At Summer Game Fest 2025, Wccftech's Kai Tatsumoto met with Techland Dying Light Franchise Director Tymon Smektala to discuss the Polish studio's upcoming game, Dying Light: The Beast.
Ahead of the full interview's publication, here's an interesting tidbit: Smektala not only defends the decision to make Dying Light: The Beast a standalone game (it started as a DLC for Dying Light 2: Stay Human) but also reveals that Techland wishes to release games more often, shortening their average development cycles.
I understand why some players might think, 'oh, it started as a small thing and now they charge full price, they just want to sell it as the next game.' But it actually is, it is the return of Kyle Crane. The campaign is comparable to the previous games, and I think it really is the best Dying Light game we have ever made. One day, we realized we had a new game on our hands.
That realization is also something that we would like to assume moving forward as a developer. Because both Dying Light 1 and 2 took seven years to make. We think that with a slightly different approach, with a bigger focus, we can release games more often. We are probably looking at a three or four year cycle, and I think that Dying Light: The Beast is the first step in that direction.
Indeed, when you consider that Dying Light 2: Stay Human launched in February 2022 and Dying Light: The Beast is set to launch in late August 2025, there's just about three and a half years between the two releases. More importantly, this strategy stands out in stark opposition to regular triple-A development, which is continuously getting longer. Nowadays, the average triple-A game requires five or more years to be properly finished, assuming things don't go very wrong somewhere in the process.
It is undoubtedly a bold strategy from Techland, though we'll have to play Dying Light: The Beast first before assessing if it can be successfully pulled off. Stay tuned for our full interview with Tymon Smektala, which is going up shortly.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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