The Day Before wants to be a huge survival MMO with picture-perfect graphics. But not everyone believes in this dream. We tell you what’s behind the debate about developer Fntastic.
A game too good to be true? That’s the question many survival fans are asking themselves right now about The Day Before. The shooter MMO with the picture-perfect graphics and immersive gameplay mechanics sounds, at least in theory, like the perfect PvP open-world for fans of The Last of Us, The Division or DayZ.
However, not everyone believes in the game, which currently sits at (the 1 most anticipated game on Steam) . Between impressive gameplay demos, many unanswered questions and a developer studio with a portfolio of mixed multiplayer titles, more and more scepticism is spreading.
In this article we tell you what the debate about The Day Before is all about. All further information on the survival shooter by developer Fntastic can be found here:
What exactly is this game?
Great role models: In terms of gameplay, The Day Before is reminiscent of a mixture of The Division, The Last of Us and DayZ: In the survival MMO, we are supposed to explore a post-apocalyptic America alone or with several other players. In terms of gameplay, this works via a third-person perspective without (!) an active cover system. We crouch down and can fire over cover, but we can’t nestle directly against walls and the like.
(Online or offline): The Day Before relies on a mixture of PvE and PvP. This means that we not only have to deal with zombies or human AI opponents, but also with real players with whom we fight over loot. By the way, there are no special types of undead hostile to us; The Day Before follows a more grounded approach in this respect. By the way, those who don’t feel like PvP battles will also be able to play The Day Before in offline mode.
(Open World and Survival): As in comparable survival MMOs, we explore an open game world in The Day Before, finding new weapons, clothing and equipment and can even cover longer distances behind the wheel of vehicles. Crafting also plays a major role, while we have to pay attention to our character’s temperature, hunger, thirst and exhaustion.
(What the world offers): The game world shall offer several big cities, but also rural areas. There are also camps with NPCs, but we can only speculate about their exact function at the moment. Of course, it would be obvious that these camps serve as hubs for trade and picking missions from quests.
(Weather and weather): The Day Before’s open world is also said to feature a dynamic weather system that can have a noticeable impact on gameplay. Heat, of course, drives up our thirst, while on snow we can sneak more quietly than usual. In the latter weather, however, the cold also gets to us.
(No skills or levels): By the way, there is no level system. This means that you will not advance in rank while playing and that you will not be able to improve stats such as strength, stamina or resistance. Only your equipment and the loot you find can give you advantages in the game, such as stronger weapons or a fatter car.
(HUD to the minimum): At the same time, the developer studio Fntastic seems to place great emphasis on immersion. In gameplay videos shown so far, the HUD remains reduced to a minimum, while visual elements such as life bars, hit counts or wayfinding aids are dispensed with.
What questions remain?
However, many questions remain unanswered at the moment Fntastic does not currently make any concrete gameplay promises. Instead, interested players have to guess at many aspects from the gameplay trailers and screenshots that have been released so far, while certain details can only be guessed at. Currently unanswered questions include:
- Will The Day Before be a free2play or full-price game?
- Is there an overarching story or goal to complete?
- How big and diverse is the open world?
- What are the quests and missions like?
- Are there boss fights, events or raids?
- How will a fair balance between players be ensured?
- How does The Day Before’s loot spawn work?
- How do co-op and matchmaking work?
- Are there any disadvantages for players exploring the world offline?
- What happens when my character dies? Is there permadeath?
- How extensive are the crafting and modification options?
- How does food preparation and ingestion work?
- How
film-like
does it really play?
Of course, these are not the only unanswered questions surrounding The Day Before. Let us know in the comments what you would like to know about the survival MMO.
Who are the developers?
Young studio, mixed portfolio: Fntastic is a Russian-based developer studio that was founded in 2015. Since then, the team has released four different games, of which only three are now available on Steam: Propnight, Radiant One and The Wild Eight. Dead Dozen, released in 2018, is no longer available for purchase.
- (Propnight): An asymmetrical multiplayer hide-and-seek game criticised on Steam primarily for its balancing issues.
- (Radiant One): An entertaining point&click adventure game that thrills its fans not so much with its gameplay, but mainly with its story and atmosphere.
- (The Wild Eight): A survival game set in Alaska from an isometric perspective, which uses a minimalist celshading look. Players criticise the technical state of the game and the fact that support for The Wild Eight has been discontinued.
- (Dead Dozen): A first-person shooter with horror and survival elements for up to four players, which suffered from balancing and technical problems. Players praised Dead Dozen’s untapped potential, but in the meantime the title is no longer even available for purchase.
You can watch the trailer for Fntastic’s latest game below:
- Will there be boss fights, events or raids?
- How will there be a fair balance between players?
- How does The Day Before’s loot spawn work?
- How do co-op and matchmaking work?
- Are there any disadvantages for players exploring the world offline?
- What happens when my character dies? Is there permadeath?
- How extensive are the crafting and modification options?
- How does food preparation and ingestion work?
- How
film-like
does it really play?
Of course, these are not the only unanswered questions surrounding The Day Before. Let us know in the comments what you would like to know about the survival MMO!
Why are people so sceptical?
Is it really going to be that good? The Day Before at least currently seems like the next big survival hope, for which many players have great expectations. Not surprisingly, the gameplay trailers shown so far all make a promising impression, both graphically and in terms of gameplay. After all, popular and established titles like The Last of Us or The Division seem to have served as inspiration.
The fact that game fans are interested in the concept and the idea behind The Day Before can be seen, among other things, in the number of views on YouTube or in the fact that The Day Before is currently the number one most wanted game on (Steam).
Nobody has played it: But not everyone believes in the fulfilment of the survival dream that The Day Before hopes for. And there are many reasons for this. For example, it is questionable to what extent the gameplay shown so far corresponds to the final product. In this respect, neither the press nor the players have been able to get a picture until today – just a few weeks before the original 2022 release. There have been no preview, public alpha or beta versions to date.
Is Fntastic keeping too low a profile? Of course, this goes hand in hand with the fact that Fntastic has so far left it at vague information about gameplay and co. and even in the few interviews answers little and evades more. For as we have already described in this text, many questions about the gameplay and technology of The Day Before remain unanswered to this day. Our questions to the team at Fntastic have also remained unanswered to date.
Can the developers handle it? To make matters worse, of course, The Day Before seems very ambitious and of a completely different calibre compared to Fntastic’s previous projects. In terms of graphics, gameplay and scale, games like The Wild Eight and Propnight can’t really keep up with The Day Before, the user ratings of these titles on Steam vary from balanced to mostly positive.
Incidentally, we also have all these points in a detailed video for The Day Before. Just take a look for yourself.
What’s behind the UE5 shift?
Release now not until 2023: The Day Before was supposed to be released on 21 June 2022. However, in May Fntastic announced via IGN that the survival shooter would be delayed to a release on 1 March 2023. The reason given is the switch from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.
What’s behind? The postponement naturally increases scepticism, but from a technical point of view it can be explained. Epic Games, for example, worked on this circumstance after complaints from numerous developer studios about the awkward switch from Unreal Engine 3 to 4. Thus, it is now much easier for game developers (for the most part) to move their games from UE4 to UE5.
In a Twitter discussion on the subject, numerous employees of various studios describe the switch as seamless and unproblematic. Especially if the games actually use internal engine assets and no external building blocks are imported. It is not supposed to work completely without stumbling blocks or complications, but importing a game based on the Unreal Engine 4 into 5 would be quite possible within a year.
Can any game devs comment on what it would take to convert a game to Unreal Engine 5 and ship inside of 10 months? I don’t know shit but that sounds super weird to me, right?
– Skill Up (@SkillUpYT) May 5, 2022
The fact that this decision is being announced only a few weeks before the release originally planned for 2022 nevertheless causes raised eyebrows.
Editor’s verdict
Of course I’m up for DayZ The Day Before. I mean, just look at this impressive gameplay trailer! The game world, the graphics, the immersive gameplay and the freedoms that State of Decay The Day Before currently throws at me like a carrot, makes me want to play a genre that I actually do next to nothing with: Survival. Ugh. Why does it always have to feel like work?
Okay, enough unpopularity. Despite impressive trailers and screenshots, I can’t shake the feeling with Days Gone The Day Before that something isn’t right. The info remains too vague, the developers too opaque and Fntastic’s previous games too mixed to deliver an open-world game of the calibre of The Division The Day Before.
But sure, I’m happy to be convinced otherwise. Maybe The Last of Us The Day Before 2023 will be a real plank. And rarely would I rather be wrong than in this case. But for that to happen, the developers first have to deliver more and show themselves willing to reach out to their fans and the press. Especially in light of the last release postponement and the switch to the Unreal Engine 5.
