Dying Light: The Beast Announced With A Trailer Teasing The Return Of The First Game's Protagonist

Techland revealed Dying Light: The Beast, the latest addition to the open-world zombie series, with a new trailer that teases the return of the original game's protagonist, Kyle Crane, as its playable character. The announcement came with a trailer during Gamescom Opening Night Live.

The trailer is light on details, but switches perspectives between a group of soldiers and an unseen creature that rips them apart--which, given what Crane says when he finally appears on screen, seems likely to be the player-character. Check out the trailer below.

"Every man has an animal within. If you push too much, you might unleash the beast," Crane says cryptically. So 10 bucks says you get to play as a mutant monster in addition to a sneaky, parkouring zombie-hunter, as we see in some gameplay clips in the back half of the trailer.

Afterward, Opening Night Live host Geoff Keighley provided a little more context, calling The Beast "a new zombie adventure set in the Dying Light world with 20 hours of gameplay, a new open-world region, and more." So this sounds somewhere between an expansion to Dying Light 2 and a full-blown, standalone title.

Dying Light 2: Stay Human released back in 2022, bringing back the series' signature parkour-heavy traversal system along with deeper progression and narrative choices. We were mixed on the sequel, with Mark Delaney saying in his review, "While Dying Light 2's most-crucial element, first-person parkour, is certainly better than it's even been in this massive sequel, much of the rest of the game fails to keep up."