I got my hands on Dying Light: The Beast during Summer Games Fest, and ever since that demo, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Now, with the brand-new “Blood & Guts” trailer from Techland, I can confidently say: this game is going to be visceral horror at its peak. If you thought the original Dying Light games were brutal, The Beast laughs in their blood-soaked face and kicks it off a rooftop.
Decapitations, limb-severing strikes, crushed bones, seared flesh… Techland is pulling no punches in turning every melee encounter into a display of raw survival instinct.
“We’ve dramatically increased the body horror to give you this feeling of fighting for pure survival and Kyle’s hunger for revenge.
It’s one thing to see a health bar go down; it’s another entirely to see the flesh peel away from bone or have a burnt and destroyed faces only inches away from you - that’s how nightmares are made!”
And this isn’t brutality for brutality’s sake. There’s tech to back it all up. Dying Light: The Beast runs on an upgraded in-house engine with an overhauled body damage system—featuring double the amount of “Gore-Nodes” on enemies and incredibly precise hit detection. You’ll feel the difference when your weapon carves through specific limbs and joints with pinpoint accuracy. No two fights ever look the same, thanks to an almost absurd number of visual damage combinations.
Let’s not forget the finishers. There are nearly three times as many brutal finishing moves compared to past games, and every single one feels earned, savage, and ridiculously satisfying. These aren't cutscenes—they’re kill-sculptures made with flesh and fury.
Behind the scenes, Techland is taking their blood work seriously. The art team went through extensive research to get the visual gore just right. Lead Character Artist Dominik Wasieńko even joked, “I just hope no one looks up my browser history,” while blood FX specialists resorted to real-world experiments with actors and gallons of fake blood to get splatters just right. That dedication shows. Every slash, every splatter, every grimace from an enemy inches from your face feels terrifyingly real.
And with six weeks still left until launch, they’re not done yet. Techland is still dialing things up. More polish. More precision. More blood.
Dying Light: The Beast launches September 19th, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and if what I played at Summer Games Fest was just the beginning, we’re in for one hell of a ride.
