Days Gone Sequel Would Have Featured Deacon and Sarah’s Story

Days Gone has been making the headlines lately due to several reasons. In an interview with USA Today, Jeff Ross – who left Sony Bend at the end of 2020 – shared that he pitched a sequel. However, despite the success of Days Gone, Sony never considered it. Ross shared his detailed pitch to show us what direction Days Gone 2 would have headed in. 

The sequel would have continued the story of Deacon and Sarah. However, they would not be happy together despite seeming so at the previous game’s end. “Well, what can we do with that? Okay, we were married before the apocalypse, but what about the future?” Ross said. From its looks, the main focus this time would be the narrative. According to Ross, the narrative would be “heavy” and “strong“. The bike would also be featured heavily, but the tone would expand to a bigger scale. 

“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.”

New Features That Were Pitched

The sequel featured new mechanics such as swimming and a dynamic, open world. “The swimming thing in Days Gone, it’s the worst,” Ross explains. Swimming was cut out of the first game due to engineering constraints and story reasons. It would have been brought into the narrative to create a powerful moment for the sequel.

As for the dynamic world, animals would roam around and hunt freely. Enemies would also get more varied behavior to keep the game feel vibrant. The overall gameplay loop would also see improvements as players were often dying to their Molotov cocktails in the original one. Ross also wanted to give players a unique open-world experience. 

“I would add more systems. Systems are very simple. And if they’re simple, they can be elegant and very rich for the player. I knew adding one or two more layers to the systemic elements of it would have been something that we could have wrapped our heads around, it would have led to a ton of richness for the players and a ton of unique open-world moments and responses that we haven’t seen before. Let’s sink our teeth into this and do something even more epic.”

While the pitch wasn’t successful, Jeff Ross states that his game was a success – sales-wise – yet it was still treated as a “big disappointment”. 

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

For now, we can only imagine what a Days Gone sequel would look like. Ross has since left Sony to pursue other endeavors. Let us know what you think of the details for Days Gone 2. If a potential sequel would be announced, will you be excited?