Dying Light: The Beast's Restored Land update is not a new game mode. It may as well be: baked into a gleaming re-release of last year's survival horror-action epic are new winning conditions, starvation mechanics, and developer Techland's own spin on one-life permadeath as per Baldur's Gate 3 Honor Mode, all wrapped up in a separate experience you can select from the main startup menu.
Lead producer Michał Broda has his reasons for avoiding the term 'mode'. "It's sort of diminishing the scale of things," he tells me. It makes sense; many of Techland's systems had to be reworked to accommodate the extra survival challenge, with our new goal being to eradicate zombies, cleanse the infection from Castor Woods, and let humanity take back territory. "What does it mean for crafting? What does it mean for shops? What does it mean for open world activities like dark zones or convoys or hideouts? We needed to change it. So, I tend not to call it a mode, because it just diminishes the scale of what we were doing and what we were trying to achieve throughout."
