Is Days Gone a misunderstood masterpiece?
That’s a question that some gamers have been asking since April 26, 2019 — the very day that Sony’s open-world zombie game first released. A wave of lukewarm critical reviews, including a dreaded “6.5” from IGN, kicked off a minor culture war as the game’s biggest defenders went to bat for it before it was even installed on most PS4s. Whether its genuine love or console tribalism fueling it, Days Gone’s legacy has long been held up by a vocal group of dedicated fans who are determined to give it a redemption arc.
They’ve finally gotten their best chance at that thanks to Days Gone Remastered, Sony’s latest PS4 double dip. The new edition freshens up the visuals, adds some new modes, and brings in some welcome accessibility features. Is that all it needs to be recognized as a misunderstood classic? Absolutely not, but it does leave me wondering how Days Gone would have fared had it launched in an entirely different context. Returning to it now, it somehow feels both outdated and years ahead of its time.
Another remaster
The least interesting thing about Days Gone Remastered is the actual remastering. Like The Last of Us Part 2 or Horizon Zero Dawn’s recent overhauls, the entire idea of this double dip feels like a needless use of developer Sony Bend’s time and talent. Days Gone launched at the tail end of the PS4 lifecycle, meaning that it was already one of the console’s more technically capable games (don’t forget that PS5 games like God of War Ragnarok were still cross-launching on PS4 up until a few years ago). The visual glow-up here is, frankly, imperceptible. There are moments where I wonder if the only thing that’s changed is the color temperature of images, which feel a little cooler now, creating a placebo effect. Sony’s use of the word “Remastered” in its recent PS4 updates continues to stretch the meaning of the word; I can’t help but feel like it’s more about marketing than anything.
The more impactful change is to performance, as the remaster can now run at 60 frames per second at 1440p resolution on PS5 and 1880p on PS5 Pro. That’s great if you’re the kind of person who really can’t enjoy a game at 30fps, but it hardly feels like cause for a paid rerelease. After all, Days Gone already got a 60fps update on PS5 years ago, so that’s not exactly new. My playthrough was still filled with long load times and unsightly bugs that make it feel like a very modest update. The more impactful changes are all in the new accessibility menu, giving more players an opportunity to experience the adventure by adjusting game speed or letting them auto-complete quick time events. I also appreciate the DualSense updates here, as the adaptive triggers give Deacon’s motorcycle a little more grit.
The better way to think about Days Gone Remastered is as a DLC bundled in with a quality of life update. The package adds several new modes, which feel worth the $10 it costs to upgrade your PS4 copy. Horde Mode is a nice extra that finds a new way to let players take on giant waves of zombies, which remains one of Days Gone’s best tricks. The smartest addition is a Permadeath mode, which will force players to start the entire game over upon death. That’s a genius pairing for a survival-based game like Days Gone that only makes it more intense. On the flipside, there’s a Speedrun mode for those who have played the original to death and want to zip through it as fast as possible.
This is the same strategy that Sony employed last year with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, giving Naughty Dog’s game a suite of new modes. I was very critical of that approach at the time, noting that features like a Speedrun mode felt entirely at odds with the story’s musings on cyclical violence. Days Gone totally avoids that problem for a simple reason: It is a very dumb video game. And that just might be its best quality in 2025.
On the road again
For those who skipped Days Gone in 2019, the open-world game follows a motorcycle enthusiast named Deacon who is living out in the woods of Oregon amid a zombie apocalypse. The story apes The Last of Us to the point of comedy, as if Sony engineered it in hopes it could make lightning strike twice. Deacon is a gruff guy with a dead wife who employs a little too much gleeful violence to kill both rival humans and “Freakers,” the world’s incredibly ludicrous name for zombies. Sometimes it’s laughably self serious. Other times, Deacon has to fight a bear. For anyone hoping that the remaster will change the narrative around Days Gone and reveal a hidden masterpiece, keep dreaming.
But that’s not to say that Days Gone isn’t enjoyable. On the contrary, I kind of love it in 2025.
Don’t get too excited: I think critics were right on the money in 2019, if not a little too kind to it. Days Gone is a slog of an open-world game that was constructed almost entirely of overused cliches of the PS4 era. It has crafting pulled from The Last of Us and a radial menu taken from Horizon Zero Dawn. There are collectible audio logs scattered throughout the world. I can’t count the number of times Deacon has to reboot a generator to get into a locked building. It’s all so by the books that you can guess what each button does and will instinctively know that you can sneak up behind an enemy to stealth kill them without ever being taught to. It’s a game that highlights the limitations of formula at every turn.
There are bright spots, though, and that’s where I start to wonder if Days Gone could have been just a little ahead of its time. Its best feature is its motorcycle management, which takes some getting used to. Deacon’s bike doesn’t function like a magical horse that gallops to him every time he whistles; it’s a machine that needs to be cared for. I need to stop riding during long trips to find gas cans and keep my bike fueled up. If I don’t, I’ll have to abandon it and return later with some gas in hand. The same goes for repairs, as it can get damaged over time by reckless driving or Freaker attacks. I need to break abandoned cars open and look for mechanical parts that can be used to tune my bike up when it starts smoking. It’s an excellent bit of friction that I’ve only seen replicated as well in Pacific Drive, a game that launched last year.
It strikes me that Days Gone originally released during a time where developers were desperate to smooth their games out as much as possible. Ubisoft-style “map games” were still the dominant form of open-world design, giving players an icon-filled checklist to complete. Days Gone follows that design, but it isn’t as simple as fast traveling from point A to point B. If you don’t prepare to make it through a journey, you’ll end up stranded. That’s genuinely dangerous too, because Deacon often comes up against waves of enemies that he simply can’t outgun. The Broken Road can and will punish players who don’t take its survival systems seriously.
I’m not sure if mainstream players were hungry for an experience like that in 2019, but they certainly are now. Games like Elden Ring have proven that players want to be challenged sometimes. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 shows us that players are open to systems-heavy games that are built on friction. Even The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered’s breakout success is a good sign that players can handle an old school open-world game that takes the guardrails down. If nothing else, Days Gone Remastered lets us see what the original was going for in a modern context. It feels a little too caught between competing design philosophies for its own good, but its survival side feels much more tailored to modern tastes.
Revisiting Deacon
That’s not the only part of Days Gone that feels ahead of its time. The original game dropped at exactly the wrong cultural moment. It was a zombie game that was trying to capitalize on The Walking Dead several years too late. The horror trope was well oversaturated at that point and Days Gone had nothing to add to the conversation, dealing entirely in genre cliche. It also had the misfortune of launching in a heated political climate that threatened its reputation. Amid the chaos of President Donald Trump’s first term, where neo-Nazis proudly marched through the streets, many players didn’t feel all that excited to play a game about gruff bikers and crockpot radio hosts who rant about the feds all day. It was the absolute wrong game for the moment and, regrettably, still is.
But it’s a mistake to characterize Days Gone as a “conservative game.” That gives it way too much credit. Assigning a political philosophy to it implies that Days Gone has any consistent beliefs that it wants to communicate. Heck, it implies that there is a single thought rattling around in this game’s skull at all. That is not the case: It is an extraordinarily stupid game. And frankly, that’s why I’m enjoying my time with it so much.
When I first met Deacon, my instinct was to roll my eyes at his tough, tortured guy demeanor. He’s a video game character pulled out of a filing cabinet, reminding us that gaming’s recent push to better diversify its heroes came from a place of necessity. But the more time I spent with Deacon, the more I was drawn to him. He is so incomprehensible that he’s magnetic. Part of that comes from bizarre game direction. Deacon constantly talks out loud to no one throughout the entire game, saying every single thought that crosses his head out loud. Sometimes he’ll do that quietly so that freakers can’t hear him. Other times, he straight up screams at the top of his lungs. The man has no volume control or consistent survival instinct.
He also has no comprehensible political beliefs. Deacon is designed to be a one issue voter, and that issue is “Who will leave my motorcycle alone?” That’s made clear every time a radio broadcast plays and Deacon listens to a right wing host spout conspiracy theories. He shouts out a rebuttal every single time, and they only become more head scratching as the game goes on. In one radio broadcast, a host criticizes consumerism and voices his desire to see manufacturing jobs brought back to hard working Americans rather than being outsourced overseas (a familiar line that is having a serious impact on our economy today). Deacon’s retort? Actually consumerism is good if it means being able to buy another motorcycle. It is an alien response that somehow feels entirely realistic. Deacon is every American who is not tuned in to larger political conversations and instead bases their opinions entirely on vibes. Somewhere along the journey, I grew to love Deacon for moments like this. He’s just so unserious that he comes back around to being a charming eccentric.
I wonder if that reaction would have been more common had Days Gone first launched today. We’re currently feeling the rumblings of a return to “dudes rock” irony. TV shows like Reacher have earned unexpected fans who see its titular character’s machismo as a sort of over-the-top novelty. I feel that in Deacon whenever he stumbles into a bandit camp and starts mumbling how he’s going to kill every last one of these sorry murderers. He’s the antithesis to The Last of Us’ Joel, a character built to deconstruct and critique characters like Deacon. The self-reflection goes out the window in Days Gone in favor of a dude who came here to ride his bike and kill Freakers — and he’s never out of gas, bullets, or bubblegum.
Days Gone Remastered is unbelievably unnecessary as a “product” and does little to give a middling open-world game the redemption arc that some fans so desperately want. It is, however, a sort of fascinating historical document. It’s a reminder that art is inseparable from cultural context and that every surface can shine depending on what angle the light hits it at. In 2025, I can appreciate Days Gone as a somewhat ahead of its time survival game starring the most lovable dummy imaginable.
Maybe the recipe for a sequel isn’t shying away from the aspects of Days Gone that were criticized at launch. Maybe the team at Bend can pull it off by cranking the testosterone dial as far as it will go until it breaks and swings back around to accidental self-parody. The only catch is that it can’t be self-aware. Days Gone works as a guilty pleasure because it takes a lot of very dumb things very seriously. If you can drop all pretenses and meet it at the garage, all covered in gasoline and grease, it’s one heck of a joyride.
Days Gone Remastered is out now on PS5 and PC.
