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Originally conceived as a DLC pack for Dying Light 2, The Beast was later retooled as a standalone game after its main story was leaked by hackers in 2023. And whilst Dying Light: The Beast is going to offer a shorter and more compact experience than either Dying Light 1 or Dying Light 2, it's already being touted as "a very powerful dose of Dying Light gameplay, of Dying Light" as a whole. "Almost like a double espresso" that, despite the franchise's 10 year history, will be a good entry point for new players to jump into.

I spoke to Tymon Smektala (Franchise Director, Dying Light) who is responsible for overseeing all of the creative decisions within the Dying Light zombie game world and series, and got to ask him as to how Techland was impacted by the story leaks, how the studio has changed after being acquired by Tencent, where he sees the Dying Light franchise going in future, and how he's been able to maintain enthusiasm for the Dying Light franchise since he joined Techland 10-odd years ago. Enjoy!

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Let's start from the beginning... Dying Light: the Beast is its own standalone game, and it's not a major DLC pack for an existing game. Given the fact that the first game had its own major DLC pack, what was the reasoning for the deviation from this strategy? You already had the second game, and now you've got The Beast. Although I understand it from a business perspective, for those people who bought Dying Light 2 and who might feel a bit short-changed, what's your response to this?

Okay, first of all, I don't think it's that obvious in terms of business. Because if you build DLC for a successful game, you basically already have your playerbase that you can talk to directly. With a new game, it's always a gamble. There's always a risk as to whether players will really be that interested in wanting to go back to that world again. But we made that decision on the basis of a couple of factors... Actually, you can trace some of the origins of The Beast to the se