In an interview, Tymon Smektala spoke about how open-world games aren’t necessarily fun because of the size of their worlds.

Dying Light: The Beast, much like other titles in the Dying Light franchise, will feature an open world that players can freely explore. Speaking about the game in a recent interview with GamesRadar, franchise director Tymon Smektala said that the most enjoyable thing about an open world game is rarely the size of the world; rather, it’s about how fun it is to explore the world.

“Open worlds are not about scale.” said Smektala. “They’re about your feeling of being there. So we can create an open-world that’s maybe not as expansive, but if it’s hand-crafted, if it feels real, the player’s satisfaction of being in that world is much bigger.”

Smektala brings up how other open world games tend to have “hubs of activities”, but there rarely tends to be anything in between these hubs. With Dying Light: The Beast, developer Techland is trying to avoid this type of game structure. Smektala said that “we were trying to make Dying Light open-world games where you are constantly playing, where you are constantly interacting with the controller, where you’re constantly pushing buttons.”

“Dying Light is probably one of the most dense open-world games on the market,” he said, continuing that the studio wants to make a world “where you are constantly looking around you, where you are constantly in the zone, in the feeling of it all.”

In an earlier interview, Smektala had spoken about how the studio saw itself as an underdog, and how it ended up losing some of the DNA of the Dying Light franchise when it made Dying Light 2 Stay Human. While the game was a commercial success, Smektala admitted that “maybe we made some missteps.”

“Our fans were telling us ‘that’s not it, that’s not what made you so special,’” Smektala said, referring to the studio wanting to provide a more polished AAA experience with Dying Light 2 Stay Human. Ultimately, however, he notes that the studio is now aiming to provide players with both aspects – polish as well as the core Dying Light DNA.

“We want to deliver both,” he said. “We want to deliver the AAA quality, but at the same time, we want to deliver proof that our mojo is not gone, that our mojo is not there, and we know what makes Dying Light, Dying Light. And if players say ‘wow, this feels like Dying Light 1, and it looks so amazing, it’s such a polished game’, then I think we’ll be very, very happy.”

Just last week, Dying Light: The Beast had gotten a new trailer where we got to see the game’s primary setting of Castor Woods. Once a lively, busy tourist town, Castor Woods has fallen quite far in the wake of the zombie outbreak. Along with the town of Castor Woods itself, players will also be able to explore its surrounding areas, including a lush forest in the nearby national park.

Dying Light: The Beast is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on August 22.