Hello, PlayStation fans! Now that Days Gone has officially gone gold, I’m happy to finally share details about Bend Studio’s implementation of Photo Mode. The world of Days Gone includes a regular day/night cycle, as well as multiple biomes and weather types. We’re giving players all the tools they need to capture and share these breathtaking vistas and the unique sandbox gameplay moments Days Gone makes possible.
The vast Central Oregon wilderness is so beautifully crafted and rendered in Days Gone it’s easy to forget that you’re playing a game. Our aim with Photo Mode was to make players feel like they’re manipulating a real camera in the real world.
Of course, this includes features that people expect to come standard these days. From the Characters panel, users can toggle character and bike visibility as well as select from a library of facial expressions. The Frames & Presets panel hosts nine custom frames, several black frame shapes and sizes, Days Gone logo options, and 18 filter presets. The Lens panel lets players manipulate Field of View, Focal Distance, Aperture, and Film Grain. One of the first features we developed for Photo Mode was the inclusion of Focus Lock, which allows users to set a permanent focus point that stays sharp no matter where they move the camera.
But the pièce de résistance is our Advanced Mode where users can fine-tune their final shots by manipulating 55 different settings across Bloom, Color Grading, and Color Depth Grading panels. We worked closely with members of our Art team, including some Hollywood veterans, to help define the essential properties to capture all the power and flexibility that comes with professional photo editing software. This is the very same interface our artists used to author the filter presets that ship with the game. Players can even use one of our presets as a starting point to learn how Advanced Mode works, then use it a baseline to creating their own filter that can be saved to one of five preset slots for easy reuse later.
All of this will be available at launch. Everyone at Bend Studio can’t wait to see the pictures the community creates starting April 26!
