While it doesn’t quite seem like The Day Before is vaporware on the level of Blue Box and its non-existent “Abandoned” game, it’s a title that has raised a serious amount of questions, even as a supposedly playable version of the game will now arrive in December (after being pushed back yet again).
But it couldn’t even announce that without stumbling into a new controversy. Previously, its game art has been accused of lifting from other post-apocalyptic games like The Division. Now, it’s the new trailer that’s just debuted doing something similar, and you can see that comparison below.
It’s not mainly about the visuals this time (though again, some people are claiming there are pieces directly from The Division or Dying Light in there), it’s about the audio. In that video above, you can see how (presumably AI voiced) lines of dialogue directly rip off other open world games, namely GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077.
I would give The Day Before the benefit of the doubt if A) we had not already seen it taking things from other games before and B) if this was just one throwaway line instead of half a dozen instances in a single short trailer.
Again, this does seem like a real game. It’s not Abandoned, which was content showing us images of hallways for a year despite getting a PlayStation feature. Like there’s something here, but it appears not just to be an amalgam of genre games, but often lifting pieces right off of them. At least for marketing.
I imagine that when this game does come out, players will begin to find more and more assets or other things that are taken from elsewhere. Granted, in many cases using assets from elsewhere is fine, but there are lines and everything I’ve seen from The Day Before indicates they are more than comfortable hugging the coattails of the AAA games it’s trying to emulate, right down to swiping their promo art or trailer dialogue.
It’s hard not to get extremely bad vibes from this game, which attracted attention because it initially seemed like a wildly ambitious project from a small studio, that if it could deliver, would be something to see. But now? It’s hard to imagine this is going to produce a final product of significance, given it’s bizarre road to release. I mean, I am curious to see how it all plays out, I’ll admit to that.
I’ve reached out for comment to Fntastic about this trailer issue, and will update if I hear back.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Read the full article here
