The Day Before is a game that has had quite a rocky journey. Due to the lack of any substantial details regarding the game itself, we took some time to dig through the game's trailers to see how it developed. Read on to see what we found.
The Day Before's Journey
Turbulence Brings Change
The Day Before is an open-world zombie survival MMO developed by the Korean developer Fntastic. It's been on the radar for many players for a few years, albeit sometimes due to less-than-flattering reasons. Although its development and marketing cycle has been mired by allegations, ranging from plagiarism and scams, to trademark disputes with a calendar app, it has finally received a release date (again) on December 7, 2023.
The Day Before might actually exist!
Whether or not The Day Before will finally see the light of day at the specified date is unknown, but with the copyright conflict over, one of Steam's most wishlisted games has finally returned to its store.
Following that, for a game that has been in development for over two years, changes to its structure, graphics, gameplay, and other aspects would likely be made. However, considering that there's barely any gameplay available from any of its trailers aside from a few minutes of nothing really happening, it's hard to consider making comparisons between the game's early days to its present state.
Although, it's admittedly quite hilarious how the game's trailers are so similar to other games as an an article from MP1ST has pointed out. However, let's give them the benefit of the doubt anyway, and check out the game's development through the trailers they have released.
How The Day Before Changed Over The Years Based On Trailers
Attention To Detail
Although, I would argue that critiquing a video game's graphics is no longer as important as doing so for other aspects, such as gameplay. I mean, surely, there wouldn't be any difference between how it was two years ago and today, right? If anything, it should have improved, considering the amount of time the developers have had with the game.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what happened in The Day Before's case, particularly regarding their attention to detail. Take, for example, the difference between "The Day Before: Exclusive New Gameplay Trailer and More!" (left), which was released in October of 2021, and "The Day Before Official 10 Minutes Gameplay Trailer" (right), which was released in February of 2023. The scene on the left appears to be taken from the ruins of a boutique store, while the one on the right was taken from inside a dilapidated restaurant.
At a glance, the two might not seem too far apart in terms of detail. After all, everything that looks like it should be broken is broken, and there's a lot of litter on the ground to depict some past struggle, whether done through looting or fighting for one's life.
However, the differences become quite apparent once you observe the two images narratively (and as a whole).
The 2021 trailer's boutique store looks utterly dismantled. Display cases have been shattered, paper bags and boxes are scattered all over the floor, and the shelves look almost devoid of the goods they must have once displayed.
But aside from that, no blood can be seen anywhere. There's also the dried mess of footprints on the floor. These trace around the display cases, telling a story that the store was a victim of rampant looting. The lack of bloodstains indicates that no interpersonal violence has occurred there, which makes sense. After all, there's little reason for such a thing to happen in a place where people who become more concerned with survival would rarely visit.
On the other hand, we have the 2023 trailer's restaurant looting scene. Similar to the 2021 trailer, we could see evidence of property destruction, such as broken windows, as well as the typical litter on the floor. However, that's pretty much it.
Remember that this restaurant is located at the corner of an intersection. Not only does it serve as a great source of supplies such as spices and food, and weapons such as knives and even chair legs, but it also functions well as a temporary shelter with its fantastic view across a vast, open stretch of road and an abundance of furniture survivors could use to barricade the windows and doors with.
But why does it look relatively untouched? Most of the chairs, which could be used as obstacles or weapons, are primarily upright and intact, the display counter, which should have contained food, is nearly spotless, and the floor, which should have been utterly mottled with the footprints of people who have fled from the outside, appear to be mostly clean aside from areas irrelevant to how a person might act in such a place in an apocalypse scenario.
While the differences between these two trailers could be explained by how my computer would reject the idea of showing a nice patch of grass without tanking my frames, it doesn't throw light on why the two scenes have such a difference in the attention to detail behind their designs.
The latest gameplay trailer's lack of narrative substance is even more apparent compared to the game’s Announcement Trailer released in January 2021. There, the same restaurant was shown to be nearly entirely inaccessible, with piles of plastic bags, boxes, and other debris blocking its doors. Dozens of ruined vehicles are scattered about, with what looks like checkpoints to manage the flow of people via concrete barriers arranged with strategic thought on the road.
Meanwhile, the same location in the 2023 gameplay trailer looks like it was neatly cleared out, with barely a single abandoned vehicle in sight.
Even though the latest trailer’s far darker roads make much more sense, considering that there should be widespread blackout during these settings, the original version showed much more thought when it came to the idea of creating a desolated city.
The Ranch
Regarding your home (ranch) feature, it seems like they used the same location to record footage. Upon a preliminary observation, the ranch gates used between their November 2023 "The Day Before Final Trailer" and October 2021 "The Day Before: Exclusive New Gameplay Trailer and More!" are more or less the same.
Although the house beside it looks entirely different, this can be attributed to a mechanic where you could upgrade your house's overall appearance, perhaps through in-game currency.
The wooden lamp posts with green housing also resemble each other.
It begs the question: does everybody get the same plot of land? Or is it just a coincidence that the developers decided to use the same location for both trailers?
Vehicle Interface
One of the features that has been present with the game since its announcement trailer was the ability to commandeer vehicles. Various means of transportation have been revealed throughout the game's development, which include practical solutions for the zombie apocalypse, such as a military humvee, to quite frankly ridiculous ones, such as sports cars.
I mean, why would you want to take sports cars in a zombie apocalypse? Sure, they're fast, but they're also extremely loud (read: zombie magnets), a waste of fuel, and can't even carry a lot of supplies in terms of bulk. As a big, big fan of zombie apocalypse stories, I'm quite frankly shocked that Fntastic would even consider this as an option.
Well, anyway, to run your choice of wheels, the basic resource you'll require is fuel. On the original "The Day Before - Official Off-road Vehicle Gameplay Teaser" released in March of 2021, the amount of fuel you have left is indicated by a fuel gauge on the bottom-right corner of your screen.
This has apparently been scrapped for a more intuitive approach to depict your fuel reserves.
In their November 2023 "The Day Before Final Trailer," it was replaced with a numerical indicator that showed exactly how much fuel your vehicle had, probably in terms of gallons. While this approach might be better in terms of accessibility, it does look much more detached from what actual vehicles would show. In a way, this reminds me of how fuel is depicted in Deadly Premonition, without the burden of a vehicle that uses fuel as a clutch lubricant (and without the confidence imparted by the hindsight that Deadly Premonition is a great game).
Whether or not you could switch between either is a mystery to us. But while I certainly appreciate Fntastic's desire to make things easier to understand, I do believe that there's more benefit to using the original use of the fuel gauge since it adds a tiny bit more immersion to the driving experience. Everybody should know how to interpret what a fuel gauge means to tell you, right?
Combat Interface
The Day Before's combat interface, on the other hand, has a very minimalist approach, as shown in the trailer they provided to IGN titled "The Day Before - Official Exclusive Combat Gameplay."
On the bottom-left corner, you have a gauge indicating your health, as well as other parameters such as temperature, thirst, and energy. These indicators are always visible regardless of whether you're in combat or not, but they're small and unassuming enough to not really interfere with your vision. Located on the other side is your ammo counter, which shows how many bullets are loaded into your weapon and how much you have left in reserve. Again, these numbers are small and are placed thoughtfully enough to not interfere with anything.
But it seems that throughout the game's development, Fntastic deemed it wasn't minimalistic enough, so they reduced the interface even further.
Now, all you can see during combat are your ammo reserves, as well as the firing settings for your weapon.Your health will only be displayed whenever it changes, such as when using a healing item, but otherwise, it'll be hidden most of the time.
This is a strange decision to make. As mentioned before, none of the indicators are intrusive to your ability to make out any detail in the game. The only thing this decision does is make it inconvenient for the player to quickly glance at their vital parameters, such as their thirst and energy levels. Now, instead of having a constant reminder available for players at an unassuming location on their screens, they have to constantly access their inventories just to check.
Similar to the fuel indicators for vehicle gameplay, this might be an option that can be changed using in-game settings. If not, then this is undoubtedly a downgrade from its original design.
Inventory
And speaking of accessing inventories, there's also a notable change between the "The Day Before Official 10 Minutes Gameplay Trailer" released in February 2023 (the image below) presentations and the recent "The Day Before Final Trailer" released in November 2023 (the one above).
For starters, it seems like knives have been transferred from your loadout to your equipment. Well, that makes sense. It’ll empty your loadout for general-purpose items to be stored there for easier use.
On the other hand, there’s no more slots to equip gloves. It also looks like you can’t change your underwear anymore (sad). Less equipment to manage would mean less hassle to maintain them. However, it also means less customizability.
At least now, with six slots of pocket space, it could mean that you can use consumables without having to keep going to your inventory each time.
In fact, the inventory windows have gone through many different iterations. Pictured above is the game inventory as shown in the original January 2021 Announcement Trailer, and pictured below is the one from the October 2021 "The Day Before: Exclusive New Gameplay Trailer and More!"
As you can see, there’s barely any resemblance between each other, even though these trailers were only a mere nine-odd months apart. It’s almost like these old inventories were just randomly cobbled-together graphics they wanted to use for presentation.
It’s also quite funny that the devs seem to have trouble deciding whether or not you should be able to change your gloves and underwear, as those equipment slots have appeared and disappeared over time.
Overall, the changes between what was shown back in 2021 and now in 2023 are all over the place. Some feel like blatant downgrades to what they had originally shown, while others are sensible improvements to the system.
There should be more things to discover as you compare every trailer. Aside from the differences between their graphics, combat and quality of life are also essential aspects to consider.
Regardless, The Day Before is sure to carve a niche among gamers. Does it look like they’re still delivering what they’ve initially promised, though? Well, yes. They do. But whether or not it all meshes together into one cohesive product is up in the air.
I just hope they scrap the sports cars, though.
