Trivia / Days Gone

• Dummied Out: There are several unused weapons that are mostly functional, and can be modded into the game. Notable ones include a submachine gun modeled after the FN P90, two types of flamethrower, and a rocket launcher (which is missing its sounds).
• Dueling Works: With World War Z (2019). Saber Interactive were able to secure the well-known World War Z License and were starting development when they had seen Days Gone. Though they were daunted by the AAA marketing budget, they knew Days Gone would get and though would distract from WWZ's release, and so they approached Bend about making a multiplayer mode for the game using their work for WWZ as a baseline. Bend passed on the prospect, feeling like it'd be a compromise of their vision. Both ended up releasing ten days apart in April 2019 and selling notably well, with WWZ selling over 2 million in its first month and Days Gone ending up #8 in the top 10 sales for North America in 2019, but both also got So Okay, It's Average Reviews.
• Schedule Slip: Days Gone was repeatedly delayed from its original planned release dates, as evidenced by how often it showed up at the yearly E3 trade show.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • A pitch for a second Days Gone was rejected by Sony in late 2019, making Bend Studio focus as a support team for Naughty Dog until March 2021.
  • This accusation flared up again in response to an official PlayStation tweet celebrating that Ghost of Tsushima sold eight million copies. The game director Jeff Ross, responded claiming that Days Gone had sold just as well in the same span of time, yet had received very little attention or support from Sony post-launch. The former claim is somewhat disputed^note He was basing this number on a now-defunct Trophy tracking site which observed that eight million accounts had played the game, not that it had been purchased eight million times, but the observation that Sony had little interest in the game despite it doing well for itself has clouded the game's legacy. It would later come out that the actual reason the sequel never moved forward was because of director John Garvin's difficult attitude during development and Sony not wanting to deal with him any further.
• Sleeper Hit: Days Gone was released to reception best described as So Okay, It's Average, with many critics not enthused by yet another open-world zombie survival game, and it saw itself releasing between big hitters from acclaimed developers or established IPs such as Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, on top of the aforementioned World War Z (2019) and being a PS4-exclusive. In spite of all that, Days Gone sold extremely well and ended up as the console's sixth-best selling exclusive in the United States as of early 2020.
• Stillborn Franchise: The game's Sequel Hook set up for potential sequels, but the original pitch for Days Gone 2 was rejected by Sony at the time, director John Garvin claimed it was because of the game's average review score on Metacritic, but after blaming review score on "woke" reviewers not liking Deacon other Bend devs came forward and said the real reason a sequel wasn't greenlit was because Garvin had a horribly toxic attitude during development (with him refusing to move forward on ideas unless the team could convince him that he came up with them on his own) and Sony did not want to deal with him anymore.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early demos and footage show that the game originally had a moral choice system where Deacon could sometimes choose to kill or spare certain characters, affecting his relationship with Boozer, that got removed before launch due to the story needing to be scaled back. Character animations for this system can still be found in the game's files.
  • The game was also meant to have a co-op option, which was also suggested for its potential sequel.
  • After Patch 1.11, modders discovered there was meant to be an additional region, known as "Pinnacles" (probably meant to represent the real-world Pinnacles Trail near Crater Lake National Park), that would have been accessible from Highway 97. The area can only be accessed via the debug menu, and has rendered physics and data for five locations: Fort Klamath, a survivor camp, a ranch, farms, and a pot farm. Wade Taylor was supposed to be stealing drugs for the survivors in the region. There was supposed to be a mission involving Taylor, Deacon, and a character named Eddy Apuna (who uses Iron Mike's model as a placeholder) getting high, which has incomplete cutscene data. The only remnant of this in the final game is one of the collectibles, Taylor-Delivery Boy, which mentions the region and Eddy Apuna.
• Working Title: Dead Don't Ride.

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