Days Gone: 3 reasons why Bend Studio's new zombie shooter could work

Back when Days Gone was announced by Bend Studios as an open-world zombie survival game, I was excited beyond the hype.

You see it's because back in 2016 the only open world game Sony had exclusively made for PS4 was Horizon Zero Dawn, and so I was really interested to see as to how a first party exclusive title utilises the power of PS4 to make an immersive open world experience.

Fast forward to 2018, Days Gone has been sort of sidelined, its hyped reduced to almost zero, and the game continues to look unpolished and generic.

By no means, it looks bad though, but if you have been a die-hard PlayStation fan from the beginning then there's a certain level of quality you expect from their exclusive titles and that has been very well delivered this generation by the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, God Of War and Bloodborne.

So yes, by Sony's standard, Days Gone doesn't look to match the quality of those other games I mentioned above, but does that mean it will fail?

Of course not, in fact, I'm pretty optimistic about that Days Gone will sell because after all its targeting a genre which appeals to the wider gaming audience and it's an exclusive after all.

That being said, the game still looks very generic to me, and after exhaustively playing open world games one after another since 2016, I'm pretty disappointed to say that I have reached that level of fatigue that makes me not wanna touch any other game in this genre for quite some time and I believe many other people reading this could relate to the same.

But Days Gone is something I really don't wanna miss out, and there are 5 things I believe this game could actually do to garnish that attention and praise it deserves from me and many others alike.

#1 A dangerous open world

If you have been following Days Gone as rigorously as I have since the beginning, you must have noticed that this game has been promoted from the very beginning that it offers a world that is dangerous at all time.

What it means by that is this game doesn't have a difficulty option, the game is opting to be as much as realistic as possible when it comes to combat and encounters with freakers in the game. In short, its open world will consistently surprise you with encounters, it means you have to be attentive all the time.

This makes sense and could actually make the game immersive because the people who have played a lot of open world games by now, find it a very tedious and predictable to travel from point A to point B across the open world.

This I noticed a lot in the recent Ubisoft games and realised how boring the game gets when there's no difficult encounter in the game in between two story mission or side quests.

Days Gone seems to change that, it wants our attention all the time as a gamer and that interests me. Maybe I'll actually remember the pathways in its open world?

#2 Good Environment Sound

Days Gone is promised to give us a dangerous open world. But how would it actually make us feel tense all the time?

If you watched the Game Informer coverage of the game which included gameplay from the opening segments of the same, then you would have noticed that during most of the tense combat encounters, especially involving the freakers, the game relied more on the environment sound rather playing out a specific score.

I do not know whether that was the case because of the limited budget of the game or they intended to make it that way, but it sort of worked.

You see hearing your silent footsteps through the word as you cock your ears to listen to any nearby freakers who might jump on you out of nowhere is satisfying. It makes you think clearly and that's why it will make for a more immersive experience.

Adding a dramatic score in the background will only distract the players, and I'm glad Days Gone is thinking in that direction.

#3 Giving the player the required tools

Days Gone isn't focusing on making you save your bullets and limit your gameplay experience posing restrictions of weapons, ammo or other tools, In fact, as far as I have seen, Days Gone is in favour of all of the above things.

It features a wide variety of weapons, tools and big open areas in the game which will give you the freedom to approach things your way.

This is something that players never get tired of because everyone is consistently trying to find more creative ways to play the game, the developers just have to provide the necessary tools for that, and I'm satisfied with what they are trying for now.

Days Gone isn't going to be a technical achievement, a landmark in story-telling or innovative gameplay mechanic, but it's targeting a few specific areas where it could shine very well and be known for that in the time to come.

I mean, after all, it's Bend Studios first huge AAA game right? They deserve some break.

We will be covering Days Gone a lot in the coming days and weeks before its release of 26 April 2019 so make sure to stick to Sportskeeda for everything related to it and other gaming news.

Edited by Debjyoti Samanta