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Subscribe from just £3 Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£9.99Subscribe now PS5 State of Play Ghost of Yotei Battlefield 6 New Games for 2025 Don't miss these Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast review – "A playful sandbox of horror and mayhem with a surprising amount of depth" Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast is more than a homecoming for Kyle Crane – "For us, this is Dying Light 3" Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast's open world is "a secret mystery box" where "very f*cked up things" happen, but I'm most intrigued by the Stranger Things vibes Survival Horror Games "If everything is the same, nothing stands out" – How lead devs for Silent Hill f and Dying Light: The Beast are putting the horror back in survival horror Open World Games Dying Light: The Beast – Everything you need to know Survival Games Dying Light: The Beast's dialogue choices are all about character building instead of story-shaping, and it fixes my biggest problem with Dying Light 2 Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast thrives in its smaller map by making every centimeter count, and that makes Castor Woods the best open world in series history Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast feels like Action Man: The Game, and I can't get enough of Kyle Crane's badass skull-smashing moves Survival Horror Games I've been playing horror games for 25 years, but Dying Light: The Beast's gore just out-grossed it all by getting uncomfortably realistic Open World Games I live and breathe survival horror, so here's my ultimate Dying Light beginner's guide if you're starting with The Beast Survival Horror Games I love all of Dying Light: The Beast's incredible side quests, but one of them was so powerfully horrifying I thought it was a main mission Survival Horror Games 2025 already belongs to double-A games, and Dying Light: The Beast is helping Clair Obscur prove it – "Do you really want to play every game for 100 hours?" The best games to play in 2025, so far Survival Horror Games "If I start playing Assassin's Creed Shadows, I know I will never finish it": Dying Light: The Beast director says his game is just the right size to let you get "every dollar" out of it Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast is not trying to be The Last of Us, it's just trying to be a good time: "We really don't need to be overtly philosophical" Survival Horror Games Dying Light: The Beast Dying Light: The Beast is an ending and a new beginning for Techland, and the action horror series' future has never looked brighter: "We have new ideas, so we need to make them come alive" Jasmine Gould-Wilson 26 September 2025 Interview | Game director Nathan Lemaire reflects on The Beast's reception, avid community, and the art of building a legacy When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Techland) For any game developer, seeing the culmination of a decade's work finally come to fruition is an assumedly daunting thing. That's what Dying Light: The Beast is for Polish developer Techland. But despite all the pressures that come with shipping a game during one the most stacked years in the industry to date, game director Nethan Lemaire's confidence in the project seems to have outweighed his nerves. "I knew we were making a good game," Lemaire tells me of his headspace as Techland approached its September 18 release date – which had already been moved forward a day as a little thank you to the one million fans who'd preordered it. "When we launched, I told the team beforehand that whatever happens, the game is good. No matter what happens and what the reception is, the game is good." A week on from launch, the game hit an aggregate review score of 80 on Metacritic. "It basically confirmed the assumption that we were having about the state of the game," he says, highlighting the privilege of having released "the highest-rated Dying Light title" yet. There hasn't been much time to celebrate yet, though, especially given how the studio immediately mobilized on a swathe of post-launch updates and hotfixes in response to player feedback. Warning: Spoilers for Dying Light: The Beast ahead! Don't look back in anger (Image credit: Techland) (Image credit: Techland) Dying Light: The Beast review – "A playful sandbox of horror and mayhem with a surprising amount of depth" With a community outreach team relaying feedback to the developers and strike teams working around the clock, it's clear that the decade of work in delivering The Beast isn't quite over yet. Atop the immense passion, talent, and drive, Techland takes every drop of earnest feedback to heart. "I think this is part of why The Beast is successful, because we know how nitpicky they can be," he says of the passionately vocal Dying Light fanbase – not unkindly, but with appreciation, stressing how the community's high standards push the team to strive for perfection. It's the fans who alerted Techland to day-one bugs like indoor rain, or night-walking Volatiles roaming the streets of Castor Woods in the harsh light of day, and the studio is "working overtime" to implement those changes. But still, I want Lemaire to bask in the glow for just a little bit. He's right that Dying Light: The Beast is so far the highest-rated game in the series so far, with the first game clocking in at 74 on Metacritic and Dying Light 2 having achieved an aggregate score of 76. How, then, was the developer able to deliver such a bombastic, mature, purified iteration of the beloved survival-horror-action series despite the game's far narrower scope compared to either? "In design direction, we have the saying about less is more," Lemaire tells me of The Beast's streamlined approach to everything from narrative to open world experience. He came to Techland two years ago from Ubisoft, off the back of Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn, and by that point, the developers had already started weaving the threads together to make The Beast a cohesive experience that tied up the series' loose ends. "It's like this from start to finish, because when you finish the game, the ending is actually quite intense. It's like a final chapter, but a strong chapter that is basically giving you a feeling of satisfaction," Lemaire says of the finale that – spoiler alert – sees protagonists Kyle Crane and Aiden Caldwell storm The Baron's fortress in a mission the game director describes as the "peak Dying Light experience." That is what The Beast is trying to be – not something brand new that totally puts the franchise on its head, but Dying Light to the very marrow. You may like Dying Light: The Beast is more than a homecoming for Kyle Crane – "For us, this is Dying Light 3" Dying Light: The Beast's open world is "a secret mystery box" where "very f*cked up things" happen, but I'm most intrigued by the Stranger Things vibes "If everything is the same, nothing stands out" – How lead devs for Silent Hill f and Dying Light: The Beast are putting the horror back in survival horror (Image credit: Techland) Of course, everybody would like to have 500 skills and whatnot.Nathan Lemaire This seems to have been Techland's guiding principle. "I have mixed feelings when it comes to the pursuit of novelty," Lemaire says, commenting on the lack of huge, format-changing twists in The Beast. "It's important that we have fresh ideas and we put new things in where needed, because it needs to refresh [with each new game]. Now, I think what Dying Light needed was actually a retake." The goal was never to fix something that wasn't broken – namely, its already iconic, genre-defining core gameplay – but enhance and tune up what was already there. The core of Dying Light is fused to the heart of The Beast, taking precedence over pressure to overcorrect elsewhere. "We'd try to focus on core elements," Lemaire says of how the team stayed on task. "For example, the combat experience was more important. It was more important for me to cover world-class, industry standard combat experiences and physicality in combat than having 1000s of tools and [ending up with] clunky combat." (Image credit: Techland) Another trimmed down element many players have commented upon is Kyle's four-pronged skill tree, which builds on his agility, survival, power, and Beast Mode, and is far more compact than past iterations of the game. In response to cries for a more complex skill tree, Lemaire reiterates that Dying Light: The Beast is "a game of moments"; in order to think big, the team had to think small, streamlined, but detailed to the nth degree. "We could have made the skill tree twice as big by reusing Kyle's abilities from Dying Light 1. Kyle is weakened [in The Beast], but he doesn't have amnesia, right?" Lemaire laughs, but he has a point. The fact that Kyle is a returning protagonist gives Techland an excuse to build core parkour elements into his default skill set – "like wall running" – instead of locking them behind tree progression. "Of course, everybody would like to have 500 skills and whatnot. But the main focus for us was [creating an] individual experience that felt very connected and dense, so we made choices based on that premise." Fever pitch (Image credit: Techland) I have mixed feelings when it comes to the pursuit of novelty.Nathan Lemaire As such a dense, connected experience, one of my favorite aspects of Dying Light: The Beast is its tightly-hewn story. Kyle's journey through Castor Woods ends in a crescendo, and it's during a particularly powerful cutscene at The Baron's mansion that the stakes are made plain – not just in terms of the game's action, but in its implication for what could come next. "It's the culmination point in time, where everything merges together," Lemaire says of the nailbiting "dinner party" where players see a series favorite NPC meet a shocking end (don't worry – it's not Kyle or Aiden). It's the definitive dramatic boiling point, something Techland communicates not only through a tense series of extremely Dying Light-shaped survival horror moments in the leadup – driving through zombies in a burning tunnel, stealthing or shooting your way through enemy territory, parkour puzzles galore – but through cinematic subtleties only the die-hards will notice. Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Listen hard during this final mission, and you'll hear the theme melodies for Dying Light 1 and 2 overlap to form a unique motif for Kyle and Aiden's iconic team-up. "Same thing for during the castle boss fight," Lemaire points out. "When Aiden is there fighting alongside [Kyle], you have all the soundtracks hitting some cues from Dying Light 2, which is a very nice idea from Olivier [Deriviere, composer]." (Image credit: Techland) It's a beautiful touch, symbolizing a key overlap between both past games as their heroes unite. But Lemaire stresses that it's not about "fan service". Instead, it's to showcase these characters in their best (pardon the pun) light. It's also a chance to give Aiden a little more gravitas as a leading man himself. "Yes, Aiden is the beast, but Aiden is [also] the hero, and the hero behaves like a hero." True, he's not the main character this time around, but he was the main character, Lemaire argues. "We could not treat him as an NPC, just following Kyle." It's poetic, then, that when I try to cheekily get a little out of Lemaire about the future of the series, he takes us right back to those final moments. "I think right now the whole team at Techland is like Kyle at the end of the game, looking at the horizon, at the opportunities that are in front of us, and I trust our team and our company to make the right choice. To make sure that we are committed to delivering always the best Dying Light experience, no matter what that means," he says. "At the end of the day, what I see in the team is people that are proud and, most important, I see people that would like to continue working with each other. People want to continue working together, striving together. We have new ideas, so we need to make them come alive." Now, it's just a question of when and how. Check out all the upcoming horror games you'll be playing soon! See more PC Gaming Features Xbox Series X PlayStation Jasmine Gould-Wilson Social Links Navigation Staff Writer, GamesRadar+ Jasmine is a staff writer at GamesRadar+. Raised in Hong Kong and having graduated with an English Literature degree from Queen Mary, University of London in 2017, her passion for entertainment writing has taken her from reviewing underground concerts to blogging about the intersection between horror movies and browser games. Having made the career jump from TV broadcast operations to video games journalism during the pandemic, she cut her teeth as a freelance writer with TheGamer, Gamezo, and Tech Radar Gaming before accepting a full-time role here at GamesRadar. Whether Jasmine is researching the latest in gaming litigation for a news piece, writing how-to guides for The Sims 4, or extolling the necessity of a Resident Evil: CODE Veronica remake, you'll probably find her listening to metalcore at the same time. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Dying Light: The Beast is more than a homecoming for Kyle Crane – "For us, this is Dying Light 3" Dying Light: The Beast's open world is "a secret mystery box" where "very f*cked up things" happen, but I'm most intrigued by the Stranger Things vibes "If everything is the same, nothing stands out" – How lead devs for Silent Hill f and Dying Light: The Beast are putting the horror back in survival horror Dying Light: The Beast – Everything you need to know Dying Light: The Beast review – "A playful sandbox of horror and mayhem with a surprising amount of depth" Dying Light: The Beast's dialogue choices are all about character building instead of story-shaping, and it fixes my biggest problem with Dying Light 2 Latest in Survival Horror Games Silent Hill f fans can't decide if its combat is "ruining the whole experience" with fights harder than Elden Ring, or if the new horror game "was designed for you to pick your battles" Every Silent Hill f Omamori and where to get them How to solve the mural puzzle in Silent Hill f How to find the objects for the device in Silent Hill f and open the sacred door I've been playing horror games for 25 years, but Dying Light: The Beast's gore just out-grossed it all by getting uncomfortably realistic 26 years later, the best Silent Hill monsters are still haunting my nightmares – and I couldn't be happier about it Latest in Features The super-heroics are spectacular in MTG Spider-Man, but I think it's missing a special something Marvel's White Tiger is taking the spotlight in a comic that explores the hero's long legacy: "This is a story about honoring our ancestors" I play Final Fantasy 14 like I do any other Final Fantasy game of the past 27 years, totally solo and you can too with the Free Trial 21 years later, Spider-Man 2 is back in theaters and it’s still one of the greatest superhero movies ever made Dying Light: The Beast is an ending and a new beginning for Techland, and the action horror series' future has never looked brighter: "We have new ideas, so we need to make them come alive" After playing its single player, I was surprised to find that Battlefield 6 is evoking the FPS shooters of the PS3 and PS4 era in all ways but one GAME REVIEWS MOVIE REVIEWS Ghost of Yotei review: "One of the first PS5 games to feel truly boundary-pushing, this hyper violent samurai revenge quest truly hooked me" Hades 2 review: "Impeccable combat and flawless characterization across a huge roster make for a follow-up that surpasses even its excellent roguelike predecessor" EA FC 26 review: "Ultimate Team's huge, divisive changes have me torn – FIFA's successor has moved away from serving football purists" Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review: "Fantastic tweaks elevate a classic while leaving its spirit intact – this seminal tactical RPG has never been better" Baby Steps review: "If you craved a tougher hiking challenge than Death Stranding, this is for you – though prepare to get dropped from many great heights" One Battle After Another review: "One of the best studio movies in years and an instant classic" The Conjuring: Last Rites review: "Not bold or memorable enough for the Warrens' final chapter" Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle review: "Roars past Mugen Train as Demon Slayer's best adventure yet" The Long Walk review: "One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made" Frankenstein review: "A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation" Marvel Zombies review: "A fun expansion of the What If episode with delightful MCU Easter eggs and truly gross R-rated kills" Gen V season 2 review: "As strong as the first season, if not stronger" Wednesday season 2 part 2 review: "Ortega shines, but it's a zombie who steals the entire show" Peacemaker season 2 review: "Darker and sadder than the first year, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids." 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