How Days Gone creators built the horde of zombie-like creatures in their E3 demo

My favorite demo from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was the Days Gone gameplay demo at the close of the Sony press conference. I saw it again later in a small group session with the developers from Bend Studio. Sure, it was yet another post-apocalypse game, but this one stood out above the rest.

The demo worked well because it felt like it was a scripted scene featuring lead character Deacon St. John as he tried to battle on the run with a horde of zombie-like creatures, dubbed Freakers, in the open world of an abandoned sawmill. The demo had pulse-pounding music that got faster as the intensity increased. Deacon kept finding ways to evade the horde in the nick of time, and the demo included cinematic moments in between the action, such as when he escaped into a garage to catch his breath. Slowly, Deacon ran out options, and he became trapped.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.