• Interview
• Video

Dead by Daylight creative director talks perk overhaul, map balance & Wesker

Behaviour Interactive's Dave Richard spoke to us about the massive endeavor of perk overhauls, changing the police station map, and new killer Albert Wesker.

TJ Denzer

September 19, 2022 6:40 PM

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Behaviour Interactive’s flagship game, Dead by Daylight, has gone through some massive changes in the past couple months. We’re not just talking about the arrival of new Resident Evil content, including Albert Wesker, Rebecca Chambers, and Ada Wong, but also the rework of a great many of Dead by Daylight’s most-used perks as well. There’s a lot that has gone into sprucing all facets of the game up and recently we got to speak with creative director Dave Richard about this undertaking.

According to Dave Richard, the perk overhaul was a matter that had been on Behaviour Interactive’s to-do list for a long time, but it was a difficult thing to undertake. Moving a much-beloved perk like Barbeque & Chili or Self-Healing one way or the other stands to have drastic effects on the game. Too much change and you have an outcry among the game’s community on both sides of the playing field. This meant carefully observing feedback, testing, and carefully finding the balance that would help to break a long established meta in Dead by Daylight without ruining what players liked about their favorite perks.

The new killer, Albert Wesker, AKA The Mastermind, was also a subject not taken lightly. While some parallels in his kit to characters like The Nurse could be drawn, the goal from the get-go was to make Wesker accessible. Behaviour knew that a lot of fans would want to play Wesker, so they didn’t want to make him too difficult to pick up or play. And so, while Wesker can certainly be beaten, he’s also not too hard to understand in his playstyle.

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TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.