Days Gone: Crafting Narrative in an Open World

What's Good Games: A Video Game Podcast

What's Good Games

Games, Leisure, Video Games, News, Entertainment News

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2019

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this special episode* of What's Good Games, Andrea chats with John Garvin, Creative Director at Sony Interactive Entertainment's Bend Studio. After spending a few hours with a preview build of the upcoming game, they discuss the open world mechanics, how to incorporate narrative into a player-driven game, and if there is hope for Deacon St. John. *Special access to Days Gone provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment Support What’s Good Games on Patreon! Gain access to behind-the-scenes content, exclusive videos, extra podcast segments and more. http://www.patreon.com/whatsgoodgames 1:45 - Does Days Gone have an identity crisis? What is this game? 2:52 - Who is Deacon? 3:20 - Incorporating cut scenes into an open world 5:24 - Explaining the "Storylines" feature to quests 7:20 - How do you balance narrative progress in an open world? 9:35 - The crafting system explained 10:50 - Gameplay grounded in realism: where is the balance in a fantasy world? 13:10 - Deacon's motorcycle and its upgrade progression 14:00 - Encampments, vendors, and the "Trust" system 16:35 - Where the "Days Gone" title comes from Want audio only? http://whatsgoodgames.com/podcast/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/whatsgoodgames Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/whatsgood_games Follow on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/whatsgoodgames Follow on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/whatsgoodgames Our discord channel: http://discord.gg/whatsgoodgames Follow on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/whatsgoodgamesofficial Our website: http://www.whatsgoodgames.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Hule. Between work deadlines and just living life, it can
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0:17.1	protein per serve, 400 calories and 26 vitamins and minerals. Visit Hule.com forward slash Spotify
0:24.3	to find out more.
0:30.0	Access to the day's gone preview event was made possible by PlayStation.
1:00.0	What's good everybody? I'm here at Days Gone Preview event and I'm sitting down with John
1:16.3	Garvin, the creative director at Bend Up There in Oregon. Thank you so much for taking the time
1:21.0	to chat with me today.
1:22.0	Hello, hey, awesome. Great talking to you, Andrew.
1:24.4	So the last time we saw each other, as I mentioned before, we sat down was at the judges' week
1:29.2	event right before E3. I only got just that tiny slice of the game back then, but I was really
1:36.0	impressed with what I saw. So thank you so much for giving me a much meatier slice today.
1:41.6	Right. And the game has come a long way since then. I mean, it's like we've put so much more
1:45.7	polish and performance enhancements. So I hope you enjoyed it more today than you did back in
1:52.2	judges' day. Oh, absolutely. I think I'm kind of like a kid in a playground. I don't even know which
1:57.7	attraction to go check out first. There's so much to do. And I don't even kind of know where to start.
2:03.2	I kind of made a joke before we started recording that I have this long list of notes that I've
2:08.1	been keeping. Fire away. Fire away, you said. Okay, so here we go. How about let's start with
2:14.7	one of the first questions I had. And it was I didn't quite know how to frame this, but it almost
2:19.7	seems to me that this game maybe has a bit of an identity crisis for lack of a better phrase.
2:26.4	I was trying to pin it down. Is this survival horror? Is this action adventure? Is this a combat RPG?
	...

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