Dying Light: The Beast will incorporate more than 170 different character models for its various types of zombies, providing plenty of variety for players’ eyes. Keeping up a sense of realism and humanity has been important to Dying Light: The Beast‘s designers, and the staggering number of enemy models should help to preserve those qualities.
After a delay from its original planned launch date of August 22 and a slight bump forward from its second target of September 19, Dying Light: The Beast is now set for release on September 18. Though it was originally envisioned as a DLC for Dying Light 2, players will resume the role of Kyle Crane, the hero from the series’ original 2015 game, and not Dying Light 2 protagonist Aiden Caldwell.
Dying Light: The Beast Includes 170+ Realistic Zombie Character Models
A new blog post attached to the game’s Steam profile goes into detail on the artistic direction behind the zombies’ designs, explaining how character concept artist Charidimos Bitsakakis’ vision purposefully dives into the uncanny valley to provide “human-like realism that’s hard to look at, yet impossible to ignore.” The bulk of the designs will belong to two main types of zombies in Dying Light: The Beast. There will be more than 110 different variants of Biters, the most common enemy type in the game. These classic zombies have undergone a major redesign, no longer appearing dried-out and mummified, but freshly bloated and wet. Biters will come in a variety of body shapes and sizes, and some special versions will provide unique hazards and challenges, while also showing traces of their humanity in subtle ways, like staring in disbelief at one of their limbs after it’s been torn off.
In addition to Biters, there will be almost 60 versions of Virals, victims of Dying Light: The Beast‘s villainous Baron‘s experiments. While not quite as numerous as their standard-fare zombie counterparts, players should expect variety from these lab-created zombies in both appearance and behavior, as different versions will include special abilities and skills like spewing acid or feats of immense physical strength.
Finally, while the fewest in number and the farthest from their pre-death forms, Dying Light: The Beast’s Chimeras will provide the greatest challenge for players, and their twisted designs foreshadow the danger they represent. To create these hulking beasts, the design team performed medical research on human muscles and tissues, resulting in horrifying skinless abominations with features like bones tearing through their rotten flesh, jaws that are split down the middle, and weaponized hands that are distorted in size and shape.
