Days Gone

We have played longer open-world games than this, but nothing quite so aggressively drawn-out

Eight hundred and thirty two days gone, the menu screen tells us as we near the endgame, and boy does it feel like it. We have played longer openworld games than this, but nothing quite so aggressively drawn-out. When, after the ninth cutscene of a single mid-game mission, its title changes to “It’s a long story”, we can’t help but laugh. There are more cinematics to come before this particular quest wraps up, by which time we’ve already had to follow an NPC – by bike and on foot – between waypoints more than half-a-dozen times, including a bit of meaningless busywork where we hold the Square button against a door to feel for vibrations from a turbine behind it. “Well, that’s a day I’m never getting back,” says protagonist Deacon St John when it’s all over. Well, quite. ‘This world comes for you?’ If only it would get a move on.

In fairness, it’s not the world that’s the problem. This patch of rural Oregon might be subject to some odd climatological shifts – we go from what appears to be midsummer to the depths of winter on successive days – but it’s so convincingly realised you can almost smell it. It’s a familiar vision, admittedly: an amalgam of popular post-apocalyptic fiction, with particularly strong hints of John Hillcoat’s film adaptation of The Road. But it feels rich, tactile and real, never more so than when you’re careering down a dirt track in lashing rain, your back wheel skidding through splattery mud as you hurry home before the sun sets. The inhabitants of the scattered survivor camps refer to it as ‘the shit’: it’s perhaps not that good, but they’re not far off.