Nine of the Bend developers did an AMA on Reddit yesterday. They go into a whole bunch of things -- visuals, sound, environment, story, building an open world, etc. I came away with a better appreciation of how much work went into the game and how challenging it must have been.
Here's a summary of their responses:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/days-gone-ot-days-gone-b-gud.1478110/page-21#post-254331283
Some examples....
Sound:
"It’s nice to see so many positive comments about the sound design in Days Gone. It’s especially gratifying when players notice the finer details we added. Some examples: rain on Deacon’s leather jacket (more noticeable when aiming, since the camera moves in closer), the bike’s exhaust pinging as it cools down after the player dismounts, the way wildlife ambient sounds react to game states, weather, day-night cycle and region. Have you noticed the insects in Belknap are slightly different to the ones heard in Lost Lake or Iron Butte? There are many more little subtle details like these that we hope players hear."
Weather:
"The way the weather works in the game I think is quite unique: At any time, there are thousands (often tens of thousands) of clouds moving through the world. Each cloud defines a number of states about not just how the cloud looks (density, shape, etc) but also the weather conditions below the cloud: Be it rain, snowfall, mist, wind, etc. This is how the weather feels so dynamic, as it moves through the world the weather below the clouds gets accumulated dynamically through the world (it’s possible to have one part of the world wet and at the same time another snowy, etc – it all depends on the clouds and where they are). We have systems to control how these accumulations blend and combine in to the world as the clouds move through it; this also controls visual and gameplay transitions too..."
Most challenging:
"Getting all of the open world systems to work together nicely was the biggest challenge. There is a lot of overlapping open world content that requires different systems to communicate with each other and/or account for each other along with layers and layers of tuning."
What are you most proud of:
"The thing I'm most proud of is how diverse and dynamic we were able to make the open world with such a small open world design team (5-6 people). We had to think smart and efficient with all of our design choices knowing the man power limitations."
Environment:
"We really tried to make the environment as authentic as possible, but it's a game so we had to make a few adjustments for gameplay and narrative. Some of the spaces we created, such as Iron Mike's are a sort of combination of several of our favorite places around the state. So while most of it is not a one-to-one replica of the state we really strived to capture the overall feel."
"We picked a number of locations that we felt offered something unique in terms of our gameplay, and helped us capture the history and feel of Oregon. One of our greatest challenges was getting the scale of the world right so it was fun to ride around on the bike, while being in that not-too-big but not-too-small zone. In the early days we threw out the whole world and started over three times, but it was really necessary to get the scale right..."
"Central Oregon and the High Desert were the perfect environments for an open world. The diverse biome of the High Desert really does vary as much as it does in the game, from the arid desert of Belknap to the snowy mountains of Crater Lake. It’s picturesque but deadly."
Why isn't there a button so I can quickly look behind me?
"We went through lots of iteration with the motorcycle, including a look back camera not only for the motorcycle, but for on-foot as well. For the motorcycle specifically, we started with it on the R3 button but as the game developed, Survival Vision turned out to be a higher priority for that particular button. ... We tried it on the L3 button, but as you are backing up, loads of players pressed this accidentally while trying to use the left stick to turn.... For a long while we had it on the circle button, but that lost out when we created our ‘drift’ button. The biggest issue for us with the look back button (and the main reason we didn’t include it) was that it not only caused you to constantly run into things in our dense world (trees, cars, stumps, rocks, etc), it took away tension. There is something to be said for not being able to see what is behind you and we thought it was the right call for the game. "
Misc:
"We are currently working on a few different aim improvements to help players customize the way they want to aim."
If you haven't come across them yet you will lol
