Open world games are not about scale. Dying Light: The Beast creator explains what he thinks is most important

The director of the Dying Light series believes that the scale of the world is less important than its proper density. The developer wants players to be constantly occupied with something.

Martin Bukowski

Open world games are not about scale. Dying Light: The Beast creator explains what he thinks is most important, image source: Techland.
Open world games are not about scale. Dying Light: The Beast creator explains what he thinks is most important Source: Techland.

The upcoming Dying Light: The Beast will offer a smaller world map than the sequel released a few years ago, but according to Techland, it gains a lot thanks to manual crafting. As a result, players will have more fun on it than on much larger areas.

Big maps don't matter

Open worlds are not about scale. They're about your feeling of being there. So we can create an open-world that's maybe not as expansive, but if it's hand-crafted, if it feels real, the player's satisfaction of being in that world is much bigger.

The above words belong to Tymon Smektala, the director of the Dying Light series, who recently spoke with GamesRadar+. He pointed out that in other games, "there are usually activity centers," between which not much really happens. Techland, on the other hand, wants the player to be constantly occupied.

We were trying to make Dying Light games open-world games where you are constantly playing, where you are constantly interacting with the controller, where you're constantly pushing buttons.

Such a solution made Smektala believe that "Dying Light is probably one of the most dense open-world games on the market." Of course, it will be no different in The Beast - according to the developers, the game will offer a world in which "we constantly look around ourselves." Considering that it's filled with hordes of zombies, it really shouldn't be any different.

Dying Light: The Beast will be released on August 22, on PC, PS4, PS5, XOne, and XSX/S. Techland assures that the game will avoid the mistakes made in Stay Human and will keep the essence of the first installment of the series.

Dying Light: The Beast

August 22, 2025

PC PlayStation Xbox
Want It!
Like it?

0

Martin Bukowski

Author: Martin Bukowski

Graduate of Electronics and Telecommunications at the Gdańsk University of Technology, who decided to dedicate his life to video games. In his childhood, he would get lost in the Gothic's Valley of Mines and "grind for gold" in League of Legends. Twenty years later, games still entertain him just as much. Today, he considers the Persona series and soulslike titles from From Software as his favorite games. He avoids consoles, and a special place in his heart is reserved for PC. In his spare time, he works as a translator, is creating his first game, or spends time watching movies and series (mainly animated ones).