Days Gone – The Pros and Cons

The Pros and Cons of 50+ Hours With Days Gone’s Con Deacon St John

Cons:

1. Its a Mud Mud World – granted I’ve not travelled the lush back-country hills of Oregon myself but I can’t imagine that the colour palette is quite as drab as it is represented in Days Gone.

The infection drained the humanity from the souls of the Freakers but did it have to take brightness from the world as well?

2. The Gruff White Male – our protagonist is far from unique or even overly interesting. It may well be that the vast majority of people who play through this game are indeed white and male – hey that’s me – but its hardly a blow for diverse representation. It’s hard to mark this game down for the “safe” choice of main character but I’m still going to.

3. Sound Off – there are a few instances of jank in Days Gone, most of it is harmless enough to almost be charming, but none is so frustrating as the audio overlays. I don’t know the proper name for this but I just mean that you’re trying to hear some crucial plot exposition or mission description from a quest-giver and some rambling flavour text from a random NPC in the camp will be just as high in the mix making it next to impossible to hear either clearly. It happens a lot in this game and it’s disappointing.

4. Mad Not To – there’s plenty of times in the game where DSJ will just start mumbling quietly and aggressively to himself as he creeps around in a style not dissimilar to the way old homeless drunks and the mentally unstable tend to do. Yes I can see how routinely cutting and hacking your way through the rotting flesh of countless humanoids, undead and living would take its toll on the noggin but this is a side of our chosen hero that is never really explored and I think that may have been a missed opportunity.

Pros:

1. Feel The Love – it may sound strange but there’s something about this game that makes it feel like it was cared about deeply by its creator. Sure it has its jank but the the jank here feels more like the work of a smaller studio trying to wrap its arms around an enormous & ambitious project rather than oversight of some huge unwieldy corporation too focussed on profit to sweat the small stuff.

2. Oh The Humanity – the characters in Days Gone feel quite real, and where they may in places seem a bit more wooden (Yes Garret I’m looking at you…) there remains at least a verisimilitude to the way the characters related to each other, and the performances are solid, sometimes even touching.

Yes DSJ is your standard Gruff White Male but he’s also a bit of a dork, a bit gormless and were it not for his persistent lust for killing he actually comes across as almost charming – which is no small achievement for a man who represents such a collection of standard tropes and cliches.

I appreciate that the emotional integrity of the protagonists is a fairly ephemeral benchmark to be measuring the game against but its a strong point in Days Gone and should certainly be acknowledged and given its due.

Have you played through?

Did your experience differ? Let us know below.