Days Gone is the first title from Bend Studio since Uncharted: Fight for Fortune back in 2012. In that time, the team has been hard at work on the open-world, action adventure.
Days Gone is GameInformer’s month-long coverage for May 2018 which has revealed some interesting information. In a recent video interview with key members of the development team, it was revealed just how difficult a transition it has been to create an open-world game, how Bend Studio has grown, how Days Gone makes use of the PS4 hardware and how Sony reacted to the title.
The development of Days Gone hasn’t been easy for Bend Studio, but each of the team members feels like the game is something special and well worth the effort.
Days Gone Development
In the interview, it’s revealed that Bend initially thought it could develop Days Gone with a team of only 50. However, as time went on, it became apparent that a lot more assistance was going to be required.
We’re 130 people now. My guess is, by the time you factor in all the third-party support we’ve gotten and all the support groups, it’s gonna be north of 250.
It’s interesting to note that the original Syphon Filter for PS1 was developed by Bend Studio with a team of only 13.
Moving into an open-world game was a huge transition for Bend Studio and the team admits that it was a combination of naivete and hubris that saw them dive in headfirst. Even Sony told the studio that it was “crazy going from a non-open-world studio to an open-world” one, but Bend persisted.
At one point, the team had to abandon Days Gone’s original engine and move over to Unreal. This proved to be a challenge in and of itself.
The artists had this great leg up but it takes time to build game systems, AI and weapons.
For years people would call the game a walking simulator and that sucked for me. We were working hard building these systems, but the world was so pretty so early on that it was just unfair.
Days Ahead
When it comes to making Days Gone run on the PS4’s hardware, Bend claims that it’s on the cutting edge.
We’re definitely pushing the PS4 to its limits
But that’s something that the studio feels like it has to do. Being a first-party studio, there’s an immense amount of pressure on Bend to create something that’s worthy of that title.
What we really want to do is create something that is best in class for the kind of game that we’re making.
The endless comparisons to The Last of Us don’t help matters, according to Bend, but the team says that Days Gone is a very different game.
How different? We’ll have to wait and see.
Days Gone is due for release in early 2019.
