This review contains spoilers
I put in somewhere around 75 hours into this game and I felt every minute of it. Far too much main story progression is locked behind tedious tasks and mandatory side quests involving random NPCs you've never heard of prior to getting the quest and will never interact with again.
There's not a whole lot to see in the overworld, and what's there is all the same. Small towns, rest stops, and roadside attractions are all littered with Freaks, and once you clear them out you can forage for supplies in the area. Maybe burn out some Freaker nests or find a horde later in the game. Marauder camps follow the same format too: clear them out, find their bunker. Granted, I did enjoy the novelty of occasionally coming across a souvenir for a little world building, but the general lack of variety in things to do started to weigh on the game early on.
But the writing is where Days Gone really suffers. Deacon comes across as less of a biker and more of a guy who really liked Sons of Anarchy and wanted to make that his persona, but is still the guy who gets upset over tweets that offend him and opinions he finds distasteful. Some of the dialogue was so cringe, so insufferable, that I found myself wondering more than once who read those lines and thought, "Now that's quality writing."
The game absolutely didn't deserve some of the ridiculous criticisms it got, like outrage over real biker wedding vows or pearl-clutching over a guy admiring his wife's ass. But it does deserve scrutiny for treating Boozer like a ball and chain for quite a large chunk of the game; for introducing too many key characters and plot points with next to no context or history; and for creating a world filled with people so nasty and miserable that I didn't give a shit what happened to any of them.
Days Gone does a cool thing in exploring the human element of the zombie apocalypse, showing the toll that a day-to-day existence in this world would likely take on the average person, including the protagonist himself. It's a unique concept that would be brilliant in the hands of a solid writing team. Instead, everyone — literally everyone — is bitter, angry, depressed, rude, two-faced, murderous, opportunistic, anxiety-riddled, on-edge, and miserable. At two years into the apocalypse, I'd expect a greater array of emotions and personalities. It's just lazy writing that lacks any of the nuance needed to communicate why I should care about any of these people.
Combat is where this game shines because it's fun. I liked finding progressively stronger melee weapons to craft, and shooting felt good to control. Once hordes are introduced (which I never stopped being terrified of), it felt amazing taking one on while totally maxed out on consumables galore, equipped with crowd-clearing guns. The hordes are a unique, well-done feature.
However, for a game centered around a biker, your bike in this game is more nuisance than asset. Even after multiple critical upgrades to fuel tanks and durability, it still felt like my bike was a sluggish gas-guzzler that couldn't withstand much damage before needing repairs.
I get that there's some demand for a sequel, but it's for the best that a sequel has been written off. I think the ending is as good as it could be for this game's world. Deacon's little family is safe together and ready to rebuild their lives at Lost Lake with their friends. And while O'Brian's final reveal and parting words are cryptic and unsettling, some stories are better suited for that level of ambiguity and uncertainty. I'm just not sure what else there is to say that wouldn't take Deacon on an adventure that would feel way too over-the-top.
Days Gone is perhaps too ambitious for its own good. It wanted to do too much at once and overstayed its welcome, particularly by the time I fled Wizard Island for Lost Lake and realized I was being put on multiple fetch quests involving clearing hordes in order to finally, this time (no, for real this time) reach the end. What the game does right, it does very well. But it's just not enough to outweigh the middling to bad.
(Side note: I first played this game on the PS4 when it came out, then abandoned it. This second attempt to play and finish it was on a PS5 and while the game doesn't have an official PS5 version, the graphical upgrade it gets from the console is incredibly impressive. The game looks amazing, though there are some issues in some cutscenes with textures not rendering properly or at all. Also, sometimes NPCs will suddenly get pulled a few feet to the left or right during battle, like they're puppets on invisible strings being dragged around for whatever reason. But visually, the game for the most part looks amazing on a PS5.)
There's not a whole lot to see in the overworld, and what's there is all the same. Small towns, rest stops, and roadside attractions are all littered with Freaks, and once you clear them out you can forage for supplies in the area. Maybe burn out some Freaker nests or find a horde later in the game. Marauder camps follow the same format too: clear them out, find their bunker. Granted, I did enjoy the novelty of occasionally coming across a souvenir for a little world building, but the general lack of variety in things to do started to weigh on the game early on.
But the writing is where Days Gone really suffers. Deacon comes across as less of a biker and more of a guy who really liked Sons of Anarchy and wanted to make that his persona, but is still the guy who gets upset over tweets that offend him and opinions he finds distasteful. Some of the dialogue was so cringe, so insufferable, that I found myself wondering more than once who read those lines and thought, "Now that's quality writing."
The game absolutely didn't deserve some of the ridiculous criticisms it got, like outrage over real biker wedding vows or pearl-clutching over a guy admiring his wife's ass. But it does deserve scrutiny for treating Boozer like a ball and chain for quite a large chunk of the game; for introducing too many key characters and plot points with next to no context or history; and for creating a world filled with people so nasty and miserable that I didn't give a shit what happened to any of them.
Days Gone does a cool thing in exploring the human element of the zombie apocalypse, showing the toll that a day-to-day existence in this world would likely take on the average person, including the protagonist himself. It's a unique concept that would be brilliant in the hands of a solid writing team. Instead, everyone — literally everyone — is bitter, angry, depressed, rude, two-faced, murderous, opportunistic, anxiety-riddled, on-edge, and miserable. At two years into the apocalypse, I'd expect a greater array of emotions and personalities. It's just lazy writing that lacks any of the nuance needed to communicate why I should care about any of these people.
Combat is where this game shines because it's fun. I liked finding progressively stronger melee weapons to craft, and shooting felt good to control. Once hordes are introduced (which I never stopped being terrified of), it felt amazing taking one on while totally maxed out on consumables galore, equipped with crowd-clearing guns. The hordes are a unique, well-done feature.
However, for a game centered around a biker, your bike in this game is more nuisance than asset. Even after multiple critical upgrades to fuel tanks and durability, it still felt like my bike was a sluggish gas-guzzler that couldn't withstand much damage before needing repairs.
I get that there's some demand for a sequel, but it's for the best that a sequel has been written off. I think the ending is as good as it could be for this game's world. Deacon's little family is safe together and ready to rebuild their lives at Lost Lake with their friends. And while O'Brian's final reveal and parting words are cryptic and unsettling, some stories are better suited for that level of ambiguity and uncertainty. I'm just not sure what else there is to say that wouldn't take Deacon on an adventure that would feel way too over-the-top.
Days Gone is perhaps too ambitious for its own good. It wanted to do too much at once and overstayed its welcome, particularly by the time I fled Wizard Island for Lost Lake and realized I was being put on multiple fetch quests involving clearing hordes in order to finally, this time (no, for real this time) reach the end. What the game does right, it does very well. But it's just not enough to outweigh the middling to bad.
(Side note: I first played this game on the PS4 when it came out, then abandoned it. This second attempt to play and finish it was on a PS5 and while the game doesn't have an official PS5 version, the graphical upgrade it gets from the console is incredibly impressive. The game looks amazing, though there are some issues in some cutscenes with textures not rendering properly or at all. Also, sometimes NPCs will suddenly get pulled a few feet to the left or right during battle, like they're puppets on invisible strings being dragged around for whatever reason. But visually, the game for the most part looks amazing on a PS5.)