The director of Days Gone has outlined what the game's sequel might have looked like.
Speaking to USA Today, Jeff Ross said that a second Days Gone game would have been "the definitive version," citing the step up between the "basic" first games in series like Uncharted and Batman: Arkham and their more expansive sequels.
Ross went on to explain how his sequel would have taken shape, starting with the relationship between protagonist Deacon St John and his estranged wife, Sarah: "Yeah, they're back together, but maybe they're not happy. Well, what can we do with that? 'Okay, we were married before the apocalypse, but what about the future?' We would have kept the heavy, strong narrative."
Deacon's bike would have stayed too, of course, but the tech on offer might have been a little more impressive, thanks to the NERO resources accessed throughout the original game: "the tone would have expanded one ring outward towards some of the new reality. I think this would have been a little bit more [...] something where the player had resources, some sort of the remnants of whatever the government had."
Ross also says that the game's world would have been more dynamic, mentioning bears digging through trash cans, and wolves that could roam and hunt throughout the map. Deacon would also have been able to swim, fixing one of the first game's biggest killers - game data suggests that players were their own biggest cause of deaths, and that 75% of those self-inflicted demises came from drowning, but it would have taken too long to include programming and animation work required to include swimming in the original game.
Unfortunately for Ross, these plans seem unlikely to ever come to light. Sony decided not to greenlight a sequel, and developer Sony Bend is understood to have moved on to a new IP. Ross has recently been expressing his disappointment in Sony's decision, claiming that the publisher declined to sell the franchise to other developers despite his claims that it was a commercial success.
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