After the delays, trademark problems, and more, does it really exist?
In the industry, there are many projects that have been announced or “unveiled” for years but almost nothing has been shown. Many of these projects last for years under “development” and end up coming out as garbage, they never end up existing, or they find themselves in development hell. Looking at you, Beyond Good and Evil 2.
But there is an elephant under the table that in the last months is making a lot of noise. The Day Before, an MMO that seems to copy… excuse me, be taken from the universe of The Last of Us, is planned to launch in mid-2023 but has been delayed. After lost licenses, misinformation, few development updates, and other problems, the game may take longer to develop. This has led some to question whether it is even real.
This game isn’t real lmao
— Michael (@LegacyKillaHD) January 25, 2023
Zero gameplay shown. Bunch of fake trailers. Tons of excuses & now this… 8 month delay because they forgot to get the rights to the games trademark just weeks before release???
Naaa, this just screams “Abandoned PS5” scam all over again… https://t.co/pJEwrpYq8d
Licensing problems and an “unforeseen delay”
The Day Before is an MMO that looks to be a fascinating game. In fact, it already is! Well, I’ll explain myself better… Fntastic, the indie developer behind the game, has already shown “gameplay” and screenshots from an early stage of development. In them, we can appreciate different game mechanics, graphics, scenery, and much more important, the power behind the game.
Thanks to this, The Day Before can be highlighted as one of the MMO games that will give more to talk about if they achieve everything the developer has promised. But, there have been a lot of problems that have affected the development. Most serious of all, though, was the cancellation of the launch of the extended gameplay due to trademark claims about the game’s name.
Fntastic, through Twitter, notified fans that due to trademark claims about the name “The Day Before“, they had to delay the game. Although they would be showing extensive gameplay of the game, they felt the need to launch later to resolve the trademark issues.
That gameplay trailer finally got released, but it immediately got flagged. In fact, users on social media (Twitter and Reddit) noticed similarities with Call of Duty. This, by the way, is the same studio that wanted unpaid “volunteers” to work on their game.
Even with all of these issues, both Fntastic and publisher Mytona confirm that they are working to offer us as much content as possible as soon as possible.
Is it real? is it fake? is it a scam?
In spite of everything we have talked about in the previous point, there is an unknown that is going around in the heads of all those who are watching this project: Is the project real or is it a total lie? Well, after the passing of all these months, a lot of variants have arisen that have raised the suspicion of many people.
Development time
We all know games like Duke Nukem Forever and Beyond Good and Evil 2 that lasted or have been in development for many years. In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, it was known that the game was developed by CD Projekt Red. And, although no screenshots of the game were ever shown, it was known that the team was working hard on its release (although we all know how it all ended).
As for Beyond Good and Evil 2, the game still has no real gameplay despite being 14 years in development! But, even so, there is some hope from Ubisoft that it will be released at some point. They are, after all, a huge company.
But with The Day Before things are different…
Fntastic has been developing the game for four years. Despite having shown different clips of “gameplay,” the only thing we have seen is the scenes of the port of the game to Unreal Engine 5 since in the middle of development, they made the decision to change the game engine. If I, with a very little experience in C++, know how difficult it is to port a simple project, I don’t want to imagine what it is to port a project like a video game.
UE5 Presets
To the Unreal Engine 5 experts or fans of the projects created with this game engine, we know the presence of presets. Whether they are for animations, sounds, lighting, physics, and more, they allow you to facilitate or accelerate the development of a project. However, these presets must be modified to be adapted to the project where they will be used.
If you look closely at the gameplays they shared, Fntastic abused these presets to be able to set up each of the scenes. This, to the connoisseurs, only gives a clear impression: The low level of development that the game is having or the little effort on the part of the developers.
The Chinese “The Last of Us”
One of these variables that make the most noise is the excessive resemblance to the work of Naughty Dog: The Last of Us. From the atmosphere, the modeling of the characters, certain scenes of the game with very accurate shots, reload animations, and many more elements seem to have been copied from Naughty Dog’s best-selling game.
What at first seemed like a simple inspiration, ended up being a very important warning sign. Even the game’s typography is the same typography as The Last of Us. Therefore, all this collection of details has made many gamers wary as to whether the game is simply a fan-created project – or worse, whether the project is real or not.
Disinformation among the team itself
Several industry figures have tried to contact the developers of The Day Before to no avail. It was even rumored that Geoff Keighley would have the world exclusive of the new extended gameplay of the game for The Game Awards. But, the studio has been very tight-lipped about the work they are doing.
This in itself is already worrying and ends up casting doubt on the project. Most worrying of all has been that this same misinformation abounds within the development team. The Day Before‘s head community moderator, Wholf, has been the one who through Discord has been calming the waters between players and the press.
Many people accessed Wholf on a daily basis to resolve their doubts about whether the game was still under development. At first, Wholf gave concrete answers about the development of the game and how important it was for the team to keep everything under wraps. But days ago, Wholf, after notifying the reveal of the extended gameplay, gave some very shocking statements.
After the cancellation of the gameplay trailer release, a tide of “fans” of the game reached out to Wholf for answers. The Day Before‘s head community moderator responded surprisingly with a message that said “Those who wonder if the game is real, I’m wondering the same right now as well.”
This is obviously a shocking message that created more doubts among those players who were already wondering if the game was real or not.
Fntastic released a statement via Twitter on February 7 addressing the speculation:
We all live in a time of disinformation and lack of fact-checking. Anyone can say anything for views, and everyone will believe it. Disinformation needs to be dealt with as it can harm not only us but also other indies and small/medium studios. It also has a mental impact on the members of such teams. After the release of The Day before, we’ll think about how to help novice developers deal with fakes and allocate resources for this.
Destroying is easy. Creating is difficult.
Conclusion
There are many variables that point to the game being in a much earlier stage of development than Fntastic makes us think. After all that we have shared with you, and much more that you can find on the internet, there is at least a small possibility that the game may not actually exist.
