Based on the trailers and in-game footage that’s been shown off forThe Day Before, the game seems to be shaping up to be one of the next big MMOs to keep an eye on. The zombie survival genre definitely has its fair share of saturation, butThe Day Beforeseems to be turning heads based on its survival mechanics and the level of polish that’s been shown off in trailers. While trailers can certainly be misleading, the game seems to be taking heavy inspiration from other big hits in the genre.
A mix betweenDayZ,The Last of UsandThe Division,The Day Beforehas something that makes it stand out among the crowd. Its environments seem to already be shaping up to be something of a spectacle. While plenty of otherMMOs and zombie shootershave great level design and environments,The Day Beforeseems to stand out for its promises of diversity and verticality.
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Unique New York
Great visuals and graphics aren’t uncommon for most big releases nowadays, however, there have already been a few differentgameplay trailers released forThe Day Beforeand most show drastically differing beautiful environments. Some showcase survivors creeping through blown-out bodegas in destroyed urban environments, others highlight the remnants of life as we know it in looted gas stations and one had players shooting and looting their way through rural farms before the police showed up.
While other games might focus on capturing one environment’s ambiance and mood,The Day Beforeseems to be expanding its scope. If players canchoose between a life in the country, city or suburbs, they might be more willing to spend more time with the game over its competition based on its sheer amount of environmental variety alone. On top of all that, each area looks polished and beautiful in its own right.
Because the only looks into the game so far have been fromtrailers and early-build gameplay footage, it’s not out of the question that the finalized game might not look the way it’s being marketed. However, even if each environment is slightly less catered and polished than promised, it’s still quite the feat to make a game world so big that it spans multiple, largescale neighborhood types.
Enhanced Verticality
Making a game work on the ground floor of a building is hard enough, but introducing verticality in the way thatThe Day Beforeis promising is no easy task. Skyscrapers are promised to be furnished, full of lootable items and zombies while also being connected to the world below them.The Day Beforeisn’t the first game to try and make something like this work, but if it can pull off the feeling of being watched from above on a city-sized scale, it might just becomethe nextDayZin terms of popularity.
Comparisons to the majorskyscraper section ofThe Last of Us 2have already been made and ifThe Day Beforecan capture similar moments they can be a selling point on their own. The big difference betweenThe Day BeforeandThe Last of Usis thatThe Last of Usis heavily scripted and those major moments were done as setpieces, not chance encounters. Areas with verticality will need to have relatively dense player counts to make it so that those moments can be interesting jumping-off points and don’t just consist of a single sniper picking off unknowing stragglers.
Moving away from the city, plenty of games feature two-story houses in more suburban and rural areas, but hopefully,The Day Beforewill make that into something just as special as the potential of the skyscraper ideas. Obviously, the top floor of a house is going to be much smaller and have a different layout than a highrise floor of a tall building, but the game might provide other advantageous reasons for a player to barricade themselves inside a house as opposed to a building. That sort ofchoice between gameplay environmentsis what’s already sellingThe Day Beforein many people’s minds.
At the end of the day,The Day Before’s environments and visuals are already making the game stand out among its other undead competition. Hopefully, it delivers on what its trailers promise and becomes the next big thing.
The Day Beforeis set to release in 2021 and is currently in development for PC.
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