It's been an absolutely wild month here at Techland! We're in the thick of what I'm calling the "Summer of Dying Light," delivering updates and big news across all three Dying Light games. Just a few weeks ago, we dropped the first gameplay for Dying Light: The Beast, revealed its release date, and kicked off pre-orders (if you haven't seen it, check out my last dev blog). I'm incredibly proud of what we're building with The Beast - it’s the culmination of more than 10 years of experience in open-world survival horror!

But here's the thing: we never forget where we came from. That's why, this week, we're not just looking forward - we're rolling out significant updates for both the original Dying Light and Dying Light 2: Stay Human. We promised to support our games for a long time, and we're committed to continuing that support, right through and beyond the launch of Dying Light: The Beast.

Let’s be clear: Enhancements, not Remaster!

Back in January, when we celebrated the 10th Anniversary of Dying Light, I announced that we are working on a new update for the original Dying Light. Ten years later and the game that started it all is still going strong! When I looked online the day after the video, my heart skipped a beat. Quite a few of you were expecting a full remaster of some sort.

So, let's set the record straight: the Retouched Update is about squeezing out even more from the Dying Light you already love. It’s not a complete overhaul or remaster.

Even without the update, Dying Light still holds up pretty well - just imagine that it’s 10 years old! But to truly explain what we've changed, I sat down with the brilliant minds who made it happen: Grzegorz Świstowski, our Technical Game Director, and Krzysztof Knefel, Lead 3D Artist: 

"One of the best things about working with your own engine is that the people building it are just next door," explains Grzegorz Świstowski, our Technical Game Director. "Over the past couple of years, we've added a lot, customized a lot, and learned how to squeeze more from the tech we already have. One day, someone just started applying those learnings to some old assets - and it just clicked that we could do that across the whole game."

So we put some more people on it. We started increasing texture quality of surroundings and upscaling them to create a sharper, better look in the game. “It was a lot of manual work - but increasing the texture resolution or quality can have a huge impact on how the environment appears on screen,” said Krzysztof Knefel. Just look at the comparison of these wooden wall panels!

Krzysztof spent a lot of time by manually adjusting and tweaking assets, squeezing out every last bit of visual quality. A big part of this involved improving lighting and PBR (physics based rendering). “With so many years of experience with PBR we're improving how metallic surfaces reflect light or react physically to the world which makes them look a lot more realistic!” You can see the difference on the metal hangar walls below.

We also made some smaller tweaks and changes to the code that have a big impact on details in Harran. “We’ve increased the maximum LOD (level of detail) range from 260% to 340% in the view distance menu in the game options. This means players who are running on modern and better systems can increase the distance of highly detailed assets being loaded into the game and balance increased GPU/CPU load on their own,” explains Grzegorz Świstowski. 

But one of the biggest differences will be visible on floors and cement walls. We’re introducing a new 8K Ultra shadow quality and improved the lighting options of many surfaces and with these new shadows, a lot of surfaces that previously looked rather flat now really pop out and get depth! 

The Sound of Harran

Beyond just how it looks, we wanted to dial up the very atmosphere of Harran. Sound and music is crucial for immersion, and we’ve gone all out to make it an experience. The maestro himself, Paweł Blaszczak, the original composer, came back to give the soundtrack a complete remaster. Get this: he even recreated that retro-tape sound by actually recording on tape! Talk about dedication. It’s authentic, nostalgic, and absolutely fantastic. 

We’ve woven in brand new tracks and ambient sounds throughout the game, deepening the mood and cranking up the tension as you explore. And we seriously juiced up the hit reaction audio in combat. Every swing, every crunch, every zombie takedown will sound more satisfying, more impactful. You’ll feel those hits.

Why it took a while

A lot of you have been asking in the last few months about the Retouched Update - where it was, why it was taking so long. The honest answer is this: We were working with 10+ year old technology. Even with all the new experience we've gained over the years, figuring out how to apply those learnings to the original Dying Light engine while keeping everything stable was a challenge.

And let me tell you, it was a massive amount of manual work. Krzysztof literally became the undisputed master of Harran: "I basically walked through the entire map, looking for assets to be improved. And all of those had to be changed manually by our artists."

Crucially, we also made it a top priority not to change the game's system requirements. "You can't just crank up the details and hope it still works on everyone's system," Grzegorz explains. "Especially on consoles – we were testing endlessly to ensure we didn't run out of memory on last-gen consoles." It was a delicate balancing act, but we cracked it. And now? It's finally ready!

Explore Kyle Crane’s origin story with this free update

The Dying Light: Retouched Update will be completely free for all Dying Light owners on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S and will roll out on June 26, 2025. The level of changes may vary by platform. 

With the update out before the release of Dying Light: The Beast it’s the best time to jump right back into Kyle Crane’s origin story if you haven’t played Dying Light yet. And even if you have, it’s worth heading back to Harran. 

Good night. And good luck!