When Days Gone was first announced, choices were said to be a big part of the game. When you were playing the game, you were supposed to have the option to pick how Deacon would react to a situation. Unfortunately, the promising system didn’t quite make it into the game as anticipated. In Days Gone, there are a lot of removed choices that we saw in earlier gameplay videos.
Were choices removed from Days Gone?
A little while back the developers on Days Gone announced that the plot would be scaled back, at least concerning how many choices you would get over it. Instead of having “good” and “bad” decisions to make throughout the game, Deacon just usually automatically does the right thing.
While it’s assumed that in previous versions of the game choice would have played a part throughout the game, we only have a few examples of what they might have been.
In the final version of Days Gone, the first sequence involves you chasing a guy named Leon that has stolen some drugs and killed some people. As mercenaries, Deek and Boozer go after him. After chasing him down, Leon is wounded. Boozer and Deek recover the drugs, and Deek mercy kills Leon before the Freakers can come to eat him alive.
In gameplay videos from May 2018, we saw the first choice you would have made in the game. The game plays out the same way as above except when it came time to decides Leon’s fate you would have gotten two choices:
Leave Leon
Leave the son-of-a-bitch to the Goddamn Freaks… Boozer won’t like it, but Leon deserves it…
or
Shoot Leon
Freaks will still get to eat – but Leon won’t suffer… Boozer says no man deserves to be eaten alive…
This decision would have likely had some future effect on Deek and Boozer’s relationship. Another choice we saw involved Boozer’s shotgun.
In the final game, when Boozer is injured, and Deek brings him back to the forest tower to heal, Deek hands back over Boozer’s shotgun before he heads back out. However, in the Alpha version of Days Gone you got two choices:
Take Boozer’s Shotgun
I’m going to need it for a bit. I’ll bring it back later.
or
Leave Boozer’s Shotgun
I can’t leave Boozer unarmed.
Again, this would have presumably affected Deek and Boozer’s friendship in some way. We don’t know what the developers had planned for the multiple game branches, but it’s likely that Days Gone had multiple endings in the past.
Why were choices taken out of Days Gone
The developers have said they took the choices out of Days Gone because they confused the narrative. They wanted to tell a particular story, and there was no way to reconcile that with the choice system.
I can also see how implementing a system like this would be a pain. You have to write basically two stories to make the choices feel meaningful at all, and with the game already being so long without choices, there probably just wasn’t time to develop it in a meaningful way.
