Agreed. We should have gotten to the third camp by like hour 5 the latest. Boozer's arm is hurt for like 8 hours and then suddenly the plot is moving. Cutting a lot of the repetitive Tucker and Copeland stuff (did we really need a hunting mission? Tucker is a jerk, did we need so many missions reinforcing that?) would have helped the pacing a lot


At the point where I am (still on the second camp), one thing I really appreciate is that the game just namedrops people that Deacon knows but we don't, and casual relationships. I like this, since it's not common to video games and provides a more "lived-in" feeling, that the story and the characters have lived and experienced more than us viewers who are dropped into the middle of an ongoing story. Glad to hear the cast and story gets better the further you progress.
It really makes Deacon feel like a part of a larger world and does such a great job at contextualizing missions that would otherwise feel rote


and it's just so great! The moment to moment gameplay is so intense and that's accentuated by the resource management and plethora of enemies vying for your life! I had three bears chasing after me, three wolves and about 20-30 freakers. It was funny because they all came for me while ignoring each other. However, I climbed on a dumpster and jumped to a roof and they kinda devolved into killing one another-with the bears reigning supreme of course. Eventually I killed the bears and whatever else survived by my ammo was non-existent afterwards. On the ride back to camp, there was a fucking sniper ambush! I managed to avoid incoming shots and raided their nest but after killing the sniper, 3 melee goons popped out. I killed two of them, but kinda got cocky and attempted to narrowly dodge the last guy and he fucked me up and killed me with his pickaxe. Reviews certainly missed the mark here! The game plays like a love child of RDR2 + HZD + TLoU. What's not to love?

It helps that the third camp's characters are actually likable, and not obnoxious like Copeland or a manipulative and twisted jerk like Tucker

Like I said, we really should gotten to Lost Lake much faster. Considering the events that open up the game, there's way too much time to spent between Boozer getting injured and Deacon going to the camp. The urgency of Lost Lake almost feels odd after so many Tucker missions or going hunting with Copeland

Speaking of that, I think it’s one of the things I like most about this game — you’re not the central hero or messiah that’s going to save the world or whatever. Just a guy trying to get by that helps other groups trying to get by out of necessity. I’m only 8 hours or so in, but everyone on here seems to say it only gets better.... I’m very excited to see where all the storylines go.
Yeah, I said it in an earlier post. This is the closest thing we’re probably ever getting to a TWD open world, with the multiple large self-sustaining communities in close proximity and having leaders that know about/are at odds with each other

And you’re just a mercenary amid this lived-in world that feels larger than your own personal objectives.

The game has it flaws, in every segment. But overall it I would say Bend nailed it. The world is beautiful and believable most of the the time, the story has it moments and some of the characters really have grown on me (especially Rikki and Deacon, this always yelling motherfucker) . Handling of the bike was always fun, I did never use the quicktravel in the 50+ hours I've put into the game. Fighting the hordes was always tense, I just wish the shooting was better. Some of the gameplay mechanics felt half assed, vut I am sure that won't be a problem if we get DG2.


Bend wasn’t kidding when they said they were inspired by Netflix with how they structured the game’s approach to missions. The Storylines angle kind of decentralizes the differences between main versus side missions; each feels like it has equal weight, none feel more central than the other. Instead of a single core thread with smaller side branches, it feels like one large interconnected web of activities.

Also in the progress menu, each Storyline has its own unique lore/“journal” entry that give everything you do some narrative context. Even clearing out nests and infestations has interesting backstory about Deacon’s relationship with Sarah or has world-building on the region or Deacon’s mindset

Gotta hand it to Bend: they have created a really great open world, and it was their first try! You can see how much attention was put to make it feel real (Horizon ZD map for example felt too artificial), and that gives a lot of spots to make some atmospheric screenshots. The size of the map is also perfect in my opinion, not small and not needlessly huge like for example GR Wildlands or AC Odyssey. On this generation I would place it only behind RDR2 and Witcher 3 as my favorite open worlds maps.

This game reminds me of The Walking Dead, the closest thing we’re probably ever going to get to a TWD open world. The multiple large, self-sustaining communities with unique leaders in relatively close proximity like Alexandria, Hilltop, and The Kingdom. The tense relationships between the camps where the leaders know of each other. The bandits on the road and the larger antagonistic group with their own outposts.

Intro portion is (as one might expect) a slog. Initial cutscene was okay, but the tutorial/cutscene sequence that followed was miserable. You get the controls, walk 5 steps, cutscene. Get the controls, play for 10 seconds, cutscene. It does this over and over and over and it's just so disjointed. I'm not sure why game developers don't understand that it really does feel better to just leave the controls with the player and teach them how to play more organically. This is so unnecessary. On top of that, there are a few curiously jarring transitions that just didn't make sense. E.g., I had a shotgun and I was meant to take out some zombies as they came out of a door. I shot the first one as it came out and it instantly died. I shot the second one as it came out and it instantly died. This took only a couple of seconds. It instantly switched to a cutscene where my character was standing over the zombie stabbing it over and over and losing his shit. It had no connection to what I had just done in gameplay. I wasn't even meleeing and I didn't have a close call.
After the game unclenches and lets you play, it's rather nice. As expected, the environment is incredible. Characters generally look quite good, as well, but the melee combat feels a bit unsatisfying. Playing on hard, enemies are sponges and zombies need to be hit over and over and over with a bat before they die. Getting feedback from shooting enemies with guns is sometimes absent. Sometimes you get a nice blood splash and a stumble, other times the enemy just doesn't react to your bullet at all.
Story/acting is generally good, but has moments where something just feels a bit off with transitions and the way characters react to things. I get the vague feeling this game was re-edited at some point perhaps without much time left.
The game is at its best when you're on your own, sneaking around, working your way around zombies. The atmosphere is incredibly strong and (playing on hard) there's a definite feeling of suspense when maneuvering around some of these places.
It's full of open world tropes, but it also constantly harkens back to The Last Of Us -- The look and feel of the game, the pacing, the sneaking, the crafting. It's unmistakable.
If you like zombies, you'll like this. It has em and they look great and move great -- Outside of the questionable melee combat I mentioned above, fighting zombies looks and feels great.
The bike controls great and feels great.
The game has great sound. Play with nice headphones if you can.

I'm loving the world. I really enjoy when a game world feels like it has a realistic scale. The Witcher 3 does this masterfully, and Days Gone feels similarly spaced out, in both the scale of the landscape and the size of encampments/enemy camps. The world also has an authentic sense of place compared to a game like State of Decay which has a similar rural/small town setting. You can tell that Bend took the advice of "write what you know" with the look and design of the world.

I just love the vibe and atmosphere of the encampments in this. They feel like legit communities, and also feel properly scaled too, kind of Witcher 3’s villages felt like the right size. A lot of life in them, people working, talking, doing things around camps. In Tucker’s camp, encountered a random thing between NPCs, someone getting accosted by a guard and then Deacon talking to the guy after the guard walks away. No prompts, no question mark, just something happening in the camp

https://bunnygaming.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/imported_from_media_libray/DG30.jpg?bwg=1556281699