Preview: Dying Light: The Beast Pulls a Lost Legacy as DLC Turned Full PS5 Game Impresses

While it only has a single marketing beat to its name in the form of a Gamescom Opening Night Live reveal trailer, studio Techland might be selling its Dying Light 2 DLC turned full game a little short. Based on a demo played to us live at the German expo, Dying Light: The Beast wouldn't raise many eyebrows if it had been announced and pitched as a fully-fledged spin-off to the main series. It essentially is that, with its own standalone open world, story, direction, mechanics, and more.

In the same way Naughty Dog spun Uncharted: The Lost Legacy out into its own game and didn't charge owners of the Uncharted 4 season pass anything to play, Ultimate Edition players of Dying Light 2 don't need to pay a penny for The Beast. A roughly 30-minute demo of what the spin-off has to offer suggests Techland is really going above and beyond.

Picking up early on in the campaign — which is said to last around 18 hours — our demo follows returning protagonist Kyle Crane as he tracks down a scientist who helped keep him captive for more than a decade. They're also running experiments on zombies that are giving rise to more types of undead called Freaks, and the session concludes with a boss fight against one.

As Kyle sprints through the new, currently unnamed city, the PS5, PS4 spin-off feels more like the first game than the second. While Techland representatives at the show never spelt this return of direction out, The Beast comes across more like a sequel to the original game than what the actual Dying Light 2 was. The city looks a lot denser and more tightly compact, allowing for a lot more parkour between buildings and fights in claustrophobic spaces with zombies.

It's the Dying Light gameplay that put the series on the map in the first place, except more refined. There's once again a grappling hook to expand your movement capabilities, which helps you get about a play zone Techland is suggesting looks like a lasagne: "multi-layered and stuffed with tasty goodies," as franchise director Tymon Smektala put it.

On the combat side, brutal melee weapons remain the focus, but it appears guns will play a significantly bigger role in The Beast. The Techland employee leading our demo started with a pistol, but as main character Kyle is being hunted down by his former captives, he can get assault rifles and shotguns a lot more easily than any other Dying Light title in the past. Gunfights seem pretty common now, representing a shift in the focus of action. Melee weapons could be reserved for the undead while human enemies invite bullet spray — you still have the option of reversing those roles for the right occasion, however.

Building on the buggy seen in Dying Light DLC The Following, there are now drivable cars in The Beast. The demo sees Kyle transporting a gas canister out to a nearby forest to draw the attention of a new zombie type, with fuel management necessary for getting it to run. It's an extra wrinkle on top of a new combat focus and beast powers that help to make The Beast stand apart from its predecessors, achieving a slightly different spin on the Dying Light formula.

Those new beast powers were only utilised once during our demo, but as a Freak threatened to become the victor in a boss fight, they were activated to hand Kyle more strength, a higher jump, extra damage, and the ability to throw much heavier objects like cinder blocks. He's also able to perform an execution-style finishing move that rips the heads off of enemies; the fate the Freak in question met. It wasn't clear in the hands off session whether these abilities could be quickly recharged to be used again a few minutes later, but it's clear they provide exceedingly powerful buffs that'll help rescue you from difficult situations.

As the demo closes, and the dangers of night turn into day, Kyle awakes to a rainstorm. Techland says better weather effects are just one of the tech improvements it's packing into The Beast under the hood, which will play out across multiple biomes in the open world: a town area, swamp, and industrial section are a few places listed off by the Polish developer.

We can't speak to how the game actually feels to play and control due to the hands off nature of the Gamescom demo, but based on experiences with the two previous Dying Light games, a sense of familiarity and progress in the right places was conveyed throughout our press appointment. This is still the Dying Light its fanbase loves — especially those who swear the first one is best — but with some tweaks here and there, it generates the same sort of excitement and potential that fuelled Dying Light 2 pre-release — despite the fact it's an expansion now separated into a standalone game. That caveat shouldn't be seen as a deterrent. Dying Light: The Beast shows just as much promise as any other, numbered instalment in the franchise. Subscribing to the structure and tone of the first game slightly more than the second, it could just be the best one yet.

Dying Light: The Beast doesn't have a confirmed release date yet, but it will be free for owners of the Ultimate Edition of Dying Light 2. The standalone price hasn't been announced yet. Are you happy to hear this spin-off is shaping up nicely? Post your thoughts in the comments below.