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‘Days Gone’ is About Life in a Zombie Apocalypse
Back in January, the Internet’s All Seeing Eye spotted a trademark Sony had filed for a mysterious new game called Days Gone. Fast forward six months and here we are, with a rumor that’s blossomed into a promising new IP — the first in a planned franchise — for the PlayStation 4 that sits somewhere between “Sons of Anarchy” and The Last of Us.
The comparison to the latter is especially fitting, because this is one very pretty game.
Days Gone is an open-world action game set in the Pacific Northwest just two years after a global pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, leaving a handful of survivors and roughly 2-3 World War Z trailers’ worth of zombies, called Freakers.
At the heart of it is Deacon St. John — bounty hunter, biker, risk taker, rule breaker — who managed to survive a hellish apocalypse to endure the constant struggle that is life in a post-apocalypse. And while this is a game with zombies, it’s not necessarily a zombie game. Sony Bend describes it as a game about “desperation, hope, transformation, loss, madness, discovery, friendship, exploration, brotherhood, regret and love.”
“In the end, Days Gone is about what makes us human. It’s about how even when confronted with such enormous tragedy, we find a reason to live. Hope never dies.”
The best part about engaging with collaborative genre fiction on the internet is that anyone can get in on the action, with worldwide accessibility often resulting in absurd story beats that wouldn’t be possible if any single person was responsible for the entire narrative. And while Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film is definitely the young filmmaker’s own unique take on the infamous creepypasta, it’s fun to see other creators join the Backrooms sandbox now that the big screen adaptation is getting ready for a record-shattering opening weekend.
As if cleverly timed releases like Puppet Combo’s The Backrooms game weren’t enough (not to mention that Scary Movie poster poking fun at Parsons’ flick), McDonald’s official social media accounts have now released an analog horror video of their own celebrating the liminal terrors of the McRooms – complete with a familiar purple surprise at the end of the footage.
While it’s funny enough to see the world’s most recognizable Fast Food giant engage with internet-borne Found Footage thrills seemingly out of the blue, the video is actually referencing a long-running gag among the Backrooms fandom where creators jokingly talk about there being a fully functional McDonald’s restaurant hidden somewhere in level 0 of the infamous liminal labyrinth.
Now, would it be too much to hope for a moist-carpet-flavored McShake to tie in with the film?
Backrooms is now playing only in theaters from A24.
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