Are There Days Coming?
Reports that The Last of Us was getting a remake were accompanied by reports that several other projects were canceled or rejected – such as a potential reboot of Uncharted and a Days Gone sequel.
A remake of The Last of Us makes a certain amount of sense. Still, does it have to come at the expense of other projects? The Last of Us is widely regarded as one of the greatest games in history, but Days Gone was a dark horse of its own – and the secret ending promised a whole new adventure.
While a potential sequel is far from out of the question, the game’s director Jeff Ross has confirmed that the original pitch was indeed rejected.
Speaking to God of War creator David Jaffe, Ross confirmed several rumors – such as the fact that a Days Gone sequel was indeed rejected, and that several key staff at developer Bend Studios were indeed reassigned to Naughty Dog projects. However, Ross claimed that his own departure from Bend was due to personal reasons – he now works for Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm – and refused to confirm the current status of Days Gone 2 – including whether it was rejected.
“I don’t think it’s publicly confirmed what the status of [Days Gone 2] is. I don’t want to be the guy who’s the official source for whatever that is.”
Ross did, however, seemingly hint that the game’s sales may have played a part in the sequel’s (potential) rejection.
“Sony with these big triple-A games… they’re not cheap games to make. The first Syphon Filter I think cost $1m or $2m. The second one was definitely $2m because we did it in a year. So the return of investment on those is great, [but] for games where you have to sell four of five million copies just to break even… there’s got to be a confidence in the return, because Sony doesn’t have the cash that Microsoft does and they’ve got to use it very intelligently and they’ve got to stay focused on a diverse portfolio.”
It’s worth noting that the first game has gained a lot of attention as part of the PlayStation Plus collection, so it’s possible that even if a pitch was previously rejected, Sony will want to capitalize on the newfound attention.