"It's sort of like two games in one": Dying Light: The Beast's Restored Land update puts the survival back into survival horror

Dying Light: The Beast's Restored Land update is not a new game mode. It may as well be: baked into a gleaming re-release of last year's survival horror-action epic are new winning conditions, starvation mechanics, and developer Techland's own spin on one-life permadeath as per Baldur's Gate 3 Honor Mode, all wrapped up in a separate experience you can select from the main startup menu.

Lead producer Michał Broda has his reasons for avoiding the term 'mode'. "It's sort of diminishing the scale of things," he tells me. It makes sense; many of Techland's systems had to be reworked to accommodate the extra survival challenge, with our new goal being to eradicate zombies, cleanse the infection from Castor Woods, and let humanity take back territory. "What does it mean for crafting? What does it mean for shops? What does it mean for open world activities like dark zones or convoys or hideouts? We needed to change it. So, I tend not to call it a mode, because it just diminishes the scale of what we were doing and what we were trying to achieve throughout."

Devise and conquer

Stepping out into Castor Woods, eyeing up the new yellow hunger bar atop my health and beast mode meters, Kyle's journey already feels different. Excitement lurches in my stomach. I've never been one for Dying Light's tried and true "legacy save" endgame permutations, racking up legend levels to show off in co-op. I'm a solo gamer through and through, and Restored Land seems tailor-made for people like me.

Broda smiles when I tell him as much. "I think you're absolutely nailing that. And I think that there are different kinds of players and [things] players want to have from a game, and we are trying to give players a possibility to experience it in a way that they want to experience it."

Techland hasn't forgotten about you level-grind fans, though. As a total game re-release, Restored Land is part and parcel of a free update for all base-game owners as well as a replacement for all future copies of the game purchased from here-on out. The package delivers New Game +, Legend Levels, racing challenges, ray tracing, and a terrifying new Nightmare Mode to complete the overhaul.

"But we found that it's not the only way to experience it," says Broda. "There are players that are seeking a bit of different fantasy that is maybe not focusing on the endless loop, but rather on living through the fantasy of being in this world, and affecting this world with their actions in a permanent way."

The permanence of your actions as Kyle is immediately palpable in the world. Pulling out my map, a new overlay reveals a risk assessment for zones that are still overrun with infected, as well as those I've cleared and are safe for people to return to. These areas are slowly repopulated by a trickle of NPCs, humans Kyle can observe in their day-to-day interactions, granting access to precious survival resources and insight into stories of survival. All of it serves to pad out the realism of Castor Woods, enriched by the dense lore already at play – and, dare I say it, administer a shot of RPG flavor?

"I would agree with that," Broda says. "But the survival aspect of it was very important for us." Paramount to Restored Land's survival systems are hunger and battery charges. Kyle can craft protein bars using foraged ingredients like honey, lavender, and chamomile, expanding the utility of existing item systems, and batteries are still necessary to craft weapon mods as well as being all-important for recharging your flashlight. Run out of batteries, and you'll be in deep doo-doo when the Volatiles come a-knocking.

All this is bolstered by what Broda describes as "the ultimate experience" for survival-RPG fans – and, potentially, the game's biggest challenge yet. "We knew that we wanted to have a one life option. So you need to really secure the food. You have one life, so you need to eat. You need to be careful when defeating the enemies, but at the same time, when you do it, you do have this reward of living for its fantasy."

Let me tell you: one-life mode is no joke. Especially in the early game segments where Kyle is severely underpowered, armed with little more than a shovel and a hammer as he goes against his first Chimera. I died embarrassingly fast, of course, and a pathetic end game summary displays my shame like a tarnished badge of dishonor. Much like in Baldur's Gate 3, I can take it on the chin and end my journey here – or I can resurrect in regular campaign mode if I don't want to lose all 18 minutes of progress thus far.

A world of our own

With Restored Land leaning so heavily on the "survival" end of the best survival horror games, I find myself even more risk averse than usual. I avoid all night time encounters while I play my preview build (unless they are narrative beats, of course), and find myself going to ludicrous ends to keep Kyle safe and secure. Battery charges over weapon mods any day; I'll keep my basic crowbar, thanks.

Does amped up survival gameplay tone down the scares? "The night is still super, super scary," he tells me, specifically of the Alpha Volatile – Castor Woods' new big bad. The souped-up monster takes the already terrifying, almost-unkillable Volatile infected and turbo charges them for a nightmare I certainly did not ask for.

"The fun fact is that we still wanted players to be able to affect the night. So it's not like you will be able to get rid of the Volatiles. These are the ultimate threats. But you can reduce the numbers of Volatiles by completing the hives, so you can make nights a little bit safer, a little bit less scary, a little bit less horror-ish, if you are invested in that as well."

Now that, I can get on board with. Dying Light is one of the only horror games I know of where it's possible to sidestep the biggest horrors completely by choice. I joke about it with Broda – this is a reactive open world with night and day cycles, and without the need to tread a linear narrative like in Resident Evil Requiem, you really can sleep your way through the scariest bits. Is that something Techland is fine with, knowing some of us are just plain scaredy cats who get enough thrills from daytime variety shamblers?

"It's not necessarily a bad thing for me personally," Broda laughs. He's been with the team since 2015's first Dying Light game, and he sees the opt-out element as one of the series' biggest strengths. "It's sort of like two games in one," he says of that duality. "I think that if the player feels something and gets the emotion of the game from fearing the night, this is already a success, and if you want to avoid it, that's completely cool. It's the choice that you are making, and it strengthens, I think, the fantasy that you are living through."

It all boils down to that one magic word: fantasy. If The Beast is Kyle Crane's power fantasy as the ultimate human-infected hybrid, Restored Land is the fantasy of being underpowered instead. It's a more narrativized approach to the style and shape of classic Dying Light, forcing me to confront that tortured humanity still burning in Kyle after all those years of torment under The Baron's control.

Resources might be finite, but there's still a world of possibility at my fingertips. Approaching some of the game's biggest hurdles with a new air of self preservation and caution is not something I had on Kyle Crane's 2026 bingo card, but I can already feel The Beast pulling me back into Castor Woods to re-conquer a game I thought I'd squeezed every drop out of already.

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