Understanding the Upcoming: Days Gone

During the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Bend Studio premiered a trailer and gameplay demo for their new game, Days Gone. A PlayStation 4 exclusive, the game is set to focus on a post-apocalyptic world, and a lone drifter who must find a reason to live. Before we get into wrapping our heads around this familiar theme, take a look at the demo.

Days Gone takes place along the northwest coast of the United States, in a world that has been wiped out by a vicious pandemic. Survivors of this plague must do what they can in the face of horrifying odds: brutal marauders, the remnants of a beaten government, and hungry zombies called "Freakers." You know, the usual post-pandemic deal. While this may sound like another recent PlayStation game of a similar genre, this title appears to be unique in its approach to open-world survival.

Let's discuss what makes this upcoming game a different approach to the age-old zombie survival game. First off, what is most likely on everyone's minds is the horde. Deacon, our Sons of Anarchy (or some biker club member), fights off a literal moving ocean of Freakers. The gameplay trailer showed off this relentless pile of hunger as a moving and thinking hive mind of monsters. It's impressive to look at, considering that it responds and careens and flails as Deacon fires his assault rifle into it. Impressive, but a strange choice for a gameplay demo, considering it gets a bit repetitive after a while. He runs, he turns around, he shoots. He runs, he turns around, he shoots. The overall feel of the game hints at more diverse combat, but this particular demonstration was one-sided. That being said, it is certainly a new take on humanity's never ending fight against the infected/undead/freaky deaky.

While that was a singular and elongated moment of combat, the video does show some more sides of the game. The visual presentation of this heavily forested area is great, and boasts some fairly advanced environmental physics. The light bounces off surroundings well, the physics appears active, and it all seems "next-gen" enough. The gameplay mechanics are another story. So far, Deacon's movements and they way the world responds to him seems a bit last-gen. An opinion of this article, of course, but an observation nonetheless. While rummaging through an old box, we don't see much detail. Our grumpy biker buddy simply reaches his hands in and boom, he's got new supplies. Nit picky, we know, but if this studio wants to break through with a tired-out genre, they need to give us more detailed visuals.

Now, let's get it off of our collective chests: this game looks like The Last of Us. It sort of even sounds like The Last of Us. Hell, even stylistically it feels like The Last of Us. However, while there appears to be plenty of similarities, we have also discussed that there also seems to be just as many differences. The Last of Us brought players into a grim, vibrant world teeming with ultra-realism. The world encountered a global, life-altering plague, and the game showed us a realistic response to it. Its main character was a grumpy man struggling to find the will to survive. Players needed to scrounge for ammo, medicine, and supplies. If Days Gone wants to accomplish that critically acclaimed ultra-realism, they need to spruce this up before release. No assault rifles with over 600 bullets. Does that make for a fun, endless zombie fight? Sure! But not realistic, which is clearly the tone the announcement trailer strikes.

As previously mentioned, this title shows some similar narrative characteristics to others games, but the announcement trailer seems intriguing enough. Deacon appears to be numb to the horrible violence and chaos in the world, and yet remembers when life was less bad. There's no telling what the main goal of the game will be, but we do know that this East Coast open-world will offer a very action-packed life for Deacon, on the "opposite end of the spectrum from The Last of Us," as developer Brian Pape has been reporting. Not 100% sure what that means, but with any luck it means we have a different kind survival-horror game on our hands.

Sorry, no release date for Days Gone just yet, but we'll keep you posted. Read up, and play on!

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