The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Dying Light: The Beast.
While it’s certainly glad to see Kyle Crane back in Dying Light: The Beast, one might wish his return were under different circumstances, but it is what it is. After being captured by a brilliant but ruthless scientist known as “The Baron” and enduring over a decade of experiments, Crane has finally escaped the Baron’s clutches and is out for revenge. As a revenge tale, though, Dying Light: The Beast fails to truly capture the magic of what makes such a story so compelling, and that largely revolves around its development (or lack thereof) of the Baron.
Revenge stories are not typically about saving the world, but simply about one character seeking to end the life of another. As such, in order for those narratives to land with more impact, both the protagonist and the antagonist have to be well-developed — the backstory and character of the protagonist must be tragic and relatable enough to spread their hatred for the antagonist to the viewer, and the antagonist must be depicted as both relentlessly evil enough to deserve death and have a character arc with such depth that the villain’s demise will leave a gaping hole in the world. Unfortunately, Dying Light: The Beast‘s revenge narrative fails to truly make fans despise the Baron until it’s far too late for it to mean something.
Dying Light: The Beast's Baron Lacks the Fear Factor
A Villain Defined by Distance
From the beginning of Dying Light: The Beast‘s story, the whole point of the plot is clear: the Baron is bad, and Kyle Crane, while he might not be “good” in the traditional sense, has a justifiable score to settle. However, while the narrative does start with a major reveal of the Baron right from Crane’s eyes, that’s pretty much the last time players see him until the very end of the game. Rather than seeing the Baron and Crane regularly encounter one another, or even developing the Baron using occasional cinematics on the side, he is mostly defined by distance.
It’s more annoying than threatening, with frequent story beats that see Crane rushing back to Town Hall or somewhere else to save people from the Baron and his army. Those aren’t necessarily moments of character development for the Baron, though, but simply ways to remind players that he is, in fact, the antagonist of Dying Light: The Beast‘s narrative, as if they have forgotten. The biggest downside is that these moments really never lead to the players actually encountering the Baron, as he managed to either get away before Crane arrived or he was never there to begin with.
When Hatred Finally Catches Up
That being said, as Dying Light: The Beast begins its closing moments, there are plenty of reasons to hate the Baron. In what feels strikingly similar to The Walking Dead‘s brutal Negan scene, Crane sits at a dining table as he watches the Baron murder and attempt to kill some of his friends and more recent acquaintances. Here, the Baron’s truest colors are shown, and if he wasn’t really a true threat before, he is now. From then on, things really reach a peak for Dying Light: The Beast‘s revenge story, though it all comes to an end not much later.
It’s a shame that the Baron was really treated as more of a side character in Dying Light: The Beast than the character who defined Kyle Crane’s journey to begin with. If the game had given the Baron more screentime or allowed him and Crane to have more direct encounters, perhaps his death in the end would have meant even more. Nevertheless, at least he is eventually shown for what he truly is, and players get the satisfaction of smashing his transformed face in before the credits roll.