Days Gone

• 1. Introduction

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  In Days Gone, a horde of the game's infected can number anywhere from 50 to 500. Every one of them is chasing a single man on a motorcycle. That man is Deacon St. John, a former outlaw biker in post-apocalyptic Oregon. He has just learned that his wife Sarah, long assumed dead, may still be alive. The 2019 action-adventure game was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and built by Bend Studio.

  Behind the premise sits a stranger story. A studio that had spent decades making spinoff games for handheld consoles set out to build an open world on home consoles. Critics split over the result. Players still bought it in the millions, and a sequel never arrived. How did a project so ambitious end up so divisive, and what did it get right and wrong along the way?

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• 2. Freakers and Hordes

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  Freakers sleep through the daytime in Days Gone and come alive at night, wandering in search of food and water. They are the mindless remains of millions of people changed by a pandemic that killed almost everyone else. Players can lure them toward rival enemies and let the two groups fight each other. Younger infected called Newts, and infected animals known as Runners and Ragers, add variety. Hostile humans fill out the threats. Some opportunistic hunters attack only when Deacon enters their territory or looks weak.

  A horde is the real danger. Players who meet one head-on are easily overwhelmed, so Deacon must keep his distance and rely on traps, explosives and choke points. Firearms and melee weapons help, though melee weapons break unless repaired. Stealth offers another route. Players can distract enemies, or kill them silently from behind with a combat knife. Noise suppressors keep gunfire quiet, survival vision highlights nearby enemies and items, and binoculars help with scouting.

  The arsenal is wide. Pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, submachine guns and crossbows sit alongside proximity mines, grenades and homemade molotov cocktails. Higher-tier weapons are generally stronger. Guns bought from sellers can be kept in a gun locker, but anything scavenged in the field cannot be stored.

  Building those hordes took real effort. The Swarmers are the infected who gather into the largest groups. One inspiration for them was "a guy who was doing a YouTube video where he was moving weird". The Newts took their movements from contortionists. To keep a crowd manageable, the team split Swarmers into small clusters. Some clusters break away from the main group when they get close to the player. A large horde uses only eight Swarmer character models. The artists changed the height of each one so the crowd looks less uniform.

  The team also spent a lot of time on group artificial intelligence. They wanted the horde to do more than charge in a straight line, so it uses the terrain to surround and overwhelm Deacon. That is why distance matters so much, and why his motorcycle matters too.

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• 3. Camps and Fuel

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  Fast travel in Days Gone burns fuel and lets time pass. Players cannot use it until every Freaker nest between two points has been destroyed. The rule shows how much the game revolves around Deacon's motorcycle. It is his main way of getting around the open world, and it needs constant care. The bike uses fuel and stops working if it takes too much damage. Players refill it at gas stations and camps, and mend it with collected scraps.

  Deacon cannot live on the road alone. He earns trust with settlement camps by finishing missions and selling food, and that trust pays out in "camp credits". As trust grows, the camps sell new weapons, supplies and motorcycle parts. The parts improve the bike's speed, durability and maneuverability. Resources and components found in the world can also be crafted into weapons and supplies.

  Side objectives fill the map between story missions. Players clear Freaker nests, rescue hostages, raid enemy camps and capture bounty targets. They can also restore power to checkpoints run by the National Emergency Response Organization, known as NERO. Inside a checkpoint, injectors raise Deacon's health, his stamina for sprinting and dodging, or his focus. Focus lets him slow down time briefly while aiming a ranged weapon.

  Experience points arrive as missions and objectives are completed. Enough of them unlock new abilities that improve Deacon's melee and ranged combat and sharpen his survival skills. NERO's checkpoints are a small part of the game, but the organization behind them becomes central to the story's final reveal.

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• 4. Deacon's Road

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  Deacon St. John, voiced by Sam Witwer, watches a NERO helicopter carry away his wife Sarah. He stays behind to help his injured friend William "Boozer" Gray. Sarah is played by Courtnee Draper and Boozer by Jim Pirri. Deacon promises Sarah they will find each other again. Two years later he and Boozer work as mercenaries in the Pacific Northwest. Sarah is presumed dead, because the refugee camp she was heading for was overrun.

  A burned arm sends Deacon looking for medical supplies for Boozer. He follows another helicopter and meets James O'Brian, the researcher who evacuated Sarah. O'Brian says her flight was diverted to a different camp. Sarah might be alive. Along the way Deacon runs errands for Ada Tucker, who leads the Hot Springs camp. He also rescues a teenage girl named Lisa Jackson from the cultists called the Rippers. He leaves Lisa with a former drifter at the Lost Lake camp, which is led by "Iron" Mike Wilcox and Raymond "Skizzo" Sarkozi.

  The conflict turns personal. The Rippers' leader, who calls himself "Carlos", is really Jessie Williamson, once a member of Deacon and Boozer's motorcycle club. Jessie blames the pair for his excommunication. Deacon escapes the cult, and with Boozer's help he blows up a dam above the Rippers' compound. The flood drowns most of them, and Deacon kills Jessie in single combat.

  The search for Sarah then leads to Crater Lake, a military outpost now held by the Deschutes County Militia under Colonel Matthew Garret. Sarah is there, working on a weapon against the Freakers. She and Deacon visit her old lab, where they find that her own research helped create the virus. She now wants a cure instead. Garret grows paranoid, locks Sarah away and declares a holy war on the other camps. A militia captain named Derrick Kouri defects, Iron Mike dies defending Lost Lake, and Deacon answers with a truck bomb at the militia's headquarters. Sarah poisons Garret, and the militia collapses.

  Deacon, Sarah, Boozer and their friends settle at Lost Lake, while Lisa becomes a drifter who collects bounties on Freakers. The story has one more turn. Sometime later O'Brian asks for a meeting and admits that NERO always knew the virus caused mutations. He is a Freaker himself, still in control of his mind, and he warns Deacon that NERO is coming.

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• 5. Six Years in Bend

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  Full production on Days Gone began in early 2015, and the development cycle lasted six years. The studio finished work on the 10th of March 2019 and confirmed the game had gone gold, meaning it was ready for duplication. Bend Studio had thought a team of 50 would be enough. Instead it grew to around 130 people. Three leaders guided the project: studio director Christopher Reese, game director Jeff Ross and creative director John Garvin. All three had been at the studio since the 1990s, when it made Syphon Filter.

  For Bend Studio the game broke several patterns at once. It was the studio's first open-world project and its first original property since Syphon Filter in 1999. It was also its first release for home consoles since Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow in 2007. During pre-production the team chose to go open world and to set the game in Central Oregon, where the studio is based. Garvin said the region offers terrain from snowy mountains to deserts, which suited a sandbox game.

  The open-world systems came from a surprisingly small group. Lead designer Eric Jensen said five or six developers built them. They "had to think smart and efficient with all of our design choices knowing the manpower limitations". Most missions are scripted and tied to the main story. The aim was to bring the strengths of linear games such as the Uncharted series into an open world.

  Popular stories of the moment shaped the tone. World War Z, The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy were all prominent when development began, and they inspired the team. Because Deacon belongs to a motorcycle club, the developers also researched the Mongols Motorcycle Club.

  Sony Interactive Entertainment unveiled Days Gone at E3 2016. It was first planned for 2018, then pushed to the following year. The date moved again, from the 22nd of February 2019 to the 26th of April. That shift let the game avoid competing with big releases such as Metro: Exodus and Anthem.

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• 6. Redemption and Sound

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  Netflix's menu gave the writers of Days Gone an unexpected model. The game keeps constant track of player progress, and the team took inspiration from how that service remembers where viewers left off. Days Gone also has several intertwined stories, which lets players switch between narratives. The goal was to keep the story fresh.

  An early version let Deacon make decisions that changed the narrative. The feature was removed because the team struggled to show players what their choices had done. Garvin also argued that removing the choices protected Deacon's personality. Some options would have let him act with a cruelty that did not suit him.

  Garvin named "redemption" as the main theme. He described Deacon as an outsider who grows into a capable leader. The team wanted a more hopeful tone than the setting suggests. The story asks how Deacon can make the world better, and it explores the idea that surviving is not the same as living. The Road, The Passage and I Am Legend inspired the game's story and themes.

  The music came from Nathan Whitehead, whom Garvin invited after being impressed by his work on The Purge: Anarchy. Whitehead spent two years on the score, which the Nashville Scoring Orchestra and soloists performed. Guitar sits at its center, which Whitehead called an "obvious choice" for a biker and bounty hunter in the Pacific Northwest. He described the style as folk Americana with a touch of rock.

  The score was built in layers that the game engine can add or remove, so the music shifts with the action. Songs by Lewis Capaldi, Jack Savoretti, Billy Raffoul and Zander Reese appear on the final soundtrack. Original songs such as "Hell or High Water" and "Days Gone Quiet" also turn up in the awards categories the game was entered in.

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• 7. Critics and Counts

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  Matthew Kato of Game Informer found most of the game's side objectives to be filler that was neither engaging nor interesting. Malindy Hetfeld of Eurogamer said players are "doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way, for hours on end." Review aggregator Metacritic rated the PlayStation 4 version "mixed or average". The PC version and the later PlayStation 5 remaster were rated "generally favorable". On OpenCritic, 54% of critics recommended the original and 75% recommended the remaster.

  The horde fights drew the warmest praise. Kato called them "terrifying" and "tense" and liked that the artificial intelligence made each attempt unpredictable. Kallie Plagge of GameSpot found them "exhilarating" and "satisfying", though some campaign missions strung hordes together back to back and wore her out. Stealth drew criticism for being too basic. Dean Takahashi disliked the shooting, because the player cannot fire backward while fleeing Freakers. Many reviewers were unimpressed by how closely Freakers resembled zombies.

  The motorcycle split opinion. Leon Hurley of GamesRadar grew attached to it because the game made him care for it. For other reviewers the constant refueling became a major source of tedium. Bill Lavoy of Shacknews liked that cleared hordes do not respawn, which makes an area safer. He still found the map small.

  The story drew mixed reviews as well. Takahashi, writing for VentureBeat, found it engaging but regretted unresolved storylines. Andrew Webster of The Verge called it bland and compared it unfavorably to The Last of Us. Plagge called Deacon "selfish", while Takahashi described him as an "interesting and flawed character". Critics generally praised Witwer's performance. Technical problems were another complaint, from bugs and an unstable frame rate to frequent loading screens.

  Sales told a different story. Days Gone was the best-selling physical game in the United Kingdom in its release week, and it led all formats for three consecutive weeks. In Japan it launched ahead of God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn. About 114,319 physical units sold in its first three days. In North America it ranked second for April 2019, behind Mortal Kombat 11. Ross said it outsold all of Bend Studio's earlier games combined.

  The final count became a dispute. In January 2022 Ross claimed on Twitter that the game had sold over 8 million units by late 2020. His figures came from a site that tracks PlayStation Trophy data, and several gaming outlets challenged them. Ross added that he had personally seen it pass five million copies, while the tracking site suggested 5.8 million. A ransomware attack on Insomniac Games in December 2023 then leaked Sony data showing the real figure: 7.32 million units by February 2022.

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• 8. Afterlife

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  In June 2019, Bend Studio added a Survival difficulty mode to Days Gone, which changes the head-up display and disables fast travel. Twelve weekly challenges followed, with Gold, Silver and Bronze rankings and rewards that included credits for new characters. September brought New Game Plus and the MB-150, a sniper rifle from the Syphon Filter series. In November, bike tanks, decorations and frame paint inspired by Death Stranding arrived.

  On the 9th of April 2021, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg News revealed that Bend Studio had pitched a sequel. Sony rejected it, he reported, because of the first game's mixed reception and long development. Ross confirmed the pitch but said a non-disclosure agreement limited what he could share. The plan included a "shared universe with co-op play", which the first game left out because of staffing limits.

  Blame landed in an awkward place. On a podcast with David Jaffe, the God of War creator, Garvin urged fans to pay full price for games they love. He suggested weak profits had cost the game its sequel. Commenters pushed back that it was unreasonable to ask people to spend US$70 on an unknown game. Others noted that Sony controls PlayStation sales and offers free demos. Jensen thanked players for their support whenever they had played.

  Jaffe offered another account. He said Shawn Layden, then chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, had fiercely backed Days Gone. Once Layden left in September 2019, Jaffe said, the game was effectively dead. Ross said Sony asked whether other properties could be used instead.

  The game itself kept moving. A Windows version reached Steam and the Epic Games Store on the 18th of May 2021. Sony was bringing more first-party games to personal computers. The game reached GOG on the 25th of October 2023. Sony announced a PlayStation 5 remaster on the 12th of February 2025, released on the 25th of April. It added graphical and accessibility improvements, a permadeath mode, a speedrun mode and "Horde Assault", an endless-wave survival challenge. Windows players received the three modes in the Broken Roads downloadable content pack.

  In August 2022, Deadline reported that a film adaptation was in the works at PlayStation Productions and Vendetta Productions. Sam Heughan was under consideration to play Deacon St. John.

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