Techland’s Dying Light: The Beast will introduce players to a whole new threat in the form of Chimeras, major boss enemies that represent the calamity unleashed by The Baron. These Chimeras will also prove vital to the player’s progression through Dying Light: The Beast, unlocking more power for returning protagonist Kyle Crane.
Kyle Crane in Dying Light: The Beast will need more than parkour skills and combat prowess to thwart the schemes of the new antagonist, The Baron. Fortunately, the newly disheveled Crane will be able to access ‘Beast Mode’ and the abilities that come with it to even the playing field. These abilities can be earned by spending Beast skill points in an ability tree, and these points can be reaped by killing Chimeras, the big bosses of Dying Light: The Beast. Game Rant sat down with members of the Techland team, including franchise director Tymon Smektala and game director Nathan Lemaire, to discuss the role of these Chimera enemies and how they changed through the development process.
Dying Light: The Beast’s Chimeras Explained
The Evolving Design of Chimeras
The term ‘Chimera’ derives from Greek mythology as the name for a creature composed of lion, goat, and snake body parts. The term has since come to refer to hybrid creatures generally in fantasy or sci-fi works, or even merely creatures that result from scientific aberration or mutation (a similar evolution to the term ‘Homunculus’). Dying Light: The Beast‘s Chimeras don’t completely evoke the idea of hybrid creatures, but they fit the bill of body-horror science experiments.
These Chimera bosses will be particularly formidable when Dying Light: The Beast releases, serving as skinless, twisted amalgams that will truly test Crane’s mettle. When discussing the Chimeras, Smektala detailed their design history:
“We went through a number of designs to find something we liked. At one point they were walking tools of destruction, with actual weapons ‘merged’ with their bodies. We had them presented as real victims of experimentation, still wearing torn lab clothes. As always in the pre-production phase, the imagination was wild. Yet, in the end, we decided to focus on something really scary—the body horror—and here the human anatomy books proved to be the most valuable inspiration.”
Smektala has mentioned the point regarding human anatomy in previous interviews about Dying Light: The Beast, but this design history is worth noting. Having the Chimeras be undead merged with weapons would result in an interesting parallel to the creature’s namesake; the idea of giving the Chimeras human qualities would add to the overall tragedy. On the other hand, the final design for the Chimeras is certainly an effective direction, with the designs revealed thus far doing a lot to distinguish themselves from the average zombie in Dying Light: The Beast.
Check Out a Takedown of a Chimera
The Role of Chimeras
When it comes to the gameplay of Dying Light: The Beast, Lemaire discussed the function of these boss creatures. Lemaire described the Chimeras as “heavy modifications of our iconic enemies with unique move sets and memorable gameplay experiences,” with Smektala adding that he views Chimeras as “big, hulking enemies (with some twists!) created by Baron, who are our way of introducing more boss battles to the game.” Lemaire then went on to describe the intrinsic reasoning behind Chimeras, detailing how defeating these enemies will unlock further Beast Mode abilities for Crane:
“There’s a nice narrative explanation for it, but in simple “game terms”—Kyle kills Chimeras, which gives him Beast skill points, which he can spend on new Beast abilities to use in Beast Mode. We have both combat and parkour abilities to support our core pillars. The agency players have over Beast Mode also evolves. At the beginning, it is something Kyle cannot control. By harnessing the DNAs of Chimeras, he will eventually be able to, changing the whole perspective on how players will use it.”
