Days Gone creative director John Garvin interview — Zombies aren’t the only danger in the apocalypse

Days Gone is shaping up to be one of Sony’s big single-player PlayStation 4 exclusives for 2019. The title comes out this spring, and with luck it will be received as a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse genre. The game pits the hero, Deacon, against a full horde of zombies (dubbed Freakers) — as many as 500 of them — that he must destroy or escape as he tries to survive as a bounty hunter in the post-apocalyptic Oregon woods.

The world of Days Gone is a dangerous place, with predatory humans, zombie wolves that can catch a motorcycle, and Freakers who will come running as soon as they hear a sound. I got to see the latest build of the game at a Sony event in San Francisco. In that demo, it was clear that the woods were a dangerous place with the occasional human enclave trying to survive amid the waning of civilization.