Techland has released its post-launch roadmap for its free-running, zombie-dropkicking spinoff Dying Light: The Beast. As gaming roadmaps go, it's closer to what you'd scribble on the back of a packet of ciggies than the cartographical masterpieces produced by Ordnance Survey, with Techland's plans stretching over just 11 weeks. But this pencil-scrawl to your local newsagent nonetheless has a few landmarks worth visiting between now and the end of the year.
The most significant of these is probably new game plus, which Techland describes as being "highly anticipated" in its Steam post detailing the roadmap. Personally, the absolute last thing I want to do after putting a 30+ hour game to bed is immediately start playing it again, but it appears I am in the minority on this. Elsewhere, the next few weeks will also introduce 'Legend Levels', a new nightmare difficulty, extra weapon executions, and ray tracing on PC.
Techland doesn't specify precisely when each of these updates will arrive, but my guess is they'll be drip-fed alongside the roadmap's initial reveal—a series of weekly community challenges Techland has dubbed 'Call of the Beast'. These will provide players with rewards for collectively completing certain tasks. The first challenge is lumberjack-themed and will furnish players with a new vehicle skin and a woodcutter's axe for cutting off 30 million and 60 million limbs respectively.
While the prospect of an 11-week roadmap is a little silly, you could interpret it as a positive reflection on how complete The Beast felt on launch, certainly compared to Dying Light 2. Techland spent literal years fixing the sequel after the initial version went down poorly with players, following a purportedly chaotic development.
I likewise prefer The Beast over Dying Light 2, though as Chris Livingstone correctly pointed out in his Dying Light: The Beast review, it is a less ambitious effort overall. "No more claiming sections of the city for factions, or setting up networks of two-way ziplines and jump pads, or soaring through the air with a paraglider," he wrote last month. "The zany parkour sandbox has been toned down to resemble a purer survival horror experience."
Then again, the industry seems to be in a soul-searching mode right now, with numerous games returning to basics to rediscover what made them great. Battlefield 6 is the most notable of these, with its down-to-Earth military setting and classic implementation of modes like Conquest proving a huge hit with players. Dying Light: The Beast shares much of Battlefield's design impetus, and the response has been similarly positive.
