Days Gone - April 26, 2019 | PC Version - Spring 2021

[6souls]

[Insanecyclone]

They have come a long way

[6souls]

Press Release

Spoiler: show

Days Gone is an open-world action game set in the high-desert of the Pacific Northwest two years after a mysterious global pandemic has decimated the world, killing most but transforming millions into mindless, feral creatures. Survivors live in a world where resources are scarce, violence and murder are common and Freakers roam the wilderness.

Players face this violent, new world as Deacon St. John, a bounty hunter, a Drifter who lives in the lawless wilderness outside the civilian encampments. Deacon survives by using skills learned before the world ended, riding for the Mongrels MC, an outlawed motorcycle club, where violence and mayhem were part of the riding the open road.

At the center of it all, Days Gone is an exploration of how any of us would react to these harsh conditions, and exploration of loss, love, friendship, revenge and desperation – learning that surviving isn’t living. For Deacon especially, it’s a struggle to ensure that hope never dies.

Developed by Bend Studio, Days Gone is in development exclusively for the PlayStation 4.

Key Features

• Expansive Open World Action – Exemplifying truly free-form gameplay, Days Gone offers freedom to explore, strategize and play “your way” in the vast high-desert of the Pacific Northwest. The hazardous environments, filled with carved out ridges, mountains, caves, cliffs mines and river basins, deliver a breathtaking backdrop to an equally diverse style of gameplay.

• Emergent Gameplay – Featuring fully explorable environments and dynamic AI enemies, players will rely on their own abilities to strategize, craft weapons and tools, explore the world, and engage in combat. With almost every car, building and environment searchable, Days Gone delivers emergent gameplay possibilities, making a player’s approach to combat and discovery a vital part of the experience.

• Stunning, Dynamic Graphics – Using the power of PlayStation 4 and Unreal Engine 4, Bend Studio has developed a high volume of rendering and gameplay technology to deliver an incredibly realistic open world experience. Realistic weather effects, such as rain, wind, snow and day-night cycles impact the gameplay. The game’s lighting is all real-time and reacts dynamically, the way the human iris does, as players move from one location to the next.

It’s been a little over four years since we released Uncharted: Golden Abyss for PS Vita and you may be wondering what Bend Studio’s been up to. Well, it’s finally time to share what we’ve been working on. Today during the PlayStation E3 2016 Press Conference we debuted our brand new original franchise, Days Gone. The PlayStation team, as well as the press conference production crew at the Shrine Auditorium, gave us the perfect venue to showcase some of the hard work we’ve been putting into the game’s characters, story, open-world environments, Drifter bike and dangerous encounters. The team is very excited about the reactions we’ve seen so far and we’re looking forward to a very busy E3.

Set in the beautiful, volcanic scarred high-desert of the Pacific Northwest, Days Gone is an open-world action-adventure game where you play as Deacon St. John, a Drifter and bounty hunter who would rather risk the dangers of the broken road than live in one of the “safe” wilderness encampments. The game takes place two years after a global pandemic has killed almost everyone, but transformed millions of others into what survivors call Freakers – mindless, feral creatures, more animal than human but very much alive and quickly evolving. In the demo you saw two types of Freaks – Newts, which were adolescents when infected, are opportunistic hunters, preferring to hit and run from the shadows; and a Horde. Made up of hundreds of individual Freakers, Hordes eat, move and attack together, almost as one. Some Hordes roam the highways at night, while others, like the one in the demo, have found a food source that keeps it in a single location. Skills learned in his prior life as an outlaw biker have given Deacon a slight edge in the seemingly never-ending fight to stay alive. But will it be enough?

This is a brutal world, where everyone and everything is struggling to survive – but hopefully, the trailer shows that the game is about more than that. It’s about desperation, hope, transformation, loss, madness, discovery, friendship, exploration, brotherhood, regret and love. In the end, Days Gone is about what makes us human. It’s about how even when confronted with such enormous tragedy, we find a reason to live. Hope never dies.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/...ps4-adventure/

[tyven]

Deacon St. John? Has there ever been a worse name?

[Malithar]

I can't imagine playing it based on that game play vid. Any strategy I'd think up would devolve into run-motherfucker-run with World War Z-esque hoards on your ass.

[6souls]

[6souls]

[6souls]

Alt E3 Playthrough

At the E3 2017 Media Showcase we premiered a new gameplay demo for Days Gone that focused on open-world dynamic events. Behind closed doors, we showed an alternate-path of the demo, changing up the weather, time-of-day, and play style. Our goal for this second demo was to show that changing something like the weather was more than cosmetic — it could significantly impact the experience.

After the dust from E3 settled, I sat down with Sam Witwer — who plays Deacon St. John — to watch the Alternate-Path Gameplay Demo and talk about some of the things we’re trying to do in Days Gone.

Here are some of the topics we covered:

• Weather and time-of-day: Snow will impact your ability to ride the Drifter Bike, cold makes Freakers stronger; rain can dampen sound, but brings more Freakers out during the day; night brings out even more Freakers and changes the behaviors of Marauders, and more.

• Survival Vision: You can focus on the environment around you to discover tracks, clues, and resources.

• Crafting: You can find all sorts of things in the open world which can be used to craft items both useful and deadly.

• Traps: Creating and placing traps — used in conjunction with our distraction mechanic — is an important part of our strategic sandbox combat.

• Dynamic Events: You have to be cautious and vigilant to avoid ambushes, traps, and other hazards.

All of these features work together to create a dynamic, open-world experience. When Deacon rides out to save his friend, the weather, time-of-day, dynamic events, and playstyle preferences can change the experience pretty dramatically. In the Media Showcase demo, Deacon weaponizes a Swarm and uses it to attack the Marauder camp, while in the alternate-path demo, he goes in guns blazing. And these aren’t the only ways to play it.

[6souls]

Sony Bend (Studio) seeking in-house Beta Testers from Oregon
https://bendstudio.com/careers/

[6souls]

Game Informer June Coverage

Spoiler: show

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...days-gone.aspx

[Insanecyclone]

[tyven]

am i the only person fired up for this game?

[Malithar]

am i the only person fired up for this game?

I'm down. My only real concern is the hordes. I'm not sure how they're going to make them fun while still possible to win, even if challenging. You can even see it in the above clip. Dude gets mobbed by half a dozen freakers but one grapples him and the others stand there derping. He's got dozens behind him in another scene and has time to stop, turn around, and shoot an explosive and get away without a scratch. It just worries me that they won't really be a threat, but rather a spectacle.

[Kalmado]

I'm down. My only real concern is the hordes. I'm not sure how they're going to make them fun while still possible to win, even if challenging. You can even see it in the above clip. Dude gets mobbed by half a dozen freakers but one grapples him and the others stand there derping. He's got dozens behind him in another scene and has time to stop, turn around, and shoot an explosive and get away without a scratch. It just worries me that they won't really be a threat, but rather a spectacle.

I agree with this take. The game itself looks cool, but if it's hordes for the sake of numbers then I don't care. I wouldn't even care if it was The Last of Us Light Edition. I just want solid game play in a fun zombie world.

[Insanecyclone]

[6souls]

[Malithar]

Looking pretty good from that, trailer focused a lot less on the hordes and more on enemy variety and what you'll be experiencing. If they pull it off right, the whole "the world is coming for you" aspect could either be really cool, or just really annoying. I'm laughing more than I should at 0:27 where a biker is just REEEEEEEEEing down the road.

[6souls]

[6souls]

We’ve always said that Days Gone is a narrative driven, open-world action game. We emphasized narrative driven because it’s a big game with a big story. The last time I beat the game, focusing only on the main storylines, it took me a little over thirty hours to complete. And I can tell you, it is quite an emotional journey.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve talked a little about who Deacon St. John is and why we care about his story.

It’s a story about loss and regret. In the 2016 launch trailer Deacon remembers his wife Sarah, the only woman he would ever love. Then, earlier this year, in the “Wedding” trailer we see that Deacon won’t let go of the past and will risk his life even for a worn photo of his wife.

It’s a story about brotherhood. In 2016, the launch trailer shows Deacon’s friend Boozer is by his side as they fight to survive a dangerous world. In the “Wedding” trailer we see how far back their friendship goes as Boozer was the only person to attend.

It’s a story about fighting for survival. This is the Days Gone story everyone is probably most familiar with. The launch trailer had image after image of the devastated world. The 2016 Horde demo showed Deacon fighting to survive against overwhelming odds. The 2017 demos showed the overwhelming dangers of the open world. The “Wedding” trailer showed who Deacon was before the world ended, and the man he’s become in order to survive the now harsh and brutal world. Almost every demo since launch has emphasized that everything in the world is trying to kill you. Freakers, infected animals, marauders, Rippers, Hordes. The world comes for you.

And these are all important storylines in Days Gone. Deacon’s feelings of loss and regret are explored in a storyline called “I Remember,” where, through playable flashbacks, we learn about Deacon and Sarah’s relationship. The bond and brotherhood he feels for his friend Boozer are explored in a storyline called “He’s My Brother.” Another half dozen storylines explore the brutality of the world and Deacon’s role in it as bounty hunter and mercenary.

But the overarching story in Days Gone offers so much more.

In the new Days Gone story trailer you’ll see that the above storylines about Sarah, Boozer and Deacon’s fight for survival are still front and center. But, while trying to avoid spoilers, we wanted to draw back the curtain to reveal some of the other themes and storylines that define who Deacon St. John is.

We’ve introduced Mark Copeland before – in the 2017 demo, he’s the survivor encampment leader who had sent Deacon’s friend Manny, the camp mechanic, out on a supply run. The new Story Trailer gives us a sense of who Cope is and the desperation that drives his mercenary relationship with Deacon.

We meet several new characters. Iron Mike, who says of Deacon, “I know what kind of man he is. Has he done any worse than you?” An encampment leader we haven’t met before, Iron Mike represents a way of looking at survival in this world that is very different from Copeland’s or the others.

Members of his camp, Rikki Patil and Addison Walker are two strong voices for rebuilding and hope. As the game progresses, we see that Deacon isn’t just a mercenary for hire – he is a protector of the weak.

NERO and their black choppers are introduced and we get a hint of their storyline “Finding NERO,” where you learn more about the mysterious organization, their technology, and the back story of behind so much of what you see in the world – the mass graves, NERO checkpoints, abandoned refugee camps, death trains.

Finally, we see a bit more of the cult Rest In Peace, who are fully explored in a storyline called “Ripped Apart.” Rippers represent more than just a way to add more danger and brutality to the world, they allow us to explore the darker side of humanity that can be driven by blind obedience and obsession.

All of this represents less than half the storylines and half the main cast. We haven’t talked about things like the end game storyline, “Horde Killer,” where you, the player, are transformed right alongside Deacon, from someone who has to run for their life when facing a Horde, into a Freak killing expert who can seek out and destroy the 40 Hordes that live in and terrorize the open world.

Like I said, Days Gone is a narrative driven game with a big story. But the amount of story, its length, the number of cut scenes… none of that is as important as the emotional impact of the journey. If you don’t care about Deacon and his search for hope, you’re not going to stick around to see what happens. So in the end, it all comes back to our three main characters: Deacon, Boozer and Sarah. Whatever you think is going to happen? We hope you’ll be surprised.

[6souls]