Bend Studio announces Days Gone for PS4

Sony Interactive Entertainment and SIE Bend Studio announced Days Gone for PlayStation 4 during the Sony E3 2016 press conference.

Here’s an overview, via creative director John Garvin:

Set in the beautiful, volcanic scarred high-desert of the Pacific Northwest, Days Gone is an open-world action-adventure game where you play as Deacon St. John, a Drifter and bounty hunter who would rather risk the dangers of the broken road than live in one of the “safe” wilderness encampments. The game takes place two years after a global pandemic has killed almost everyone, but transformed millions of others into what survivors call Freakers – mindless, feral creatures, more animal than human but very much alive and quickly evolving. In the demo you saw two types of Freaks – Newts, which were adolescents when infected, are opportunistic hunters, preferring to hit and run from the shadows; and a Horde. Made up of hundreds of individual Freakers, Hordes eat, move and attack together, almost as one. Some Hordes roam the highways at night, while others, like the one in the demo, have found a food source that keeps it in a single location. Skills learned in his prior life as an outlaw biker have given Deacon a slight edge in the seemingly never-ending fight to stay alive. But will it be enough?

This is a brutal world, where everyone and everything is struggling to survive – but hopefully, the trailer shows that the game is about more than that. It’s about desperation, hope, transformation, loss, madness, discovery, friendship, exploration, brotherhood, regret and love. In the end, Days Gone is about what makes us human. It’s about how even when confronted with such enormous tragedy, we find a reason to live. Hope never dies.

Get the debut trailer, gameplay, and fact sheet below. View the first set of screenshots at the gallery.

Trailer

Gameplay

Overview

Days Gone is an open-world action game set in the high-desert of the Pacific Northwest two years after a mysterious global pandemic has decimated the world, killing most but transforming millions into mindless, feral creatures. Survivors live in a world where resources are scarce, violence and murder are common and Freakers roam the wilderness.

Players face this violent, new world as Deacon St. John, a bounty hunter, a Drifter who lives in the lawless wilderness outside the civilian encampments. Deacon survives by using skills learned before the world ended, riding for the Mongrels MC, an outlawed motorcycle club, where violence and mayhem were part of the riding the open road.

At the center of it all, Days Gone is an exploration of how any of us would react to these harsh conditions, and exploration of loss, love, friendship, revenge and desperation – learning that surviving isn’t living. For Deacon especially, it’s a struggle to ensure that hope never dies.

Developed by Bend Studio, Days Gone is in development exclusively for the PlayStation 4.

Key Features

• Expansive Open World Action – Exemplifying truly free-form gameplay, Days Gone offers freedom to explore, strategize and play “your way” in the vast high-desert of the Pacific Northwest. The hazardous environments, filled with carved out ridges, mountains, caves, cliffs mines and river basins, deliver a breathtaking backdrop to an equally diverse style of gameplay.
• Emergent Gameplay – Featuring fully explorable environments and dynamic AI enemies, players will rely on their own abilities to strategize, craft weapons and tools, explore the world, and engage in combat. With almost every car, building and environment searchable, Days Gone delivers emergent gameplay possibilities, making a player’s approach to combat and discovery a vital part of the experience.
• Stunning, Dynamic Graphics – Using the power of PlayStation 4 and Unreal Engine 4, Bend Studio has developed a high volume of rendering and gameplay technology to deliver an incredibly realistic open world experience. Realistic weather effects, such as rain, wind, snow and day-night cycles impact the gameplay. The game’s lighting is all real-time and reacts dynamically, the way the human iris does, as players move from one location to the next.