Bringing back the first game's protagonist, Kyle Crane, you experience the apocalypse through the eyes of a half-zombie hybrid: Crane is equal parts human and beast. Intent on exacting sweet, probably very sticky revenge on his captor (known only as The Baron), Crane's mission is pretty simple: shred through the hordes, defeat the Baron's forces, and end the villain's life with a sickening squelch.

While Dying Light 2's Villedor was a European-inspired city and the last real bastion of civilization, Castor Woods is remote, eerie, and infinitely more dangerous (especially when night falls). But, presumably, that means less people; less factional disputes. At Summer Game Fest, my colleague Jamie asked Smektała about The Beast's focus: will we see the same political tensions as Dying Light 2, or is the focus on the action?

"Dying Light: The Beast is much more zombie-centric," he says. "Of course there are survivors and groups you interact with, but they're a lot smaller in scale; they're much less present in the open world, and you mostly interact with zombies and the horrific mutations created by the Baron. Your enemies are also the Baron's men who are his private army - yes, he has one - and you'll find people who Kyle is maybe reluctant to interact with at first because he's so focused on revenge. But, as soon as the night comes, he'll realize that he needs to start caring about other people to make sure that he builds a stronger opposition to the Baron."

As a result, Smektała states that the game is set to get "so punishing that you basically die." With a quick chuckle, he clarifies that "on the normal difficulty, Dying Light: The Beast is balanced in a way that, in order to survive, you need to use your brain. This is something that we keep repeating - it's a pro tip, a hint, a tutorial. It's not just a game about smashing zombies on their heads; it's a game about using your brain and the wide, varied arsenal that we give you - lethal and non-lethal - to survive and achieve your goals. It's a zombie sandbox in which we give you lots of tools, but none of them are overpowered, so if you want to survive you need to start thinking about how you want to use those tools.

"At higher levels it's much more difficult," he continues. "In terms of pure numbers, things like how much damage they do to you and how healthy they are are all tweaked. But zombie behavior also changes. How smart are they? How well do they communicate with each other? We're also thinking about a proper permadeath mode, which we've never done before, but maybe this is something we'll do after launch."

The Dying Light: The Beast release date was confirmed during Summer Game Fest, and thankfully it's just around the corner. If you're looking to get some practice in ahead of time, check out our list of the best parkour games or if, like me, you need to steel your resolve a little ahead of your trip to Castor Woods, our guide to the best horror games.

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Additional reporting from Summer Game Fest by Jamie Hore.