Days Gone is a better game when you take out Deacon's motorcycle
The joys of photo mode
If there's one thing I've discovered about my gaming habits over the last couple of years, it's that I love a good photo mode. Lining up the perfect shot of a particularly pretty bit of virtual scenery is all well and good, but my favourite photo modes are the ones that let me fiddle about with what's onscreen, creating character poses and expressions that are totally incongruous with the rest of the scene. When a photo mode lets me tell my own version of events, I just can't help myself. Case in point: Days Gone's photo mode might not be the best or most flexible one out there, but it is a much funnier game when you use it to make Deacon's beloved bike invisible while he's still sitting on it.
Like a lot of modern photo modes, the one in Days Gone lets you remove certain characters and objects from a scene to help you compose better pictures. Got a great shot of Deacon but there's a pesky NPC or Freaker zombie doing something stupid in the background? You can just whip them out by disabling the 'Other Character Visibility' option in the Character tab of the photo mode's menu options. Heck, you can even take Deacon out of the picture if you want, perhaps to get a good look at the game's lovely pine forests or zoom in right up close to the snarling, toothy grins of its resident undead.
You can also make Deacon's bike invisible, too. While he's still sitting on it.
I don't know if the developers ever intended for their photo mode to be used (abused?) this way, but man alive it definitely makes Days Gone a much more interesting game. It also 100% makes up for the lack of additional poses you can put Deacon in, because honestly, what other pose could you possibly need when you have this brilliant mid-air squat?
Allow me to demonstrate:
Shot #1: Deacon looking cool in front of his lookout tower base?
OR, Deacon doing his best Freaker monster walk impression?
Shot #2: Deacon leaving straggler Freaker zombs in the dust?
OR, Deacon letting one rip in the most obnoxious (and noxious) getaway ever?
Shot #3: Deacon looking calm and collected as he swerves his bike up a mountain?
OR, a candid, freezeframe shot of him tumbling down the hill after getting whacked by some unseen force while his bike happily carries on upwards?
Shot #4: Deacon riding headlong into a group of Freakers?
OR, Deacon looking displeased that everyone's spoiling his jumping in muddy puddles party?
Shot #5: Aww, yeah, feeling the wind in my face boosting down the mountain?
OR: Deacon just had a terrible, terrible accident?
I rest my case, but do you agree? Votes on a postcard in the comments below. Personally, I think my invisible bike shots tell an infinitely better story than what's actually happening in the game itself. I'm about five hours into the PC version so far and right now everyone's just using me as their personal errand boy to do all their dirty work for them, clearing out Freaker nests here, raiding poor homeless camps there... Seriously, the amount of repetitive radio chatter in this game is insane. Worse of all, though, none of the dialogue has any sense of humour to it. Everyone is very poe-faced all the time, and goodness, it makes me yearn for the good humour and daft light-heartedness of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. The PC version of Days Gone may be very good port of the former PlayStation exclusive, but I just don't know whether I've got it in me to stick with it.
A post-apocalyptic zombie survival game about a man who pretends to ride an invisible motorcycle around the mountains, on the other hand, that game I'd play for days.