Days Gone director throws tantrum over characters being in Astro Bot

Days Gone key art (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Not everyone is excited about all the cameos in Astro Bot, as the co-director of Days Gone attacks developer Bend Studio for supporting the game.

Astro Bot is the most critically acclaimed video game of the year so far (not counting Shadows Of The Erdtree) with cameos of 150 different characters, from Sony and other publishers’ games.

The only problem with the Sony characters is that very few of the most well-known ones are family friendly, with even Nathan Drake reduced to running around with a gun that shoots softballs. It’s a bit weird to have characters from The Last Of Us in such a cheerful game, with zombie apocalypse title Days Gone also being an odd inclusion.

Nevertheless, improbably named protagonist Deacon St. John, and his motorbike, are in the game as collectible characters/items, but original co-director John Garvin is not happy about it.

All of the cameos in the game are essentially normal robots, all of who look like Astro Bot, cosplaying as the original characters. In Deacon’s case that means a baseball hat and a beard.

Strangely, none of the characters are named, so sometimes it’s not entirely clear who they’re supposed to be, but the addition of the motorbike makes this one obvious.

Garvin doesn’t seem to have played the game, but he responded to a tweet from Days Gone developer Bend Studio, who posted a drawing of Deacon’s bot watching two robot dogs playing on a beach.

Since he no longer works at Bend, Garvin responded angrily, saying: ‘Kinda sad that Deek has been reduced to promoting other games … well done Bend Studio! Way to protect your legacy!’

https://twitter.com/John_Garvin/status/1832243904172978646

When he was told to calm down, he started to get nastier, writing: ‘Haha, I see my character reduced to a cartoon schill promoting some small game and I’m being harsh? Sit down, my brotha, adults are talking.’

‘I don’t know Astro Bot and wish them well, but not at the expense of Days Gone,’ he later added.

Deacon’s voice actor, Sam Witwer, insisted that he’s going to buy the game now, after seeing the artwork, but it’s been clear for a while now that Garvin has not taken the relative failure of Days Gone well.

Although not a terrible game, it reviewed worse than most other Sony first party titles and is not getting a sequel, with Sony implying it didn’t sell well enough to justify it.

Garvin complained that it sold just as much as Ghost Of Tsushima, which reviewed better, and then seemed to get even more bitter and angry as it became clear Sony is not going to reverse their decision.

In December 2022 he complained about ‘woke’ reviewers who he claimed had never even played the game, although he quickly deleted the tweet when he couldn’t provide any examples.

Before that, he’d actually blamed fans for the game’s failure, implying that not enough had bought it at full price.

Since Bend Studio is now working on a new, currently unannounced, project it seems very unlikely that there’ll ever be a Days Gone 2.

This is what the character looks like in Astro Bot (Reddit)

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