Days Gone Open World Was Designed By Just 5-6 People

When you talk about triple-A games you usually expect huge teams working on them, and this is one of the key factors that make them so different from the indie industry.

When you talk about triple-A games, you usually expect large teams are working on them, and this is one of the key factors that make them so different from the indie industry.

Anyway, Days Gone is representing an interesting exception to that rule, as Bend Studio has shared, during a recent AMA on Reddit, a detail about the making of the game.

The Oregon-based developer has revealed that the open world for the title was crafted by a very small unit of 5-6 people in the studio.

“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),” said Eric Jensen.

Jensen remarked that this ultimately ended up being a point of strength for the team, as they had to think creatively inside of those limitations.

“We had to think smart and efficient with all of our design choices knowing the manpower limitations,” he added.

“Seeing all of the crazy videos and screenshots that people have posted of the open world coming for Deacon or even interacting with itself has been incredibly cool for our team to see!”

Indeed, while Days Gone doesn’t feel like a huge step forward to the genre (it’s very far from being that, to be honest), the traversal is usually rather fun, and one of the reasons is the quality of its open world design.

So, kudos for Bend Studio, and hopefully for a sequel, they get a bigger team on the design of the open world which is such a big component in a game like that.

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