The director of Days Gone, Jeff Ross, has recently spoken out on his disappointment with how Sony handled the success of the post-apocalyptic game. The game director described it as “weird” that the company rejected a Days Gone sequel in a recent interview with USA Today after previously speaking on the issue in a tweet last week.
At the time I left Sony, Days Gone had been out for a year and a half (and a month), and sold over 8 million copies. It's since gone on to sell more, and then a million+ on Steam. Local studio management always made us feel like it was a big disappointment. #daysgone #PlayStation https://t.co/KMZr2pGe9r
— Jeff Ross (@JakeRocket) January 5, 2022
In the interview, Ross acknowledges some flaws that were prevalent in Days Gone and says that a sequel would have given him the opportunity to “create the definitive version” and allowed him a space where he “didn’t have to necessarily apologize for so much.” The game director previously voiced his dissatisfaction with the fact that Sony has been joyously celebrating their game Ghosts of Tsushima, selling over 8 million copies; however, treated Days Gone as a failure when it had crossed the same threshold. This ultimately led to a sequel to Days Gone being rejected.
Speaking on how a sequel can improve, Ross said with the rejected Days Gone 2 in mind, “We have to be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. So you create the minimum viable entry and then hope you get to build the second one. Because you’re not arguing over the foundations, you’re arguing over the epic new ideas that you’re gonna be putting into it.”
The rejected Days Gone sequel would have been a continuation of the main character Deacon St. John’s story with his wife, Sarah. Ross said about the couple, “Yeah, they’re back together, but maybe they’re not happy.” Continuing on the plot, “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.”
While Jeff Ross’ Days Gone 2 sounds very promising, unfortunately, it is unlikely to ever happen. Sony Bend has since been restructured, and Ross now works elsewhere. However, a recent PlayStation Blog post said the company is currently developing “a very exciting new IP that they’re very, very passionate about” and which take notes from “the deep open-world systems developed with Days Gone.” So although a Days Gone sequel was rejected, it may live on in other games.
