Dying Light: The Beast has to be the week’s biggest release, with zombie hunter Kyle Crane returning to parkour his way across an all-new open world, while bashing in the heads of the undead in a variety of grisly ways. While there have been a few reports of instabilities in the launch build, Techland have got right on it, and immediately dropped patch 1.2. Here’s what it fixes!
Gameplay & Balancing
- Nighttime experience / chases
- Refined chase logic for more variety and smoother transitions between phases.
- Adjusted nighttime difficulty for greater intensity while staying fair to players.
World balance
- Adjusted in-game economy and resource distribution for better pacing and rewards.
AI, Enemies & Physics
- Volatiles & infected reactions
- Enhanced melee/firearms hit reactions for more physical impact.
- Added animated UV-reactive textures for volatiles.
- Tweaks to special attack patterns and movement, including nagewaza-like responses.
Ragdolls & physics
- Overhauled ragdoll behavior: more realistic rooftop falls and natural corpse physics.
- Polished hit reaction transitions to remove janky interruptions.
- Zombie “flavor” behaviors
- Added new atmospheric details, such as zombies banging their heads against locked doors.
Stability & Bug Fixes
- Environment fixes
- Over 500+ minor, environment-related issues resolved (clipping, stuck objects, collision bugs).
- System stability
- Over 100+ minor system-level bugs eliminated, including save/load and UI-related errors.
- Crash reduction
- Addressed multiple crash scenarios for significantly improved session stability.
Graphics
- Lighting & visuals
- Adjusted lighting across multiple locations to improve readability and atmosphere.
- Visual optimizations to boost performance on a wide range of hardware.
New Mechanics
- Instant Escape (biter grab)
- Added a skill check mechanic allowing level 11+ players to instantly break free from biter grabs – a fan-favorite feature inspired by the original Dying Light.
The team at Techland also let us know that there are going to be even more improvements made to the game over this weekend, and as soon as we have the details for that, we’ll let you know.
Gamoc is currently working through our Dying Light: The Beast Review, but his early impressions have been very good. He says, “It’s a return to the classic tone and style of Dying Light. This feels more like the truer sequel to Dying Light I was expecting, one that’s focused on the zombies and being terrifying instead of everything being about how humans are bad – we get enough of that in the real world these days. Dying Light: The Beast is tough and brutal whilst the suns up, and after sunset it’s just tension and terror. I’m not finished yet, but The Beast is mostly the game I wanted it to be.”
