Days Gone is a PlayStation exclusive Open-World Survival game, which was released on April 24, 2019. You take on the role of Deacon St. John and his biker buddy Boozer. While trying to survive in a gruesome, pandemic Oregon, your task will be to play biker-detective to find out what has happened to Deacon’s wife Sarah. Days Gone promises to deliver a riveting story about losing the loved ones.
So far, the game sounds awesome and it sounds like a big-budget, narrative-driven game. It even gives us players some The Last of Us vibes. Buying a AAA-title for 30€ six months after its release tells me something went wrong. After playing it, I have come to a conclusion that Days Gone fails in delivering the promised player experiences, because there is no cohesion between structure, mechanics, programming and UI.
Structure. The story feels unstructured. The opening sequences which should establish some sort of context between characters and the game world is completely missing. You are introduced to Sarah, who’s apparently Deacon’s lady. She gets stabbed by one of the infected Newts (teenagers). Deacon sends her on a chopper to get help and he stays behind with Boozer to fight against the Freakers. Boozer is apparently a friend? or his brother? Anyway, the whole scene is supposed to be super emotional, showing how brave and loyal Deacon is to these two people. Unfortunately, this isn’t working out.
After that cinematic scene, I was thrown into gameplay with Boozer, on my bike. I’m supposed to help him do a mission but at no point I’m feeling motivated playing. My character is a super stubborn teenager who hates everything: from talking to people, to listening to Radio free Oregon or the rain.
If he doesn’t care to tell me why he’s like that and to motivate me, I don’t care if he struggles just because the game fails to build an emotional connection with me.
This all could have been different, if the structure of events was changed and I was given more backstory. Obviously, more backstory will be revealed much later but if I’m not hooked initially and I’m not given proper motivation, I won’t finish the game.
Mechanics. The controls feel very clumsy and there is nothing smooth about them. I felt like wearing oven mitts every time playing. This applies to walking around with the main character, driving or switching between weapons. The latter point becomes very problematic the longer you play, because when you expand your gear wheel, you need to go over several levels to select the right item. Usually this isn’t an issue but we’re talking about Days Gone. Many times, I felt frustrated to find out that instead of using my selected item, the magic gear wheel choose something for me. So, I end up wasting a crafted item. Solution here would have been to have a pre-selected set on items players set for them in a more elaborate menu. During my gameplay, I discovered weapons that work for my playstyle best and ended up having so many trash items I didn’t touch twice.
Programming. In Days Gone, there are cinematics, non-playable gameplay and player gameplay. Sometimes, the designers decided to use all three in one mission, which is awesome if only the transitions would’t be that choppy. Why is this so disturbing? It kind of ruins your experience where your attention switches between the real world and gameworld.
UI:
The design of the menu and the HUD is disconnected. Not only it doesn’t match the overall design and aesthetics of the game but it also feels like it is copy-pasted from an 80s street fighter game.
Regarding the menu design, it has no relevance to me as a player. It is a neat feature to be able to scroll on the touchpad and directly see the menu, but the way the menu is being presented feels “uneasy” or out of the place.
The four areas – structure, mechanics, programming and UI – occurred due to a lack of testing and especially communication between teams. If all teams would work together with UX, issues could have been detected with every iteration.
You can see that disconnect between teams in the game structure, mechanics, programming and UI. All these elements make up the game but they don’t work together, creating something confusing and chaotic. This is where The Last of Us works better.
Why The Last of Us Works Better
The Last of Us is a if not the role model. It is also a great comparison to Days Gone, as Days Gone is going for that TLOU effect.
The story is carried out by the two main characters and gradually revealed as I proceeded in the game. When Joel is learning something new, I learn that at the same time. It is always easy to follow the story given the game’s structure and I could always tell where the linear decisions are coming from.
The mechanics reflect that gradual learning as well. When the switch between Joel to Ellie arrives, I could feel the strength and my learning curve with Joel. With Ellie I first felt weak, because she didn’t have the same equipment as Joel, and I basically had to learn again. Switching between weapons with the gear wheel/cross is easy. There aren’t many items but they feel as they are. Key is simplicity which again reflects the storyworld. You see where this is going? There is a cohesiveness between every single element of that game, from structure, mechanics, UI and even programming.
As we all know, TLOU really challenged the PS3 system but it never felt like it to me as a player. I never experience any lags or extremely slow transitions between gameplay and cinematics. My player experience was always stable.
Days Gone could have been good as TLOU if only a higher priority on user research and teamwork was put and less ambition on creating a lifeless and extremely repetitive open-world. As a designer, know your players by being a player. Understand their cognitive processes and you will find your perfect structure for your game.
I specialize in GUR (games user research), player-narrative interaction and cognitive narrative studies. If you think I can help your studio, contact me: natali.panic-cidic[at]rwth-aachen.de
Playful Brain Demand 