The games industry doesn’t hibernate for very long over the winter and holidays, so there’s already the first stirrings for what looks to be one of the busiest periods in gaming that I can remember. The next few months are jam-packed with game releases, many of which were delayed from the end of last year, and more trailers and announcements are starting to drop. That’s in addition to PC gamers getting a month where they can catch up on some huge games that are being ported to their platform for the first time. In the News This Week Hitman 3 Year 2 starts 20th January – Freelancer mode, a new level and free updates revealed All Xbox One consoles were discontinued by the end of 2020 Take Two purchasing Zynga for $12.7 billion Troy Baker backs a voice based NFT site but won’t be selling his own voice Deep Rock Galactic gains 6 million players in one week after PS Plus launch STALKER 2 hit with massive delay More Days Gone sequel plans revealed by game director Jeff Ross Overwatch 2 LEGO set delayed due to Activision Blizzard allegations PUBG’s free-to-play relaunch is now live on PlayStation, Xbox and Steam Techland clarify how long Dying Light 2 takes to complete Giveaways We’ve got a great giveaway this week for fans of the RuneScape MMORPG. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, which is mind-boggling for pretty much every game, Jagex created a gorgeous RuneScape: The First 20 Years book looking back of the game’s history. We’ve got five copies of the Deluxe Edition for a giveaway, which you can enter here. Games in Review and Featured Articles January seems to be the month of choice for games to get ports to PC, with both Monster Hunter Rise and God of War making the jump to keyboard & mouse. How did they hold up? Monster Hunter Rise – PC, NSW – 9/10 God of War – PC, PS5, PS4 – 8/10 Battle Brothers – PS4, XBO, PC – 7/10 Elsewhere, we took a good long look at The Anacrusis, a new sixties sci-fi themed take on the Left 4 Dead formula that’s now in Early Access and Xbox Game Preview, while Gareth dove back into the mind of Far Cry 4’s arch villain with the Far Cry 6 – Pagan: Control DLC. His mind is rather similar in structure to Vaas’ from the first DLC… Over the weekend, we had two features, the first from Eric delving into The Legend of Zelda Second Quest, and the second with Reggie asking what happened to Arena Shooters? Finally, What We Played featured The Anacrusis, Far Cry 6 and Fantasian. Trailer Park We could post trailers for days this week, but here’s a few of the highlights: Gran Turismo 7 gameplay trailer heads to the Daytona International Speedway Pokémon Legends: Arceus trailer reveals more gameplay from its Hisuian adventure Kirby and the Forgotten Land is coming out in March – new gameplay and co-op revealed in trailer New ELEX II trailer dives into the overhauled RPG combat Your Achievements And finally for this round-up, we come to… you! MrYd finished of Ghost of Tsushima’s main story and started on the Iki Island expansion. He also enjoyed playing through Life Is Strange 2 and got sucked into the cave-dwelling delights of Deep Rock Galactic. And willbuchanan is aiming to finish off Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. He might even shoot for the platinum, which just depends on getting all of the outfits. That’s it for this week’s gaming round-up. Have a fun weekend, wrap up warm, and we’ll catch you again next week.
More details of what Days Gone game director Jeff Ross envisioned for a sequel to the open world zombie game have come out in an interview with USA Today. This includes how he and fellow director John Garvin planned to continue the story of Deacon St. John and his wife Sarah, the introduction of NERO tech, and Deacon plucking up the courage to figure out how to swim. In the interview, Ross admits that Days Gone was far from a perfect game, with pacing issues, yelling at the radio, and plenty more, but asserts once more that “We have to be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run,” while pointing to other first-time games like Uncharted and Batman: Arkham Asylum that grew significantly from one game to the next. In his vision for a sequel, Ross revealed that the relationship between Deacon St. John and his wife Sarah would have been explored further. He said, “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. We would have kept the bike, obviously. And I think we would have expanded the tone a little bit in a more technical direction, kind of like, ‘Alright, now we have all this NERO tech – what can we do with it?’ The tone would have expanded one ring outward towards some of the new reality. I think this would have been a little bit more – I don’t want to say Avengers, but something where the player had resources, he had some sort of the remnants of whatever the government had.” Further reading: Does Days Gone deserve a sequel after all? Beyond that, they would have wanted to add to the world to have things like bears rummaging through trash cans, encounters with wolves and more varied AI for both enemies and allies. While swimming would have been included after it was taken out of the first game for causing too many technical challenges and given a narrative explanation. In essence, Ross would have wanted to introduce more lays and systems to the game for a richer tapestry of gameplay. “Systems are very simple,” he explained, “And if they’re simple, they can be elegant and very rich for the player. I knew adding one or two more layers to the systemic elements of it would have been something that we could have wrapped our heads around, it would have led to a ton of richness for the players and a ton of unique open-world moments and responses that we haven’t seen before. Let’s sink our teeth into this and do something even more epic.” Released in 2019, the open world zombie game debuted to a good, though not great critical reception. It was still a sales success for Sony and sold around 5 million copies by the end of the year, but behind the scenes, as the management at the top of PlayStation Studios changed hands, the pitches for a Days Gone sequel ended up being turned down. This, it transpires, was seemingly on a studio management level, as opposed to reaching new PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst’s desk. The decision not to greenlight a sequel made headlines in early 2021, two years on from the game’s original release. Both Ross and Garvin had departed the company in late 2020, and there were reports of discontent at the studio not being able to make a sequel and having to work instead as a support studio to Naughty Dog. Last April, the two of them gave a number of interviews and made podcast appearances that revealed some of their vision for Days Gone 2, such as having a shared open world, and the lack of a sequel became percieved as one of the greatest injustices in video gaming history by those who enjoyed the game. Time has passed, confirmation that Bend is working on a new original IP has come, but then the bandage has been ripped off the wound once again in the last few days as Ross stated that Days Gone sold around 8 million copies within its first 19 months on sale, a figure that’s comparable to critical darling Ghost of Tsushima. This, it seems, was partly an estimate from trophy tracking data, but is likely to be within the ballpark. Either way, it’s prompted fresh discussion of a game that, frankly, is never, ever going to get made. Will this be the end of the Days Gone 2 trail? I guess we’ll find out in roughly 8 months time. Source: USA Today
And now we have a little more information about what it could have looked like, courtesy of a Ross interview with USA Today. It’s worth noting that the director openly admits he only worked on the project for “about a week”, so we’re effectively talking about scribbles on a notepad here, rather than a fully fleshed out game design.
Another day, another Days Gone article. The director of the original game, Jeff Ross — who left Sony Bend at the end of 2020 — can't stop sharing details surrounding the developer itself, management, and the scrapped plans for a sequel at the moment. After sharing some fairly unreliable stats on how Days Gone sold, he has now appeared in an interview with USA Today detailing his pitch for the rejected Days Gone 2.
Ross saw his plans for a sequel as the "definitive version" where he "didn’t have to necessarily apologize for so much". The follow-up would have explored protagonist Deacon St. John's relationship with his wife Sarah and their dynamics; Ross remarks they may not be happy together. "Well, what can we do with that? Okay, we were married before the apocalypse, but what about the future?" Days Gone 2 would have kept the heavy focus on narrative as well as the bike, but the tone would expand to a bigger scale.
Update: We thought this story was perhaps over, but apparently not. Since conducting yesterday's interview with David Jaffe, director Jeff Ross has posted on Twitter: "I stand by my numbers."
At this point, we're probably never going to know how many units Days Gone sold unless Sony explicitly tells us. Not that it really matters: Sony Bend has moved on to a new franchise now.
