Days Gone Director Admits Final Boss Battle Is “Terrible”

In a new interview, Days Gone director Jeff Ross has admitted that the final boss battle in the game is “terrible.” Days Gone originally released on PS4 in 2019 and – as is becoming more common with PlayStation exclusives – has since gone on to be ported to PC. The previously-PS exclusive is joined by other Sony PC ports including Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn, with God of War also soon coming to PC.

Days Gone takes players to an open-world post-apocalyptic America where they must use their skills to survive in a harsh and unforgiving wasteland. Humanity has taken a sharp nosedive in the world of Days Gone, and humans can often prove to be even more of a threat than the walking undead. The game’s zombie-like enemies are known as Freakers, and provide a beloved game mechanic, able to attack Days Gone players in large zombie hordes. This is undoubtedly an interesting concept to play with, but sadly for developer Bend Studio, where other games have been praised for their portrayal of a zombie-ridden and divided future, Days Gone never quite managed to reach the same levels of success, and Sony reportedly canceled plans for a sequel.

Speaking to ForTheWin, Ross discussed his time working on Days Gone and his visions for the series’ future. While discussing where Ross had pictured Days Gone’s sequel going before its cancelation, the director opened up about how the team would have wanted to evolve the game’s overall narrative and the world’s ecology. However, there are elements from Days Gone that they would not have wanted to take forward into the sequel, including instant-fail stealth sections such as the boss fight against Skizzo. Describing the final boss battle as “terrible,” Ross revealed:

“A lot of that stuff, like the Skizzo boss fight at the end, is terrible… But we had to button everything up as best we could with the systems that we had. Scripting AI was really hard. With the stealth sections, we had to maintain the sense of ‘they will shoot on sight’, but we didn’t necessarily want to have a shootout because the player couldn’t kill them. That was the only thing I could really figure out to do, and we tried a lot of stuff. For the sequel, those are the types of things I wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to do them here. I kind of had to, but we have the data now.”

The overall reception to Days Gone may have been lukewarm, with the stealth sections a particular frustration, but there are many out there who are still eager to see a sequel to Bend’s take on the post-apocalyptic gaming genre. Online petitions have been widely shared, with many fans imploring Sony to give the studio another chance to develop upon its ideas. However, Sony seems unswayed, with no current plans for a Days Gone sequel.

Bend may not be working on Days Gone 2, but the team is busy creating a brand-new IP that will develop upon the open-world system from Days Gone. While this new game from Bend Studio is still very much a mystery (although job listings do allude to there being a multiplayer component involved), it has already received praise from Head of PlayStation Studios, Herman Hulst. Hulst has shared that the new game from Bend Studio is looking promising, reigniting the excitement for the many fans that have been left disappointed by the perhaps premature end to the Days Gone series.

Days Gone is available to play now on PC, PS4, and PS5 platforms.

Source: ForTheWin

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