Dying Light: The Beast, the latest entry in Techland’s now decade-old franchise of zombie action games, has been delayed. Originally set to release on August 22, you now won’t be able to play it until mid-September. Techland says these additional weeks of development will allow for “extra polishing work” ahead of release.
This rids August of one of its biggest game launches alongside Mafia: The Old Country and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. Thankfully, the additional wait for Dying Light: The Beast is just four weeks.
What is the new release date for Dying Light: The Beast?
It’s now coming out the week after Borderlands 4
Originally set to be released for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X on August 22, Dying Light: The Beast will now launch on September 19. While we’ve certainly seen much more significant delays before in the video game industry, this does move this zombie game into a more crowded month that includes the likes of Borderlands 4 and Silent Hill f.
Techland revealed its reasoning behind the delay on Dying Light’s Pilgrim Outpost website. The message starts off by highlighting the positive previews recently posted on sites like The Gamer before going on to say that it wants to take some extra time to polish what they think is a “special, fun game.” The developer also broke down what they’ll specifically be doing over the next for weeks:
We understand that this may be disappointing, but our experience has shown how important the first impression is. With just four additional weeks, we can address final details that make all the difference between good and great. Areas we want to improve include finetuning the balance of gameplay elements, looking into clarity of UI, increasing the quality of physics, as well as tweaking cutscenes and player animations further as well as adding last little details.
While game delays are always disappointing, hopefully, these few final tweaks will elevate the game as a whole. It’s an interesting conclusion to Dying Light: The Beast’s journey to release. This is the third game in this open-world series, but it actually started life as DLC for 2022’s Dying Light 2.
It was making some significant changes to Dying Light 2’s formula, though. Kyle Crane, the protagonist of the first Dying Light, is returning as the protagonist, and he has access to new superhuman fury abilities that enable him to fight giant Chimera zombies in hand-to-hand combat. It was ultimately ambitious enough that Techland decided to spin it off into its own game.
I played Dying Light: The Beast at Summer Game Fest this year and enjoyed it, so I do believe that Techland likes the core experience and just wants to make a few more polishing tweaks ahead of launch instead of after launch.
