Days Gone (Sony Bend) [PS4, PC]

[Deleted member 11852]

Missions with hordes: Iron Butte Resort Horde at mission Keep Them Safe, Chemult Horde at mission You Alone I Have Seen and Old Sawmill Horde I'll Save Some for You. Imho they perfectly balanced number of obligatory mission with hordes and adding it rather like a possible encounter mostly.

There were hordes everywhere, I think there was about 40 across the map? The game constantly put many missions near hordes but, as I said above, I can only recall two missions where you had to fight and kill hordes.

The rest were for flavour, to ad random added danger and to add some dynamics to the world. It was generally dicey to charge into a random cave during the day because you have no idea what you would find. Likewise you could use horde placement to incite them to attack over enemies. But overall, hordes really were used much in the 50-60 hours campaign. Unless you sought them out, 99% of the game had nothing to do with fighting hordes.

When you look at The Last of Us and Days Gone, 99% of the game is identical: exploring stealthily, cleared areas, scavenging, crafting, pushing on the the next locale. I'm not compelling because this is a genre that I like but it's dumb given Sony don't have a infinite first party studios and the number of post-apocalypse and/or survival games. This is not a genre threadhbare of titles that it seems sensible having two first party teams nothing produce games.

Yes but if they do a game they didn't want to do (AFAIK they wanted to do Days Gone 2), do you think they'll put all their heart and soul in that project?

Yes because they are professionals and the quality of their work may dictate whether their studios makes a further title or gets canned.

 

[snc]

There were hordes everywhere, I think there was about 40 across the map? The game constantly put many missions near hordes but, as I said above, I can only recall two missions where you had to fight and kill hordes.

you can recall two missions but I've posted 3 missions with obligatory hordes to defeat in post you quoted ;d

 

[Deleted member 11852]

you can recall two missions but I've posted 3 missions with obligatory hordes to defeat in post you quoted ;d

Ok so there were 3 horde-killing missions out of 130 story missions in Days Gone.

 

[snc]

Ok so there were 3 horde-killing missions out of 130 story missions in Days Gone.

yes and I think it was good design choice, its was very unique and great feature of game but everything can get tedious when forced

 

[Deleted member 11852]

yes and I think it was good design choice, its was very unique and great feature of game but everything can get tedious when forced

I agree, but hordes was presented as something that differentiates Days Gone from The Last of Us and whilst it is, it's not a core part of the moment-to-moment gameplay any more than fighting bloaters or the ratking is in The Last of Us Part II. There are just a couple of rare story beats in an otherwise long game.

While the games and worlds are doing different things, the fundamental gameplay loop is the same. Explore. Clear. Scavenge. Craft. Survive. Repeat.

 

[snc]

While the games and worlds are doing different things, the fundamental gameplay loop is the same. Explore. Clear. Scavenge. Craft. Survive. Repeat.

generally many aaa games in their core are similar to each other

 

[goonergaz]

There were hordes everywhere, I think there was about 40 across the map? The game constantly put many missions near hordes but, as I said above, I can only recall two missions where you had to fight and kill hordes.

The rest were for flavour, to ad random added danger and to add some dynamics to the world. It was generally dicey to charge into a random cave during the day because you have no idea what you would find. Likewise you could use horde placement to incite them to attack over enemies. But overall, hordes really were used much in the 50-60 hours campaign. Unless you sought them out, 99% of the game had nothing to do with fighting hordes.

When you look at The Last of Us and Days Gone, 99% of the game is identical: exploring stealthily, cleared areas, scavenging, crafting, pushing on the the next locale. I'm not compelling because this is a genre that I like but it's dumb given Sony don't have a infinite first party studios and the number of post-apocalypse and/or survival games. This is not a genre threadhbare of titles that it seems sensible having two first party teams nothing produce games.


Yes because they are professionals and the quality of their work may dictate whether their studios makes a further title or gets canned.

Erm...

generally many aaa games in their core are similar to each other

Exactly.

As I said before, no more games because they are all too alike.

@DSoup - 99% alike? One was open world where elements (wildlife) would interact with the other. One you constantly had (and needed) a mode of transport. One had a full day-night cycle. One had fast travel, one had significantly more crafting and skill trees than the other....I could go on. I’ll give you both were essentially zombie games with a set story line, but outside that they are very different to play IMHO, in fact I’d say Horizon is more like Days Gone.

But even then, last gen we had 3 great games (if you include LoU) that were quite similar in gameplay- why not shoot the Assassins Creed or Forza yearly regurgitation?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

@DSoup - 99% alike? One was open world where elements (wildlife) would interact with the other. One you constantly had (and needed) a mode of transport.

The games are different - I said this years ago - and I love exploring open world games and I loved Days Gone's environments but I'm focussing on the what you do most of the time. But the core loop is the same.

As somebody who really loves exploring open world games, I was constantly frustrated by Days Gone's fuel system until about the forth tank upgrade. You could explore all you liked - slowly on foot - but the bike would suffer damage from mild bumps and you had to be hugely conscious about routing through locations with fuel cans or working garages that weren't massively overrun with infected which really dinged the feel of an open world game for me. I liked the bike but the mechanics punished people who wanted to explore.

One had a full day-night cycle. One had fast travel, one had significantly more crafting and skill trees than the other....I could go on. I’ll give you both were essentially zombie games with a set story line, but outside that they are very different to play IMHO, in fact I’d say Horizon is more like Days Gone.

I agree. So three Sony had first party studios all working on post-apocalypse games with stealth, crafting, skill trees and weapon upgrades.

But even then, last gen we had 3 great games (if you include LoU) that were quite similar in gameplay- why not shoot the Assassins Creed or Forza regurgitation?

It's only Sony tasking so many teams to focus on games with such similar core mechanics and game loop that I question. As I did back in 2018.

 

[BRiT]

So between Astro and SackBoy, which one should survive since they're too similar as well?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So between Astro and SackBoy, which one should survive since they're too similar as well?

Astrobot and Sackboy are characters that have appeared in different games. I.e. PlayRoom and Astrobot Rescue - which feature Astrobots - is different from LittleBigPlanet.

Which games are you comparing?

 

[BRiT]

Their platforming games that feature them.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Their platforming games that feature them.

Flip a coin. But I'm not sure you'll see more as-similar platform games with these characters but when you look at the design goals of the characters - as in the basic design is uniform but they are designed to be customizable and even appear as other distinct characters, there is clear redundancy.

This was never more apparent than when playing Astrobot in PS5 where you're surrounded by Astrobots mimicking characters from three decades of PlayStation games.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

The games are different - I said this years ago - and I love exploring open world games and I loved Days Gone's environments but I'm focussing on the what you do most of the time. But the core loop is the same.

As somebody who really loves exploring open world games, I was constantly frustrated by Days Gone's fuel system until about the forth tank upgrade. You could explore all you liked - slowly on foot - but the bike would suffer damage from mild bumps and you had to be hugely conscious about routing through locations with fuel cans or working garages that weren't massively overrun with infected which really dinged the feel of an open world game for me. I liked the bike but the mechanics punished people who wanted to explore.


I agree. So three Sony had first party studios all working on post-apocalypse games with stealth, crafting, skill trees and weapon upgrades.


It's only Sony tasking so many teams to focus on games with such similar core mechanics and game loop that I question. As I did back in 2018.

I do largely agree with you, but I think the right thing to do would be to pivot Days Gone away from being cinematic and towards gameplay.

I'd love to see them build upon the mechanic of the camps. Have the player scavenge for weapons and defensive equipment they can then deploy around the bases to fight off hordes and raiders. Have regular, big, dynamic battles break out at these camps. Maybe the number of days since any enemies breached the camp would dictate the price of items. Maybe weapons and equipment would be researched at each camp, said research would take x number of days, and the counter would reset if the camp was breached.

Maybe a small number of camps could be completely wiped out if you don't give them adequate defenses.

More customisation options for the bike, for weapons (scopes, silencers etc,) and for Deacon's appearance. Custom structures at camps. Perhaps some custom Mad Max style vehicles.

I'd even welcome a tonal shift to something a little lighter as the gameplay loop changes to Deacon heads out, kills a bunch of zombies and raiders, scavenges for weapons, and returns home to lay out defenses before he pipes his tidy wife. Rinse (ahem...) and repeat.

So between Astro and SackBoy, which one should survive since they're too similar as well?

Two boys enter, one mascot leaves!

 

[orangpelupa]

Just played the first few minutes of the game. Felt like a discount last of us 2. Closer to last of us 1.

* cutscene plays zombies snarling in surround, characters also says zombies are coming. Cutscene ends, back to gameplay. There are no zombies visible and no snarling too.
* the switch from cutscene to gameplay is not smooth (scene directions wise and camera cuts wise)
* random stuff loads in low quality then suddenly goes high quality (despite im using internal SSD on PS4 pro)
* severely lacking in subsonic audio (easiest to notice on the bike ride and helicopter felt "dry")
* the dialogue between PC and NPCs in gameplay felt stiff. Dunno why.
* the visual quality is inconsistent. Sometimes cutscenes looks very similar to gameplay. Some other times cutscenes looks much better
* the animation looks stiffer
* cutscenes felt like a video game cutscene (the last of us series cutscenes felt like a high budget movies)

Dunno how good the gameplay and story are. Need to play more.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'd love to see them build upon the mechanic of the camps. Have the player scavenge for weapons and defensive equipment they can then deploy around the bases to fight off hordes and raiders. Have regular, big, dynamic battles break out at these camps. Maybe the number of days since any enemies breached the camp would dictate the price of items. Maybe weapons and equipment would be researched at each camp, said research would take x number of days, and the counter would reset if the camp was breached.

Yup, exactly my thoughts from last year. This could have made a really good open sandbox game like the original State of Decay. It's a shame Bend won't get to iterate on this.

A lot of open world games try to immerse you in the world but miss the obvious of allowing you to heavily influence and change it. Let me pick a spot for a new camp, using terrain to help defend it. To save and recruit survivors to do yack at base, including things like Fallout 4's base building mechanics.

Just played the first few minutes of the game. Felt like a discount last of us 2. Closer to last of us 1. ...... Dunno how good the gameplay and story are. Need to play more.

The tutorial plays out quite slowly over several hours. You can go off-mission at any time but its generally in your interest to get through the earlier missions as quickly as possible so that you can unlock all the mechanics and game systems.

 

[DieH@rd]

There were no major reveals, just lots of talk about game development, current state of the industry and more.

DG1 was started with 40 devs, team grew a lot to 120, two years were spent on getting Unreal 4 and tools up and running [and team was in "crisis mode" until that was all sorted], Sony was very supportive and "hands off", ND did not make any waves because of any similarities with TLOU, launch impressions were affected by bugs, game is getting a lot of praise now on PS5 when game is stable and running at 60, etc. He refused to talk about the current status of DG2 project because Sony did not publicly talked about it.

I did not saw the entire stream, so there's maybe more.

 

[snc]

He said dg2 was in development and Jasson article is true (but not that dread and gloomy as sony still gives flexibility to devs and also he said is not true that bend become nd supporter only). Also he answered if they considered ue5 for dg2 and he said he would love to work with ue5 but it would force to remade most things implemented for dg1

 

[BRiT]

He had some follow-up tweets after the stream:

Thanks to everyone who attended the podcast with Jaffe. I wish I could have been more forthright with some questions. Just remember @jasonschreier is a journalist who takes his craft seriously. And he has the luxury of being able to be more honest than I’m allowed.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1381361227247550467

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I did not saw the entire stream, so there's maybe more.

kyliethicc (is this @thicc_gaf ?) did a pretty good summary of the important tidbits from the 3-hour long interview, which I'm going to shamelessly paste here:


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary notes of what Jeff Ross said:

- he left for personal reasons, age, future ideas, not because of anything in that article
- there was an idea for a Days Gone 2, there was some early work on it
- never say never about a Days Gone 2 not happening
- Days Gone sold well, more than all other Bend games combined
- its a good game they're proud of, but it has flaws
- the metacritic 70 and the critical reviews did hurt

- they had ideas for a Days Gone shared world online multiplayer game (along with more singleplayer)
- Days Gone started with idea for extra 2 player co-op mode
- Days Gone development was rough and the studio changed a lot over time, new people, new structure
- team and budget basically doubled over the years while making Days Gone

- PS5 games will cost even more to make than PS4 games
- even using outsourcing studios is getting more expensive cuz of bidding wars and limited devs
- he understands the business & PR approach that Sony is taking

- putting games on subscription services later on is cool, can help more people play it
- he likes Game Pass, but has doubts about the longterm business strategy, debt, converting users to profits, etc
- not sure if doing day 1 release on service would work (hasn't done it yet)
- he's happy that Days Gone is going to PC so more people can play it
- putting Uncharted Golden Abyss on PS Plus directly benefited Bend Studio financially

- Sony are very hands off with their studios, don't just chase money
- Shawn Layden, Scott Rohde, Shu Yoshida are all great to work with and love games
- he met Jim Ryan once at a PR thing in London and Jim Ryan threatened to fire anyone who leaked anything
- Herman Hulst did a good job leading Guerrila, he'll be fine

- he loves The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2 (he liked the bold story and ideas in 2)
- he likes Neil Druckmann and had fun meeting Troy Baker, did a Joel impression
- they've had a good relationship with Naughty Dog, just a few normal creative issues

- Bend was not becoming a support studio
- he said that rumor is false
- he said that Bend was helping Naughty Dog in a limited way, collaboration he called it
- it was to give some devs at Bend something to do while they had nothing else going on early in pre-pro

- new younger millennial game devs bitch and moan a lot, about everything
- getting to zero crunch is probably impossible but it does need to be managed better and fixed
- he respects Jason and has read his book, likes serious games journalism, devs should be held accountable

- a new Syphon Filter game would not work today, not modern enough, he has no new game design ideas for that
- open world game design needs to improve with better NPCs and better systems
- too many open world games are just a map full of icons for generic quests to do
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://twitter.com/x/status/1381361227247550467

Which doesn't mean anything other than "my hands are tied because I signed NDAs and I don't want to go out of a job". He's not backing away from his original statements.
And to return the olive branch given to him by Jeff Ross (i.e. the Days Gone Game Director), who did nothing but compliment Schreier's activity, Schreier just graciously went into full-frontal attack dipshit mode against him.

A post worthy of that forum.

 

[Globalisateur]

and Jim Ryan threatened to fire anyone who leaked anything

So his first impressions of Ryan must have being of a guy who threaten people. Besides, aren't devs already signed NDA about not leaking things?