Dying Light: The Beast's open world is "a secret mystery box" where "very f*cked up things" happen, but I'm most intrigued by the Stranger Things vibes

If you caught my Dying Light: The Beast hands-on preview, you'll already know that two of Techland's biggest inspirations for the game were Twin Peaks and Stranger Things. But not only does the "desolate valley" landscape of Castor Woods drive at a similar sense of atmosphere, described by franchise director Tymon Smektała as "a microcosm of a number of weird things," Dying Light: The Beast is pulling at some creepy, paranormal threads this time around.

"Another inspiration was the Netflix Guillermo Del Toro series, Cabinet of Curiosities, which is like a set of spooky, weird stories, and each one is different," says Smektała. The Beast riffs off anthology horror to create layers of lore throughout Castor Woods – it's "a treasure box, a secret mystery box, where you're finding secrets on top of secrets. Collectibles were designed with that particular reason in mind," he adds – and that fact alone has me hyped for what might come next.

Skin(walker) deep

The principle of lore and secrets guides much of The Beast's worldbuilding, and that extends to its bad guys.

"We've built a whole family tree for for the Baron, and we decided that basically, his whole family is kind of fucked up in their own way," Smektała explains, with the player able to find "newspaper clippings which kind of show you their backstory". A twisted family lording over a remote, isolated valley? Suddenly, I'm feeling the Far Cry 5 vibes more than Eddie Munson's.

Cool as those lore-drops sound, though, the collectible that stuck with me following my four-hours hands-on session was a scavenged episode of Pepper Sparks' Hidden Truths podcast. Smektała's eyes light up as I mention it. "This [collectible] in particular is my baby," he grins. "I wanted this one to be the game. So thank you for [mentioning] that. Like, really, you really made my day!"

The collectible in question is one that, to my mind, epitomizes everything Dying Light: The Beast is trying to do with its lore. It unveils a curious new truth about the franchise – that legends of cryptids, folklore, and supernatural mythology very much exist in The Beast – while expanding the scope of what's yet to come. It also makes the game feel that much more relatable. Who didn't get hooked on podcasts over the COVID-19 pandemic, after all?

"We also wanted to kind of add this element of creepiness, of uncertainty," Smektała hints. "There are lots of very fucked up things going in the game. You've only played the beginning of it, but even in the main story, it starts to get quite strange in the Stranger Things type of way. So that was the choice: to create a world which surprises you and where you don't really know what to expect behind every twist and turn."

Roads converge

Smektała's enthusiasm for my Twin Peaks-like Pepper Sparks discovery had me wondering if, perhaps, she might be the big hint to the series' future that Smektała had mentioned last time he spoke to GamesRadar+.

However, it's not as simple as that. "To clarify, she's not the next hero of the next game. Yes, the ending of Dying Light: The Beast shows a little bit of what you can expect in the future, and also the collectibles [offer] some hints about what else we are thinking about, what else can happen in Dying Light," Smektała says. So, would the eagle-eyed among us manage to suss it out for themselves?

Again, not quite. "I don't think it's that obvious," he laughs. "Like, we know what we want to do in the future, and hopefully those plans will come into fruition. But knowing this, it allows us to have some fun by hiding things here and there, which will not make sense right now, but at some point in the future, you will play another Dying Light game, and you will look back at The Beast and say 'Aha!'"

While unexpected from a survival horror series like this, the supernatural mystery elements add a surprising amount of depth to Castor Woods, drawing you further into an intricate web of oddities with each new discovery. It all begs the question: if zombies exist here, what else lies in wait?

At the end of the day, just how paranormal Dying Light is going to get is something none of us can predict at the moment – not even Techland. "We are just trying to have some fun with this," Smektała says of the gorgeous open world we're set to explore on August 22. "We are here for the long run. So it's nice to put some seeds in the soil right now and see how they will blossom in the future."

We're rolling out the blood-red carpet for plenty of upcoming horror games this summer, starting with Dying Light: The Beast