Tech and Science News
We’ve Finally Seen the Sum of Days Gone’s Parts
Since its reveal at E3 2016, I haven’t really known what to make of Days Gone. It’s a zombie freaker* game. OK. It’s a big open-world adventure. Alright. It’s also about resource management and survival. Sure, cool - but what is it? What does the sum of all these disparate parts actually look like as a video game in this, the year 2019? Well, after getting to play roughly five hours of it for myself, I finally got a taste of what the full Days Gone experience actually looks like.
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The first hour of my demo took me through most of Days Gone’s opening, introducing basic mechanics, concepts, and characters. I quickly felt at home with the controls, since the systems at play all very familiar to anyone who’s spent time in an open-world action/adventure in the last few years. The elements we’ve seen before are executed extremely well. Stealthily scavenging for supplies while sneaking around an abandoned motel crowded with zombies freakers is appropriately tense, and the same goes for trying to discreetly (or not) clear a bandit camps to unlock a new fast-travel point. Walking into one of their ambushes (the chances for which can actually be reduced by eliminating the aforementioned camps) is equal parts shamefully frustrating and exhilarating, choosing from a wide variety of useful skill upgrades is decidedly nerve-wracking, and melee and ranged combat encounters are, for the most part, both exciting and brutally satisfying.
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My question isn't "is days gone fun?" it's "is Days Gone fun for 30+ hours?"
Days Gone makes some interesting choices that kept my play session engaging, and the sections of its story that I experienced piqued my interest enough that I was legitimately frustrated that I couldn’t continue playing at the end of the demo. While I’ll admit that I initially rolled my eyes at yet another Gruff White Male Protagonist™ in a grim world - especially one with such a Gruff White Male Protagonist™-ey name as Deacon St. John - I ended up getting far more invested than I’d initially expected. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose - this is a first-party Sony title, and Bend is no stranger to writing around well-developed characters and games with a strong narrative focus, either.
Yes, “Deek” may seem at face value to be yet another gravelly-voiced antihero, but I found myself genuinely empathizing with him (largely due to some really good performance work by Star Wars’ Sam Witwer) as I learned more about his obligatorily tragic backstory and while interacting with other survivors. Though an early-on reference to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had me prepared for a lot of cliches written by big hammy fists, I found myself enjoying their rapport with Deacon and the several threads of storylines I got to pull at - predictable plot twists included.
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The devs weren't kidding with their "This world comes for you" tagline."
The only goal you have at the onset is to survive long enough to ride north, away from the Farewell Wilderness (the region where Days Gone is set). This is smoothly MacGuffined into a quest loop when Deacon’s bike is stolen and chopped for parts, resulting in him needing to spend the rest of the game building a new one. This eventually leads to what seems to be a main story that chases leads from Deacon’s past, but it also uses the idea of “storylines” to smartly track all of your ancillary progress throughout the world. Clearing out freaker infestations or clearing cultist camps all further their own storylines, and improve your relationships with the various survivor camps you’ve managed to ally yourself with.
From these camps, you’re able to start new quests, like hunting down troublesome bandits or locating lost survivors, or purchase weapons or upgrade your bike using credit you’ve earned. It’s a clever bit of world-building, this particular currency system - you don’t trade in bottle caps or bullets, rather you simply build credit with a camp when you do them favors. The more favors you do for a given camp, the more they’ll trust you, allowing you to take their more valuable items, like assault rifles or silenced pistols (though you can always make a silencer yourself with an oil filter from one of the many derelict cars scattered around the world).
You’ll need the best equipment possible, too, since it seems that the developers weren’t kidding with their “the world comes for you” tagline. I explored two of Days Gone’s biomes - the heavily forested Cascade Wilderness, which has been shown off in most of the press material so far, and the newly-debuted Belknap Hotsprings, a stretch of high desert pocked with small pools and rivulets - and while I never saw any of the massive hundreds-strong zombie freaker hordes that we’ve been shown previously, there was always some sort of danger lurking right around the next corner. I quickly learned that the blue “?” icons that appeared on the mini-map when Deacon perceived something nearby were not to be trusted - where I expected a cache or treasure, I more often than not ended up ambushed by bandits or, worse yet, at the mercy of a pack of freakers. With barely any ammo. And no gas in my bike. Because I was stupid and didn’t take any from the station I passed a few miles back cause a pack of Newts (the legit skin-crawley product of freaker-plagued children) were scuttling around the roof and scared me off.
Ultimately, I want to say that Days Gone looks good. I really enjoyed the few hours I spent with it and I’m eager to explore more of its grim, dangerous world. Even though it doesn’t seem to bring anything revolutionary to the table (though the zombie freaker tech I’ve seen in previous demos is impressive), based on what I’ve seen, what it does, it does well. The big question I have is no longer “is Days Gone fun to play?” because the answer there is yes - the real issue, now, is “Is Days Gone fun to play for 30+ hours?” And my answer to that is… hopefully.
*we’ve explained it previously, but there is a difference: Zombies™ are specifically undead creatures that sustain themselves by feasting on living flesh, while Freakers™ are diseased humans that are still very much alive but have become feral, overly dependent on animal proteins, and prone to fits of cannibalism. Bummer.
JR is IGN's Senior Features Editor, and really freaked out by creepy zombie kids. He'll probably complain about it on Twitter when Days Gone comes out.