Days Gone didn’t receive the same fanfare as other first-party Sony games during the PlayStation 4 generation. Despite being praised for its graphics and AI, the title was widely criticized for its lackluster story and mission design. The Bend Studio game still went on to be a commercial success, selling more copies than all of the company’s previous games combined and becoming the 19th-best-selling game of 2019 in the US. A recent interview with Bend Studio director Jeff Ross revealed that the game sold over 8 million copies but was treated like a “big disappointment” by Sony. Now, more details have come to light regarding the Days Gone sequel that never was.
Jeff Ross left Bend Studio in 2020 after two decades. Talking to USA Today, he explained that the sequel to the PS4 title was going to be the “definitive version” of the Days Gone concept, and would continue to follow the protagonist Deacon and his partner Sarah. It would have given the player more tools as well, following Deacon’s acquisition of NERO’s technology in the first game.
“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,” Ross explained. The former director also mentioned plans to allow players to swim and to remove many of the first title’s instant-fail stealth areas.
Days Gone was released in April 2019 for PlayStation 4. It was ported to the PC in May 2021. The sequel, sadly, has been canceled.
