While Dying Light: The Beast may have started out as DLC, it's grown and spun out into a standalone title that, as director Tymon Smektala told Play Magazine, "remotivated" Techland's efforts on the Dying Light series.
Bringing back original protagonist Kyle Crane for a roughly 20-hour adventure is art director Katarzyna Tamcka's dream project.
She says she wants to "focus on this and soak in every moment." It's not everyday your Dying Light 2 DLC plans leak to the public and you decide to spin it out into a full-blown standalone title.
However, that wasn't always the case. After locking in Kyle Crane's original voice actor Craig Smith, Smektala says "everyone was extremely agitated" as nerves rose for the DLC project.
By the second week of development the team was quickly realizing the scope of this thing was getting larger and larger, with some on the team saying "this is not DLC anymore," according to Smektala.