Presenters
Abstract
Released in April 2019 exclusively for the PlayStation 4, Days Gone is characterized as an action-adventure survival horror video game developed by SIE Bend Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Set in a post-apocalyptic Oregon two years after a global pandemic, former motorcycle club enforcer (and US Army 10th Mountain Division Afghanistan War veteran) Deacon St. John discovers the possibility of that botanist wife Sarah still might alive after being separated in the chaos of evacuation during the West Coast, and the rest of the United States, being overrun by hordes of freakers, seemingly mindless, mostly nocturnal, zombie-like creatures. His quest to find Sarah leads to his involvement with independent camps of survivors, a newly-formed militia, and the shadowy governmental National Emergency Response Organization (NERO).
While the marketing of Days Gone seemed to position it more in line with mainstream zombie video games such as Dead Rising (2006-16) or the zombie mode in Call of Duty (2008-16) games, it functions more closely to Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (2010) and the State of Decay (2013-18) series visually as well as in terms of its open-world exploration in desolate terrain. Days Gone also may seem to initially attract players through zombie film conventions seen in Dawn of the Dead (1978) or World War Z (2013) but actually is much more indebted to films such as George Romero’s The Crazies (1973, remade in 2010), 28 Days Later (2002), and the 2007 remake of I Am Legend.
This presentation will show how Days Gone negotiates various nuances in playing with or against zombie typologies to create an engaging take on player expectations in zombie-styled video games.