Developer FNTASTIC has revealed its brand new MMO, The Day Before, which is a cross between The Last of Us and The Division. Up until now, FNTASTIC has only made two other games which were much smaller in scope and scale by comparison. Its first game, Radiant Ones, released in 2018 and was a small, story-driven indie game. It received pretty solid reviews across the board. The studio's second game, The Wild Eight, received weaker, though still decent, reviews. The Wild Eight is yet another single-player game which focuses on eight plane crash survivors trying to stay alive in a winter-y environment. Both games were very stylistic and used fixed camera angles.
The studio has yet to make any attempts at a multiplayer game or anything with a particularly large scale. As the studio is relatively new, it's not shocking that it's kept games small, and that it managed to release both games in a short window of time. However, it looks like the team has spent a lot more time on this next project, which will really be a massive departure for it.
With The Day Before, FNTASTIC is taking things to the next level. The studio is trying its hand at an open-world MMO set during a zombie apocalypse. It's basically combining the world of The Last of Us with the gameplay of The Division, with a few new twists like vehicles. In a new gameplay demo, FNTASTIC shares a glimpse at what to expect from this exciting new IP. Two players split up in search of fuel for their car in a city when they hear of a colony of survivors. Things quickly go south, though, as the main player gets ambushed by other players and their battle attracts the attention of the undead.
The player then scrambles through a snow storm and into an elevator of a skyscraper where he finds his dead partner. It looks like it'll be an incredibly compelling experience as players must manage ammo, inventory, clothing, and possibly hunger/thirst. Weather also appears to play a factor into gameplay, possibly weakening health or stamina if the player character get too cold like in Red Dead Redemption 2.
What remains unclear is if The Day Before can actually match these standards as its team size hasn't been specified. There's no disclosure saying the gameplay in the video isn't real, so one would hope that it is authentic and not just conceptual. It's a tall order and even Ubisoft, one of the biggest publishers in the industry, had to pull back a bit on its ambitions for The Division which included cutting a mobile companion app. As of right now, FNTASTIC is aiming to release the game on Steam in the future but hasn't given a release window. Players can add The Day Before to their wish list right now.
Source: FNTASTIC