Techland's Dying Light games are really great. Enter parkour-driven, zombie-filled open worlds Dying light OR Dying Light 2 Stay human and you'll be hit with a wave of side missions and extra challenges that add weight to a couple of already lengthy campaigns. With over 30 million copies of both games sold, you'd be forgiven for thinking the pair's completion rate is pretty low.
But it isn't. In 2019, franchise director Tymon Smektala he told the game developer which approximately 50% of players had completed Dying lightalthough that number apparently decreased with the sequel. In a conversation with the game developer at Gamescom 2024, he told us that the completion rate of Dying light 2 it was about 10% smaller. Both numbers, he said, are “higher than the industry average.”
These are all respectable numbers, especially when completion rates for single-player games (and especially open-world ones) can be as low as 20%. However, Smektala seemed troubled by the drop, especially with the team now working Dying Light: The Beasta smaller standalone game derived from an abandoned downloadable expansion that was leaked to the public. “Imagine you're working on the grand finale of your game and only half your players see it,” he said. “It is especially important for The Beast where we close many story threads of the series.”
As he and art director Katarzyna Tarnacka told Game Developer, the team wants to bring that number back up The Beast– a goal that highlights the challenge of making smaller, faster games with triple-A technology and timing.
Dying Light: The Beast It is on track to ship in less than 3 years
In an era where increasing development timelines are driving up budgets and demanding ever higher sales, The Beast serves as an interesting experiment. It's a smaller, but still powerful game built on the technology of its predecessor, with some small advancements that take advantage of a new generation of consoles (it will also be available on current-gen consoles to honor previous promises to do everything Dying light 2 DLC available for all players), a small technical miracle in itself.
But can a smaller game still achieve the sales goals that justify its production? Smektala thinks so, although the length of the match will be crucial in determining this. “We definitely need to find a sweet spot between this thing that's too short—something you could avoid—and something that's so big you don't have time to finish it,” he said. “We want this game to be completed by everyone who plays it because it really answers a lot of questions and we really believe in the narrative that we have there.”
That narrative is built around Dying light the protagonist “Kyle”, played by Roger Craig Smith, who returns to the role after 10 years away from Techland. Smith and Kyle are apparently a big draw for Dying Light fans, as the actor told us he was watching the reactions on social media and in live chats during the opening night of the Gamescom awards, and was blown away by the enthusiasm for his return.
Image via Techland.
Kyle's return moves the series out of the walled cities and into a forested environment, where players will spend more time surrounded by nature than crumbling buildings. Players gain the ability to unleash “The Beast” and transform into a rugged zombie that can rampage through enemies (though another beast-like creature apparently lurks in the woods…)
Bringing the setting to a Twin Peaks-inspired forest (Smektala's words) gave the art and design teams more freedom than they had with the previously planned DLC. Tarnacka explained that she and her colleagues held “a lot of big ideas” aside due to the constraints of the smaller project. “Once the decision was made, we could just free up all the ideas and get this project to the state we knew it could be.”
He said the smaller map means high-quality art assets aren't as draining on older consoles, and since Dying light 2 it was already a cross-gen title, having to go back didn't affect the process.
Smektala joked that Techland's producers lost some of their power with this move. “The producer's job is not to do it [make] the best game is to deliver that part of the game on time,” he said. The producers at Techland had the power before gently dismissing the art team's ideas with the phrase “leave it for the next game.”
“For The Beastthey weren't able to say it,” he said (before praising them for supporting the team and taking the time to execute their outlandish plans).
The BeastThe speed of implementation raises the specter of generative AI tools, often presented as tools that help developers work faster. Techland hasn't adopted any at this point, Smektala said (beyond “simple things,” like taking notes in meetings).
Smith, a member of SAG-AFTRA currently on strike on movie studios' refusal to accept protective terms on the use of AI voices (The Beast not an impressive production), he seemed amused at the idea that artificial intelligence had the ability to replace him. He said he's interested in tools that help developers and actors work more efficiently, but there's a “spark” that he says makes characters like Kyle stick with players.
Artificial intelligence isn't the only thing that can threaten that spark: Smith said coming back to work with Techland to voice the same character 10 years later is a rare experience. He's an actor known for many recurring roles, but sometimes he returns to the studio to find a different creative team waiting for him.
Image via Techland.
“I've had situations like that happen to me, where you go back and they say 'we have a different crew, we have a different writer, we have everything different,' and it's just not the same kind of spark,” he said. It's another endorsement of an idea that many developers are pushing these days mass layoffs-that studios that keep talent around can use their learned experience to work better together.
Will other games follow in Techland's footsteps?
The practice of releasing extensive DLC for big budget games is common, as they add value to the initial game and foster the loyalty needed for success.
But The Beast it's a different kind of project, recycling tools and technology for a bigger game to give the world something smaller and more efficient.
If it were a success, it would make an argument for companies Techland's size (or larger) to build processes that bring more individual games to market faster, alternating large titles that push their technology forward and smaller games that allow them make the most of it.
Smektala seems personally interested in that completion rate (he spontaneously told us about it in 2019 and highlighted its importance in this conversation). Increasing that number would definitely be a boon to The Beast– and also a great tactic to stimulate interest in the next numbered game.