Dying Light The Beast takes "brutality seriously" with the gnarliest gore ever

Dying Light The Beast is almost here, and it's trying to strike a difficult balance. On the one hand, it's looking to the past to create a more survival horror experience similar to the first Dying Light and bringing back the original protagonist, Kyle Crane. On the other, it's being bold with some new gameplay innovations and additions that push the series forward. Techland says that the result of this balancing act will be the most detailed and brutal Dying Light game yet. In a new video, shared exclusively with PCGamesN, the studio hones in on one area where this is extremely evident - its pursuit of realistic environmental gore. Plus, we've got some new comments from Dying Light's franchise director, Tymon Smektala, about creating freakish enemies inspired by Attack on Titan, savage finisher moves, and the choice to add a developer's grandmother's blanket in the game.

"Game developers should be humble, as the final verdict lies always in the hands of the players, so I'll not boast too much, but I can confidently say that Dying Light The Beast delivers the best representation of gore in the history of the Dying Light series." That's Smektala's bold claim, just in case you were worried that the sequel's rural, picturesque setting would soften the tone. Hoping that it'll make it on our list of the best zombie games later this year, Techland has gone to impressive lengths to create an unsettling atmosphere, but one that's still grounded in realism.

As is highlighted in this new video, Techland has littered Dying Light The Beast with blood spatters and smears that were all created in real life, thanks to a bucket of fake blood, some dish soap, and an actor willing to be 'murdered' in a range of gruesome ways. These realistic blood patterns are then photographed and turned into in-game assets that can be scattered around the environment. Some may even be contextual, telling the specific story of a character that may have been dragged down a hallway or that staggered around after receiving a major laceration.

"We don't expect our players to analyze it as they play, but I think consciously they'll see that there's 'something' about the representation of blood in our environment that makes it more unsettling and special," Smektala tells us. "They don't need to know but we actually bought litres of fake blood and used actors to spill it all over the place in our mo-cap room… Dying Light treats violence and brutality really seriously. It's so important to our games we just need to make that extra effort to make it right."

The attention to detail extends to other areas too. "All of the buildings in the valley make sense - if there's a factory, there's a block where its workers were living," he says. "When there's a [19th] century villa, it's modeled after real villas built in mountain regions at that time. When there's a blanket in the safe zone, it's actually a photo-scanned blanket used by the grandmother of our environmental art director."

It's not just environments, either - Dying Light The Beasts' zombies also benefit from this obsessive approach.

"We've consciously designed a number of improvements to our body damage and dismemberment systems to take the level of brutality up a notch," Smektala explains.

"We have increased the number of zones (or nodes as we call them) where the body of the enemy can be damaged by 50%. We also doubled the number of visible destructions players can see at once on a singular zombie (and human) model. There's also an increased number of the actual [types of] destructions - bones sticking out, intestines pouring out of deep cuts, etc. - to make combat even more graphic. Just don't ask what we used for reference - the browser history of our artists could definitely raise some suspicions or at least look weird to someone unaware."

When I had the chance to preview Dying Light The Beast at Summer Game Fest last month, I was particularly impressed by the design of the Chimeras - enormous mutant bosses with unique designs. "They're built out of pure body mass, muscles, and tissue, with skinless faces, similar to the titans from Attack on Titan anime. They're a good showcase of the general direction we took with the infected enemies in Dying Light The Beast - there's a lot of body horror there, designs that disfigure the human body in many ways, all for the scary effect of it."

After whittling down a Chimera's health bar during my SGF preview, I was able to perform a joyously savage finisher move on it. Smektala says there are plenty more of those to come, and not just for defeating these major bosses.

"Not only will you be able to execute unique finishers on the biggest Chimeras, but we also added an increased number of executions and special kills on our regular, human-sized enemies, as well as the bigger, special units like Goons or Demolishers," he confirms.

The Dying Light The Beast release date isn't too far away now, and I'm looking forward to jumping into Castor Woods to see these beautiful blood spatters, hand-crafted environments, and detailed zombies in all their grisly glory. From what I played a few weeks back, I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the new fan-favorite.