Dead by Daylight’s 4v1 asymmetrical horror is seemingly the pinnacle of its genre. Other games have come and gone without as much popularity as Dead by Daylight, which has stood the test of time and continued to debut interesting DLC content for its dedicated playerbase. Indeed, Dead by Daylight’s core loop is satisfyingly interpretive, generating dynamic gameplay with procedural maps and an abundance of characters.
One of Dead by Daylight’s most interesting features is its horror motif. This genre has allowed Dead by Daylight to introduce DLC with licensed killer characters inspired by seminal slashers, thrillers, and psychological-horror films, but it has also produced original killer characters with the same horror tropes and archetypes in mind. Dead by Daylight’s latest killer character offers a unique take on horror that is a breath of fresh air for Dead by Daylight.
The Dredge is Dead by Daylight’s First Non-Humanoid Killer
Put plainly, Dead by Daylight's Dredge is not humanoid. It can be argued that it maintains the same shape with distinguishable arms and a head, but there's an important distinction to make in that it lacks actual legs. Instead, there is just a shadowy, interdimensional pocket that the rest of its inhuman mass comes out from.
The reason why every killer character has been humanoid up to this point is plausibly due to the carry and hook animations necessary to lift and secure survivors. This is done as killers hoist survivors onto their shoulder, where they can struggle to break free before being tossed up onto a nearby hook. Because of this action, it makes the most sense to have humanoid killers in order to not innovate how these animations are changed from character-to-character.
Recent killer characters from licensed horror franchises have been added that are still humanoid, but rely on supernatural means to carry and hook survivors rather than physically lifting and hoisting them. For example, Hellraiser’s Pinhead lifts survivors off the ground and onto his shoulder with interdimensional chains, and the same chains appear to secure the survivor onto hooks; meanwhile Ringu’s Sadako makes no physical interaction with survivors, instead telekinetically lifting them above her person.
Interestingly, the Dredge's pick-up and hooking animations are similar to those of humanoid killers. Like all killers, the Dredge has its right-armed main weapon and a left “arm.” The Dredge uses the same thin, long arms that snatch survivors outside of lockers to pull them off the ground, and then its left arm underarms them similar to how Resident Evil’s Nemesis carries survivors. Instead, it is an amalgam of skulls, flesh, bone, and tissue propped up by a shadow that harbors other horrors and manifestations, such as the horse Maurice.
Lockers Are No Longer a Safe Haven in Dead by Daylight
Compared to all the other killer characters in Dead by Daylight, such as the Demogorgon, Doctor, Hag, or Freddy Krueger, the Dredge is certainly a step in the direction of a quadrupedal animal. Behaviour should play with this concept more with future designs to truly make its characters unique, especially if animations are not constrained to physical means. But the Dredge’s design is only a small part of what makes it so horrifying to encounter.
In gameplay, the Dredge’s Nightfall ability tests survivors’ wits in a chase by rendering the environment pitch-black. Survivors are unable to see more than a few feet around them for the duration of a minute, and the Dredge has no terror radius as well as a shorter cooldown on its teleport ability. In this darkness, it is difficult to predict where certain obstacles, pallets, or walls will be so players can exploit them in a chase, and the fact that the Dredge can appear from any direction is always unexpected.
If that's not enough to send shivers down survivors’ spines, the Dredge also has an ability that lets it teleport to-and-from lockers, letting it leap out at the right moment to scare unsuspecting players. If they interact with a locker that the Dredge is waiting in, it can snatch them up, resulting in an instant grab similar to grabs out of vaults. The only defense that players have against this is the option is to cautiously lock lockers, making the Dredge have to break out from the outside.
Funny enough, the Dredge’s own Garden of Joy realm is probably its worst map to play on. Locker placement is spread out, meaning the Dredge still needs to maneuver regularly within a wider portion of the map and waste time reaching each corner, where a generator is likely to be. Still, this ability can be particularly suspenseful when players are fixing a generator or cleansing a totem that sits beside a locker.
Dead by Daylight’s Horror Comes from Gameplay
Many killer characters in Dead by Daylight are arguably not scary in the context of their gameplay. The Trickster, for example, hurls a slew of kunai at survivors and is more of a nuisance rather than being scary. Licensed characters may have been scary in their original source material, but their gameplay often does not reflect that. The killer characters that are the most scary are Dead by Daylight’s stealth-oriented killers, such as Scream’s Ghostface, Saw’s Amanda Young, and Halloween’s Michael Myers.
These characters can sneak up on survivors and surprise them when they least expect it, making moment-to-moment gameplay tense in a title already centered around cat-and-mouse pursuits. Other characters can teleport certain distances and have abilities that startle players, but the Dredge’s abilities seem particularly designed around terrifying the survivor players.
This is why the Dredge is likely Dead by Daylight’s most terrifying killer character to date, in terms of narrative, physicality, and gameplay. The character is still relatively new, having only been publicly available since Tuesday, June 7. Players may soon learn an exploitable meta that can be used against the Dredge to help circumvent these seemingly horrifying abilities, but for now they are effective in applying scare tactics within Dead by Daylight.
Dead by Daylight is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
