If you caught my Dying Light: The Beast hands-on preview, you'll already know that two of Techland's biggest inspirations for the game were Twin Peaks and Stranger Things. But not only does the "desolate valley" landscape of Castor Woods drive at a similar sense of atmosphere, described by franchise director Tymon Smektała as "a microcosm of a number of weird things," Dying Light: The Beast is pulling at some creepy, paranormal threads this time around.
"Another inspiration was the Netflix Guillermo Del Toro series, Cabinet of Curiosities, which is like a set of spooky, weird stories, and each one is different," says Smektała. The Beast riffs off anthology horror to create layers of lore throughout Castor Woods – it's "a treasure box, a secret mystery box, where you're finding secrets on top of secrets. Collectibles were designed with that particular reason in mind," he adds – and that fact alone has me hyped for what might come next.
