Fntastic has finally released their developer blog for The Day Before, and, well, it looks like a real game.
Fntastic Communications Team Member Dana Soltangazinova took us through six minutes of a journey that the studio went through in making their open world survival shooter, including details on what they actually focused on, and what the game used to be like.
So, Fntastic started work on The Day Before in 2019. In its pre-alpha state, they already knew they were going to make an open world survival shooter, but it still looks very different than it does today. The game had a rural winter setting, reminiscent of Alaska or Hokkaido, and it had a cartoonier style.
The Day Before already had stats like hunger and energy, and it already had the looting mechanic, tied to every home and building you came across. There were also vehicles, implying a bigger world, and also zombies, of course.
In 2020, Fntastic made huge changes. Dana describes a desire to ‘win a place in the hearts of as many other people as possible’, which sounds like coded language for, they saw gamers wanted realistic graphics. They changed not only animations, but sound and lighting design.
So, as you may be able to tell from our preview pic, the change is literally night and day for this game. The cartoony style for a video game allows a game studio to simplify many aesthetic details. It isn’t exactly simpler or easier, but it does mean the game’s appeal will depend a lot on whether that style is appealing to many players or not. Case in point, the difference in visuals in Overwatch and Battleborn.
Changing to a realistic style means that Fntastic now has to worry about producing a sense of verisimilitude in the game. Even the grittiest video games don’t really 100 % recreate reality faithfully. It would be harmful to gameplay. But if you look at similarly realistic games, like The Last Of Us, or the Tomb Raider reboot, the building blocks that lead to creating those worlds have to enable that suspension of disbelief so that you aren’t constantly thinking how unreal it looks.
With that said, it’s hard to miss that the game now certainly looks more drab and boring, for the sake of that ‘realism’. Whether you like to admit it or not, that is also a quality found in modern games like The Last Of Us and Tomb Raider, that the studios have to actively work around lest they make a new Resistance: Fall of Man. They do this, for example, by creating interesting looking setpieces, and careful planning around their visual design.
The change to realism is most obvious on the characters, but also extends to the weapons, items, vehicles, and even backgrounds. Fntastic also took the effort to make a female version of every male character, including the zombies. They increased the motion capture used and added a realistic dismemberment system for the zombies.
Fntastic also cites Propnight, pointing out that they brought their cartoony style that they had prototyped over to that game. It certainly seems that they learned lessons in making Propnight that they would then carry over to The Day Before.
Dana also cites their mods in Discord and Steam, indicating that they have been using that community feedback in working on the game. And those improvement extend to elements like zombie AI, the shooting system, character customization, and more.
The video ends with Dana promising even more future videos revealing more features in the lead up to release.
It is understandable if this video still isn’t enough to convince some gamers that The Day Before will be any good. If Fntastic follows through with these promised future videos, it will likely kill off any speculation that the game is fake or somehow a scam.
Whether the game will be good or not is a completely different discussion entirely. Even in AAA development, the studio isn’t always sure if the product the come out with will be received well until it’s actually in the public’s hands. At this rate, at least, Fntastic will surely rebuild that trust in their game among the public.
The Day Before is planned for release on PC via Steam on November 11, 2023. You can watch the video below.
