After a rigorous up and down with the survival MMO The Day Before, the release was postponed again, and a legal dispute about the name broke out; there are now 10 minutes of real gameplay to see.
Here’s what’s going on: The Day Before, the upcoming survival MMO from Fntastic, has been the talk of the town lately. The trailers have looked fake so far, real gameplay has apparently never been shown, and the release has been constantly delayed. The release was supposed to take place on March 1, and real gameplay was supposed to be shown beforehand. But then it came as it had to; a sudden legal dispute over the name forced the developers to postpone the release to November 10 and cancel the gameplay reveal.
But now the time has come; a 10-minute gameplay video has been presented!
10 Minutes of “Real” Gameplay of The Day Before – This is what we See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KgrIGUhoZA&ab_channel=Fntastic
This can be seen in the gameplay: The PC gameplay starts with a suburban scene where 2 players search the area. Graphically, it seems much more real than the videos before – sure, a downgrade, but it doesn’t look fake. A real UI is still not visible, though, which might be due to the survival genre. What is noticeable, however, is that the locations visited are not new.
We also see the handling of a workbench, where ammunition and other items can be made. The weapon can also be upgraded with various attachments.
The evening falls, and it gets dark. The first zombies are shot down, and a checkpoint is passed through. Now the 2 players are inside the city. In a restaurant, an alarm can be turned off with the right code. Gameplay effects are not visible for the time being since no enemies have been alerted. At the end of the 10-minute gameplay, a few more houses are searched, and a few zombies are shot down.
Even within the city and in the dark, the lighting effects look much more ordinary than in the first rendered trailers. Some textures don’t look particularly sharp, and the power of the UE5 isn’t apparent. The gameplay, as before, is strongly reminiscent of The Division, which is not a bad thing.
This should be noted: It was already noticeable in the last gameplay video that the gameplay footage shown was previously recorded. Again, this is not live gameplay. The camera movements seem too fluid, as if playing with a controller, but the menu items and interactions are performed with the mouse and keyboard. We also haven’t gotten to see much more of the world than we have in recent trailers. So it remains to be seen how big the game world will ultimately be and when we will finally get to see real live gameplay.
How the community reacts: The community is still divided. Some think the trailer is good; after all, what is shown looks real, and fans can work with that. Some also seem to like the female character model shown here. Others criticize the rather empty game world, even though not much has been shown yet. The barely existing user interface also seems to bother some, but it is not unusual in survival games. DayZ and Escape from Tarkov already work with minimal UIs.
Short Gameplay Allegedly Shows Playing Dev, Looks Fake
We at Guided.news also wish that The Day Before is real and will be as good as we all imagine it to be. But shortly after the actual gameplay reveal, a nearly 30-second short video was released where we can see one of the developers playing the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CHvJkU5ILg&ab_channel=Fntastic
The problem a bunch from the fan community and we have, however: Is that the mouse movements don’t quite seem to match the character’s movements. It seems a bit laggy and too smooth, respectively.
The developers have also published new screenshots on Twitter:
The question also arises why the developers haven’t shown more of the gameplay when the release was originally supposed to take place next month. Why haven’t we seen anything about the NPC interactions, the “market” shown in the screenshot, or the base-building? The game, even if it could be real, looks very unfinished despite the gameplay reveal, and we doubt a release this year.
Gameplay Reveal did not Run Optimally
The gameplay reveal didn’t go as well as it could have. Initially, the video was supposed to start at 10:00 am PST on YouTube. For reasons not explained in detail, it was then postponed to 11:00 am; then the premiere began at 11:15, but first with a 5-minute timer. Thousands of fans waited live.
What we know: the postponement to the beginning of November 2023 was planned by the developers anyway, the legal dispute about the name had nothing to do with it. The game still needs more time to offer the quality that the team envisions.
Not much is known about the legal dispute. Only that an outside person registered a copyright to the name “The Day Before” shortly after the initial announcement a few years ago, thus beating Fntastic to the punch. The developers have probably only found out about this after this person spoke up shortly before the planned release. But the developers don’t want to let that sit on their hands and go against it; they want to get the name back.
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