Days Gone Director Admits To ‘Terrible’ Boss Fight And Pacing

Former Days Gone director Jeff Ross has admitted to a “terrible” boss fight caused by pacing issues due to budget constraints.

During an interview with USA Today, Jeff Ross revealed his disappointment with certain aspects of Days Gone. In particular, issues with pacing, AI, and boss fights. Before we go on, I must give you a warning that the information below is related to the plot of Days Gone. So, consider this to be your spoiler warning.

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A lot of that stuff, like the Skizzo boss fight at the end, is terrible. But we had to button everything up as best we could with the systems that we had,” said Ross.

Scripting AI was really hard. With the stealth sections, we had to maintain the sense of ‘they will shoot on sight,’ but we didn’t necessarily want to have a shootout because the player couldn’t kill them. That was the only thing I could really figure out to do, and we tried a lot of stuff. For the sequel, those are the types of things I wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to do them here. I kind of had to, but we have the data now.

Days gone image
Credit: SIE Bend Studio

Furthermore, Ross then spoke about how budget constraints had an impact on mission structure during the Days Gone story.

“This thing with Boozer wasn’t a lot of fun”

The cinematics and the VO were captured early. We were bound by it. We couldn’t go back and reshoot,” continued Ross. The beautiful thing about the story is it’s very interwoven. And that’s what makes things impossible to cut. Like, ‘Okay, this thing with Boozer wasn’t a lot of fun.

Let’s make it as minimal as possible.’ But we needed it to connect the dots between a lot of this story material, but it couldn’t be lifted out of it. It’s a blessing and a curse, having a story like that. I hate to say the Donald Rumsfeld quote – ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want’ – but it’s true.

days gone
Credit: SIE Bend Studio

Jeff Ross has been very vocal recently talking about the development and the lack of a future for the Days Gone franchise. Ross expressed his disappointment at Sony dismissing a proposed sequel for the popular post-apocalyptic zombie horror.

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Featured Image Credit: Sony/Bend Studio