GAME · 2019 · USA
Days Gone
- Developer
- Bend Studio
- Publisher
- Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation PC LLC
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows
24 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Oct 2026
24 Interesting Facts About Days Gone
Interesting Facts (8)
- #001
Days Gone never says "zombie." The infected go by names like "freakers," "swarmers," "newts," "breakers" and "runners."
- #002
While Days Gone was in development after its 2016 announcement, earlier builds included story choices that could change how things played out. May 2018 gameplay footage, for instance, showed the opening missions letting you either kill Leon or leave him to the Freakers, with either choice affecting Boozer's morale; later, when the Rippers wound Boozer, you could take or leave his shotgun while Deacon went looking for medical supplies. Playtesting showed the developers that the system didn't work, players didn't understand it and the game didn't need it. Worse, some choices made Deacon unlikable, which wasn't what they wanted for him, and keeping the original story on track meant constant rewrites. The whole "choices" feature and every alternative were cut, so in the finished game Deacon always makes the good call, a decision the developers say made the game better overall. It may also explain the odd pauses in some cutscenes between Deacon and the people he's talking to, which is probably where the good or bad choices used to be.
- #003
Days Gone isn't Sam Witwer's first brush with a zombie apocalypse: he also played the zombified soldier Rick Grimes finds inside a tank in the first episode of The Walking Dead. Coincidentally or not, that episode is called "Days Gone Bye."
- #004
A collectible picked up later in the game suggests Days Gone may be a sequel to the popular PlayStation series Syphon Filter. It names the three main characters of that series, Gabe Logan, Lian Xing and Lawrence Mujari, implying they took part in a failed mission that led to the virus and the events that ended the world.
- #005
A patch lets you fit a BB container from Death Stranding (2019) to Deacon's bike as its fuel tank.
- #006
As you progress you unlock new abilities for Deacon, one of which lets him take down bigger mutants with a single stealth attack. In New Game +, that means you can dispatch the first boss (the big mutant by the crashed plane) in seconds.
- #007
Deacon can swim in the story, but the game doesn't let him, for narrative reasons.
- #008
Captain Kouri says he served in SAC before everything went to hell. Strategic Air Command was disbanded in 1992 and revived in 2009 as Air Force Global Strike Command.
Production Story (10)
- #009
Days Gone was made by Bend Studio, one of Sony's first-party developers.
- #010
Full production began in early 2015, and the six-year development cycle saw Bend Studio grow from about 50 people to 130. The game was finished on March 10, 2019, when the studio announced it had gone gold.
- #011
The team settled on an open world during pre-production.
- #012
Lead designer Eric Jensen said a team of just five or six people designed the open-world mechanics, so they had to make every design decision count.
- #013
Bend Studio initially thought 50 people would be enough for Days Gone, which turned out to be an underestimate. Even though it's open world, most missions are scripted and tied to the main story; the team wanted to bring the success of linear games like Uncharted into an open world.
- #014
The Swarmers were inspired by someone moving strangely in a YouTube video, and the Newts by the movements of contortionists.
- #015
Swarmers can form hordes of 50 to 500. To keep them manageable, hordes are broken into small clusters, and those near the player can peel off from the main group.
- #016
The team put a lot of work into group AI so hordes wouldn't just charge Deacon in a straight line but would use the terrain to overwhelm the player.
- #017
The game was built around several intertwined storylines that players can switch between, a structure the team chose to keep the storytelling fresh.
- #018
Nathan Whitehead scored Days Gone after Garvin was impressed by his music for The Purge: Anarchy; the Nashville Scoring Orchestra and soloists performed it.
Behind the Scenes (2)
- #019
Nathan Whitehead spent two years on the soundtrack, building it around guitar, which he called an "obvious choice" for Deacon, a biker and bounty hunter, and for the Pacific Northwest setting.
- #020
To fit an interactive medium, the score was written in layers the engine could add or drop, so the music shifts with the action. The final soundtrack also has songs by Lewis Capaldi, Jack Savoretti, Billy Raffoul and Zander Reese.
Characters & Cast (1)
- #021
Garvin said cutting the story choices helped the game stay true to Deacon's personality, since some options would have let him do cruel things that didn't fit him.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
- #022
One of the guns is a lever-action shotgun you can fire from your motorcycle, very likely a nod to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, where Arnold Schwarzenegger does exactly that.
Deeper Meaning (2)
- #023
Garvin said redemption is the heart of Days Gone, which follows Deacon, often an outsider, as he becomes a capable leader. Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, the team wanted a more hopeful message about making the world better and about surviving not being the same as living.
- #024
Whitehead described the music as a mix of "folk Americana and a touch of rock elements," which he felt suited the setting.
Related pages
- The Walking Dead: Dead City — Days Gone comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Days Gone — Wikipedia
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work