Gore Impressions - Dying Light: The Beast

The new Dying Light is upon us and here are some thoughts on the response on the receiving end.

I've been using mods while playing this, that I consider to be pretty much QOL necessities.

• RGB's Infinite Weapon Duriability - yes, weapons breaking are a realistic mechanic, but frankly I've always found that to be an annoyance in this sort of a game.

• Vaxis's Gore Mod (1.4) - what it does is just get everything to stick around longer. The blood for ~5 minutes, and the bodies will stick around for as long as you`re in the area. The current version of the mod features a new blood pool too, so for my coverage I'm using version 1.4.

  
  

So this is a review of the vanilla effects as they are, the mess just sticks around.

Body damage

That is going to consist almost entirely of 2 factors - dismemberment and damage variations.

In terms of dismemberment we have 3 points of amputation per limb, the head can come off and there are 2 variations for characters cut in half. A horizontal and a sort of vertical one.

The larger focus here however is the damage variations. They've mentioned in one of the pre-release blogs that they're expanding this aspect and they weren't kidding. There are A LOT of variations. Ranging from relatively mild ones for unarmed melee (just a tad more severe than what you may see in a UFC fight). Through nastier ones when you pick up your first bladed weapon (chunks of the character cut out). And the peak is the response you'll see for the blunt melee weapons.

The latter are ABSOLUTELY NASTY, and that is the big strength of using such variations. When you have talented artists, and Techland absolutely does, what they can craft will absolutely blow you away.

However, there are issues.

The variations approach has several key limitations:

• The variations are going to be used interchangeably. You will have some variations used for literally everything that the game has, that includes your fists. As you can imagine, a variation that's made with a shotgun in mind won't look great for a machete.

• If there's no variation for any specific spot that you hit, you'll just get activation of the generic bloody overlay. And we're not talking about revealing a part of it at the point of impact, as you have in Verdun for example. You'll have it revealed all over the body. There are no decals at the point of impact for a milder response.

• It means that you will be seeing the same variations over and over again. It's not really an issue when it comes with a wound at the point of impact for milder impacts (think Left 4 Dead 2), but when variations are all you have this limitation will quickly be telling.

So, as I've mentioned in the video review too, my biggest hope for a potential next title would be a proper response at the point of impact. And we are now in a stage when that response at the point of impact can be something more interesting than a decal.

While a Dead Island 2 style body damage system is not something we can expect, a more simple, but still visceral multi layer system should be doable.

Environment

The response here is going to consist almost entirely of stains for the initial impact, and blood pools.

These mechanics are going to be consistent, I haven't noticed any issues with activation. And in the case of blood pools, you will have puddles below severed body parts too, which is a lovely touch.

The looks won't blow you away, the patterns are going to be pretty standard, so no exceptionally nasty splats or The Last of Us style blood pools.

You may recall a dev blog mentioning them playing around with fake blood. Unfortunately that seems to have been used entirely for the pre made blood on the environment, not for the responses.

I do want to note a few fun touches:

• You will have a splat stain appear when you drop a character from a height, and when you leg cannon them. Along with the body damage it will make such impacts (especially the falls from a height) feel much more visceral. Most games miss this one out, DL:Beast didn't.

• And, for the hazmat suit guy, when his tank explodes there's going to be a large, beautiful splat stain. There's only one missout though - there are no "solid" remains, he turns into that one big splat. Left 4 Dead 2 style mangled variations (specifically the explosive response) and some smaller gibs would have made a big difference here.

And as for the aftermaths - the results you'll get with the mod - of the bodies sticking around and the blood having a fairly high threshold is something that I think should be the standard.

But, the best option is to have this be configurable. For the very least, to be able to determine that distance of how far you have to go for the mess to start despawning.

But preferably you should have the option to configure how many bodies can stay, and once your threshold is met, you would have all of the mess for the character vanish too. The blood, the body parts and all of that. So as long as the character sticks around - all the mess that he caused remains there too, and the variable would be how many characters can your machine handle.

Animations

In this aspect, there won't be a great deal of physics, but beside that, it honestly is pretty great.

Nice responses for the impacts, characters can be knocked over, ragdolling a character into a crowd will cause a ripple effect, the death animations that are in are just great and you will see characters survive some pretty gnarly mutilation, with a change of behavior when limbs are removed (can't walk with a missing leg, can't attack with a missing arm).

But as I mentioned, there isn't a great deal of physics involved. You will have many kills ragdoll a character, when they go beyond the edge of a rooftop a ragdoll will be activated, and that will feel satisfying. But there are no features like active ragdoll, physics based stumbling and stuff like that. You will have the "stiff" animations that can, when appropriate, transition into a ragdoll.

So, when that's the case, the main point of feedback I have here would be to add more death animations in the vein of what's there now.

I really liked the ones that are in, but there's just very few of them.

Conclusion

In the bottom line, it's very close to being in the state where I can recommend it for the gore, but it's not quite there. That's primarily for the limitations in the body damage. As great as the variations can be, relying on that alone will leave this aspect feeling lacking.

What makes it stand out

• A great deal of damage variations, and exceptionally nasty ones for blunt weapon head impacts

• Very solid animation functionality. If you'll remember the old RM videos - this is basically what I was talking about when it comes to animation functionality for zombie games.

Key points of feedback

• Proper response at the point of impact body damage wise is very much needed.

• Better spilling on dismembering hits too. You only have that initial response on the impact and the blood pool, so you will be seeing blood pour from the stump leaving no stains.

• Configurability for the aftermaths aspect. The mod does alleviate that to some degree, but the player should have more control.

If you're enjoying the coverage consider supporting on Patreon, or if you prefer to get something physical directly from me check out the art store. From cool paintings, prints to cute animal mugs. No dropshipping, never AI, my mom is the artist and I'm handling the fulfillment.

Demonstrations: