Dying Gentle: The Beast is a chief instance of constructing lemonade when god provides you lemons. Or leakers, within the case of Techland, which revealed it press throughout previews of the sport behind closed doorways at Gamescom 2024. Inside a small room, attendees had been trucking via a 30-40 minute playthrough of the upcoming Dying Gentle 2 spin-off. It got here because of some exhausting work and artistic considering following a fairly nasty information leak which gave up the plans for some Dying Gentle 2 DLC.

As an alternative of continuing with the plan, one that everybody now knew about, the Techland staff determined to pivot into creating The Beast, a kinda midway measure between a typical DLC and a complete new sport. It is shorter than a full sport for certain, and nonetheless has the skeleton of Dying Gentle 2 at its core, nevertheless it’s a complete new map with a returning character and a few good new gameplay options that ought to sweeten the deal.

Kyle Crane from Dying Gentle 1 is again, and he is all gruff and moody as you’d anticipate. He is spent the previous couple of years locked away in a lab, however now he is escaped and looking down the man who stored him there. To assist him get solutions and a little bit of vengeance he is bought a brand new sidekick chatting to him over the radio, and a few bestial powers that’ll go a good distance in preserving him alive. A fairly cool idea for a spin-off – suppose Useless Rising 2: Off the Report, however swap the hilarity for a sterner, extra stoic strategy and also you arrive on the basic vibe on supply right here.

With him come some new options, together with a load of weapons you’ll be able to fiddle with, thanks partially to a bigger give attention to human guards and goons standing in your means. There’s even a automobile you’ll be able to drive round, geared up with space for storing within the again for carrying round heavy quest objects and different junk. However maybe the largest inclusion comes within the type of Kyle’s beast type. Within the reveal trailer, he is depicted as this lone stalker, darting from bushes to take out armed guards. Within the gameplay demo we noticed? It is extra like he put his rubber Hulk arms on, swinging haymakers at zombies and throwing big concrete blocks round inside a restricted window.

I chuckled after I noticed it, I will not lie, the sight of some man simply boxing out a poor zombie in the midst of some scrapyard. The truth that Kyle has to get tremendous duper mad to make use of it first did not assist. It is a Hulk mode, and whereas the having the ability to rip the pinnacle off of a freak – a brand new large zombie boss-style enemy – is cool certain. Kyle is positioned as a lone werewolf with a machine gun, in a position to maintain his personal along with his survival expertise however with a darker, feral aspect to him. It will both sound fairly cool or undoubtedly cringe to you and you have simply bought to go along with your intestine on making that distinction.

In the end, Dying Gentle: The Beast is an admirable departure from the bottom sport, with sufficient added in there to warrant its standalone place. I’m an enormous fan of how those that purchased the Final Version of Dying Gentle 2 get The Beast totally free – it isn’t the participant’s fault that this morphed into its personal factor in spite of everything. However with The Beast now practically right here, I discover myself wanting the following huge factor from Techland. A Dying Gentle 3, a brand new journey alltogether. The staff have performed nice work with the sport, and are pulling that base quantity of labor into cool new instructions.

Dying Gentle 2 solely got here out in February 2022 (I do know proper, it appears like endlessly in the past) and Techland’s managed to do so much with it since then. It is launched one million totally different bundles, a reloaded version, and numerous updates alongside the way in which. Watching The Beast, it felt to me like a superb ending level. Deliver within the previous foremost character, give him a correct ship off, then take the complete franchise into the sundown or in direction of a brand new horizon, possibly? Now’s the time for it.

So if you wish to rejoice Dying Gentle, The Beast looks as if a great way to take action. There isn’t any launch date but, neither is there a price ticket for it, regardless of questions on the topic coming quick and infrequently at Gamescom. Preserve an eye fixed out for it, particularly in case you’re a Dying Gentle fan.