What little context you’re given as the burning Oregon streets give way to the smoking thicket is enough to appreciate the chaos. The how and why may be left unanswered, but as our protagonist Deacon St. John prepares for another ride, the two years that have passed since the arrival of the mutagen have brought with them a touch of normality. As Days Gone shifts to its present timeline, Deacon St. John weaves his bike through the rambling infected, rain wetting a highway littered with abandoned cars and piles of claret gore. And as another open-world beckons, Days Gone emphasises that the stories of the past are just as important as the ones that define the present, Deacon’s tale an equal consideration of a lost life, and a future forgotten.
Days Gone inhabits an awkward position within the open-world adventure genre. In many ways, it reiterates upon established norms and does little to evolve them. You still have a checklist of things to do, for example, in areas of a map that are zoned off from one another and largely dictated by a percentage of completion. You still progress along a linear narrative and bounce from mission to mission, divulging from the set path as soon as the pangs of inquisitiveness strike. And you are still required to scavenge for supplies, poring over every forgotten nook in order to acquire the means to craft your tools of survival. Days Gone is no subversion of your typical open-world fare, but it doesn’t really have to be. Its worth is derived from telling a story that, although sometimes difficult to parse, has the right amount of heart where it matters. The story of Deacon St. John certainly isn’t emboldened by filling out collectible checklists and jumping between map icons, but such familiar elements are rarely imperative and often subdued. This is a tale told with a lot of confidence in its surrounding world, and with a welcome simplicity that sees the whispering Oregon woodland become inextricable from the roaring pistons of a rolling spitfire.
Deacon is a man lost within a changed world that he has begrudgingly come to understand, one in which anarchy reigns as murder goes unchecked, and the seats of power are held by those who dwell within fortified communes. The world of Days Gone is desolate and unforgiving, where even the allies of our protagonist lower themselves to the base depths of their morality in order to survive. But Deacon continues to endure, and in doing so, offers up his skills to Oregon’s newfound leadership as a messenger, an exterminator and a mercenary. On the road for days at a time with nothing else other than his bike and a few rounds of ammunition, the degradation of Deacon’s mental condition is a telling rendition of fear and isolation set against a backdrop of raw terror. Gnashing his teeth together and growling profanities at the living and undead alike, resentment quickly turns to anger which turns to fury, the stress and hopelessness of continued survival enacting a heavy toll. With every rage induced utterance, there’s a prevailing sense that Deacon edges ever closer to losing himself entirely, the increasing psychological strain upon our character perfectly suited the darkly destitution that surrounds him. Although certain dialogue choices and writing discrepancies seem determined to undermine the broader aspects of Deacon’s ailing mental state, both the visual and vocal acting of his character is utterly convincing.
BENEATH STORM OR SUN, THE GAME’S ATMOSPHERE IS THICK WITH TANGIBLE HORROR
Sam Witwer’s portrayal of both sides of Deacon—the self-assured, confident patch-bearer of Oregon’s rural western reach, and the embattled veteran of the bloody post-apocalypse—is delivered with a tremendous appreciation for his transition, the surrounding hellscape eating away at him piece by piece. Though he may be a proficient, merciless killer, Deacon’s fragility and freneticism exists in every grunt and grimace, with his maladjusted nature directly opposing his will to survive. This is a world blanketed in dread, with the unstable psychosis of its inhabitants feeding into the collective anxiety that drives the land’s lawlessness. There isn’t much nuance to many of the game’s characters, but their mutual suffering is a large part of what makes their surroundings feel so powerfully bleak.
The primary narrative in Days Gone focuses on Deacon’s attempts to escape his entrapment from within the Oregonian valley, one that is woven between a number of other structured subplots instead of being outright separated from them. Rather than detaching yourself from the main plot thread in order to salvage a few collectibles or take down an enemy encampment, it’s often necessary to open up an entirely new aspect of the story before returning to Deacon’s primary goal. In many ways this staggers linear progression, but the system succeeds in prioritising the uniformity of its breadth of content. By banding everything together in such a way, the extended lore and overarching narrative are more whole and completion feels more fulfilling. As a tonic for the overwhelming nature of typical open-world tasks, this structure offers something of a welcome relief. The majority of things you accomplish in the game are outlined with their own subheading and description via the menu, your progress along each of these paths increasing steadily as you interact with the world organically. Whenever you find yourself with only a single objective on the map vying for your attention, even if it doesn’t pertain specifically to Deacon’s ambitions, your engagement is immediately reflected and your progress easily tracked. The value in such a system is in how it filters through the glut of content in order to improve accessibility, and by doing so, helps the player maintain a vested interest in the broader world. Days Gone doesn’t boast a world overflowing with innumerable parcels of content, but what it has it most certainly uses purposefully.
Between the warring human factions and roving Freaker tribes, Days Gone has plenty of work available that is suited to Deacon’s skillset. As main missions stick to more character driven confrontations, the other activities available put Deacon to the road and have him forge a path all his own. Tasks to clear out human ambusher encampments are generally straightforward, but Days Gone shines when it comes to the utilisation of its skulking undead.
CONFLICTS CAN SNOWBALL EASILY — A HORDE CAN QUICKLY BLOSSOM FROM A FEW DOZEN UNDEAD
Like the robotic behemoths of Horizon: Zero Dawn’s greater expanse, the undead greatly outnumber the living, with their commonality never detracting from the threat that they pose. The first time that you’re forcibly pulled from your bike by a lunging Freaker and confronted by an entire pack is enough to set the heart racing. The next time you’ll be more prepared and likely have better equipment to fend them off, yet there’s no guarantee you won’t also be set upon by an opportunistic gang of wayfarers, or alert a nearby grizzly ravenous with hunger.
Though there may be no greater indication of your relative powerlessness than when you’re confronted with a horde. During the daytime, hordes of anywhere from fifty to a few hundred Freakers nestle down in cave systems and train carriages, waiting for night to fall so that they can emerge to feed at mass graves and drink from nearby lakes. Impressively, the set path that the hordes follow can be easily interrupted. On one occasion, it was a pack of wolves chasing a deer that alerted the mass of bodies, while on another, two gun-toting mercenaries engaged without a second thought, becoming instantly overwhelmed by the ensuing tide of sickly flesh. Culling a horde requires that you make the most of everything at your disposal, with Deacon never being strong enough to walk willingly into its maw and come out unscathed. Days Gone employs a base experience system, giving a set amount of points for every Freaker felled and allowing you to choose a new skill to acquire whenever the cap is met. Yet none of the skills on offer turn your character into an irrepressible killing machine, with the best you can hope for being slightly better odds when it comes to your next encounter. From the first minute of the game to the last, you are always outmanned by the undead, living in fear of every growl and hiss caught on the wind. Where proficiency meets improvisation is where the game excels, the inability to completely control situations lending to the raw thrill of breakneck survival.
As important the bike may be to your journey, you’re not completely inseparable from one another. Often, I found myself parking my bike on the outskirts of a town before I ventured in on foot, largely because I didn’t want to arouse any unwanted attention. There’s only so much that you can do to suppress the bellowing of your engine, but perhaps that wouldn’t matter if the controls for riding were a touch more responsive. The trails of Oregon, with their winding coils and narrow width, are a challenge to stick to made all the more difficult by the inconsistent distribution of power that the bike seems to struggle with. When you’re riding along a highway it’s easy to remain in control, but the moment that the path becomes more treacherous, it’s difficult to achieve the required level of thrust without losing all of your momentum. The frequency at which you’re obligated to refuel the bike is also of particular annoyance, especially since you cannot store an additional jerry can on the back as you could in Mad Max. And given the weakness of the bike prior to later-game upgrades, having to repair it after almost every enjoyably gruesome collision with a Freaker can easily set you back a fair few resources at a time.
NEW FREAKER SPECIES ARE UNVEILED GRADUALLY, THE WORLD NEVER LOSING ITS SENSE OF DANGER
Where the bike retains its importance to the game however is in its practicality. An early upgrade allows you to attach a satchel to the bike good for an entire fresh resupply of ammunition, while its use as a mobile save point gives you a certain level of control in situations that otherwise could pose a threat to your life. Most importantly, as there’s simply not enough ammunition in the game to kill every infected soul that passes you by, traversal with the bike helps grant you safe passage between regions, allowing you avoid the worst of the roadside ambushes and Freaker encounters that await you. Although the Oregonian basin you inhabit is far from gargantuan in size, it is large enough that the bike remains integral to your journey, and as important to your kit as a rifle and bandages. Travelling with your bike allows the game-space to remain manageable. The scale of the world may initially seem daunting, but it’s far from insurmountable. To get from one side of the Oregon woodland to the next won’t set you back a great amount of time, and fast travel locations, while readily available, are not imperative when it comes to covering great distances. Instead, I found myself seeing where the road took me, engaging in ambient activities along my route as and when they appeared. With missions regularly sending you back to previous camps even later on in the game, you begin to recognise your surroundings as more than just tree-lines and intersections. A few hundred miles on the clock, and the map gets pocketed as locations take on a greater visual significance, the roads at your back being remembered as much for their hairpins as their hordes.
If the size of the surrounding environment was any indication, Days Gone is a very lean interpretation of the modern open-world space. There’s little excess to be found across its fourty-hour story, side-missions and even collectibles, its priorities lying in the honing of existing systems rather than the creation of something entirely more elaborate. Though such an approach is sometimes a detriment to what it’s trying to achieve rather than a boon, and in the pacing of its primary narrative is where many problems arise. Days Gone introduces characters and retells its own post-apocalyptic history in an awkwardly abridged fashion, where Deacon’s past relationships are presented and undercut with only the most sparse elaboration. Similarly, though Deacon himself may see enough of the spotlight as the game’s sole playable protagonist, much of the supporting cast are afforded little more than an embittered prose and a disdainful scowl when it comes to their own characterisation. Deacon’s emotional and physical detachment from the world is a strong aspect of his character, but in the game’s faultless tonal consistency are many missed opportunities for often needed levity. Days Gone earns its bittersweet moments, but not before it doles out generous servings of darkly depravity and relative hopelessness.
In its accessibility alone, Days Gone’s structural design, although imperfect, succeeds in reducing the enormous scale of the typical open-world game. Free of needlessly oversaturated systems and unnecessary complications, Sony Bend’s slice of pastoral Oregon is beautiful to behold and interesting to explore. Amidst the game’s successes, its biggest is in telling a story befitting the level of detail with which the world has been created. Aforementioned pacing issues aside, the story of Deacon St. John doesn’t elevate him to that of an impervious soldier, or bless him with abilities more suited to a superhero. Instead, Deacon, like any other person he comes across, is a victim of the same psychological trauma and physical torture that blights all who remain. And in a land where your safety depends on the height of the walls that surround you, for the Drifter, independence is often as precious a commodity as anything else.