Days Gone Director Reveals Details for Cancelled Sequel Pitch
Jeff Ross, former game director of Days Gone recently revealed his ambitious plans for a sequel cancelled by Sony.
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| Days Gone Director Reveals Details for Cancelled Sequel Pitch |
Regardless of having a strong fan-community, 2019 action-adventure game Days Gone failed to convince publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment to greenlit a sequel because of mix reviews from critics and an extensive development cycle.
After working at developer Bend Studio for two decades Days Gone game director Jeff Ross has left company in 2020. Earlier, he talked about an open-world Resistance reboot and lately, has shared more details of his cancelled sequel pitch.
During a recent interview with USA Today, Jeff Ross talks further details about a cancelled Days Gone 2 pitch and how it could have been. He wanted to move to a "more technical direction" in sequel while exploring a few aspects of gameplay.
Ross claims that Days Gone sequel was going to be a "definitive version" of original concept, so he doesn't need to apologize much. After getting their hands on abandoned NERO technology, you could have access to more tools to play with.
In his interview, Days Gone director Jeff Ross recaps his overall gameplay and story concept for a sequel.
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.
In a second game, protagonist Deacon St. John would have returned with a supporting cast of characters. Moreover, he wanted to explore Deacon and Sarah's relationship, since they were back together in a future, post-apocalyptic world.
Ross had plans to keep a heavy, strong narrative to a new reality and obviously, Deacon's bike. He would expand the tone of Days Gone a bit outward by giving player more resources, ability to swim and a lot less instant-fail stealth sections.
He points out that many other established franchises had weaker first entries and Days Gone 2 could probably become a major success. It could become a trilogy as you need be able to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run.
Days Gone launch sales and mixed reception was apparently not enough to get Sony on board for a sequel. Jeff Ross called out management for making Bend Studio dev team feel like it was a disappointment despite selling 10 million copies.
