The story of Sony and Days Gone is complex. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the open-world game received some mixed reviews in 2019. You play as Deacon St. John, a motorcyclist and bounty hunter who survives an apocalypse after a catastrophic pandemic turns the world into a freaker-infested hellscape. Due to its less than stellar critical reception, Days Gone quickly became an oddity among PlayStation’s blockbuster first-party titles. While it may not have been the most successful PlayStation hit, it was also a rare move from Sony to a new IP and set a strong foundation for a sequel. However, Deadline reported on their site that Sony is working on a film adaptation instead.
With a Metacritic score of 71/100, but a user rating of 8.4/10, the game was better received by audiences than critics. This trend toward audiences enjoying the title extended to the PC release as well. The game currently has a Steam rating of “very positive”, indicating that 92% of the ratings for Days Gone are favorable. Such a large discrepancy in review scores could be inflated by widespread approval for PlayStation exclusives coming to PC, with Steam users expressing support for this relatively recent practice by Sony. Anyway, Days Gone performed very well with its PC release. Unfortunately, when it came time to review Days Gone 2, things didn’t end well.
Days Gone is far from a perfect game, but it was a great start to what could become a great franchise. The game’s open world featured some impressive emerging gameplay. For example, a player can be pinned down while fighting looters in a camp, only to gain a horde. Both the player and the looters would have to fight for their lives against the freakers and give up their own dispute to face a greater threat.
When Bend Studious promised the world would come for you, they meant it. Marauders were waiting to snipe you off your bike as you raced across an open road, and a damaged bike meant major problems for the player. Your motorcycle was more than just a vehicle, it was your rescue point and therefore a safety lanyard.
Horde encounters were unlike anything I’ve ever played before. The answer to taking on a horde wasn’t just overwhelming firepower (although that didn’t hurt). Instead, players were sent running and clambering through obstacles as freakers gave chase. Familiarity with your surroundings became crucial as you ran through a sawmill with freakers streaming around you like a tsunami of rotten meat. Eliminating your first hurdle was immensely satisfying, feeling like you’d just accomplished something impossible.
My first encounter with a horde was an embarrassing affair. I tried to run between the freight cars of an abandoned train. In a panic, I threw Molotovs too close to Deacon and set him on fire. My fingers stamped on buttons quickly and foolishly as I tried to cycle to any weapon to keep the freaks off me. After pushing myself into a boxcar with no ammunition and a baseball bat as my only defense, the freakers poured over me.
A catastrophic failure, but the thrill of it was something I couldn’t wait to get back to work.
While the story and world initially seemed like a generic zombie apocalypse, Days Gone quickly found its identity and evolved as you played the game. When you got to know Deacon, he went from a gruff survivor to a man who had loved and lost, then found a chance to win his life back. Instead of having one central group of survivors, you had different sections of society that managed to find ways to persevere.
Each camp had its own philosophies and hierarchies. Copeland’s Camp was erroneously based on individual freedom, and the leader regularly spat about those freedoms and conspiracy theories over the radios. Hot Springs Camp was run by Ada Tucker, who basically ran a forced labor camp. Iron Mike’s Camp was philosophically somewhere in between the other camps. While Iron Mike had the final say, he listened to his community and did not perform forced labor. Later in the game, Deacon would discover two more camps run by the military. All these different sections of society have spiced up the setting of Days Gone. By the end of the game, even the freakers evolved into their own unique kind of monster, with some seemingly regaining a semblance of humanity.
In USA Today, Days Gone director Jeff Ross said the sequel would have been the “final version” of the game. He talked about continuing the narrative focus, a potentially complicated relationship between Deacon and Sarah, and what the survivors could accomplish with their new military technology. Of course there is also the issue of Nero and what they were doing at the end of the game. All that comes on top of the ability to revisit boss fights, bugs, swimming, and other aspects of Days Gone that really needed to be ironed out.
When I think back to a game like Uncharted, it’s easy to forget that the franchise really took off until Uncharted 2. It’s much easier for a game to thrive in an established IP like God of War (2018) or Marvel’s Spider-Man than for a new IP – sometimes that leap of faith is necessary. Even some games with an established IP start hard. The Witcher was a serviceable but clunky game that had huge success with The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3. Sometimes a first game performs just well enough to build a more successful sequel, where the studio can evolve and make it into something polishing really special. With Days Gone sold over eight million copies on PlayStation, and over a million on PC, you’d think it deserved its shot commercially.
Instead, Bend Studios is working on a new open-world IP that will supposedly build on many of the core systems that shined in Days Gone. As a fan, I’m thrilled to hear that not all of Days Gone’s good ideas are being scrapped, but I want to know where the story went. In a scene after the credits, Deacon found out that O’Brian (who helped him find Sarah again) is a freak himself. Where did that go? What was NERO up to with all their experiments? How would these things have reshaped the lives of Deacon and his fellow survivors? The freakers evolved, but we never figured out how or why. I can’t say which threads would have been followed in Days Gone 2, but they would set up enough to make me insatiably curious.
Just to be clear, I’m not against a film adaptation as a concept. It’s great that Sony is trying to get their stories out to more people. But I can’t be the only fan wanting to get back on Deacon’s bike and hit those twisting, wild roads, where the cool freshness of the great American wilderness is dotted with the stench of rotting hordes. I want to know what nefarious plot NERO had in mind for this new world. We may never get it, but I will always believe in Days Gone 2 and its sequel that could have been.
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