Days Gone’s Hordes Will Be Persistent; Can Have Up To 500 Freakers

Days Gone’s systemic open world nature is something the game seems to be banking quite heavily on, and its massive Freaker hordes are perhaps the one aspect that exemplify that better than anything else. We’ve seen plenty of these monstrous swarms of zombies ever since the game was first revealed, and now, thanks to a new video by PlayStation Access, we’ve got some interesting new details on these hordes.

The video goes over new details about the game that you (probably) might not know about, and at the tail end, reveals some interesting tidbits about Freaker hordes. Throughout the game’s main campaign (which can take roughly 30 hours to finish), players will encounter zombie hordes as part of main missions three times- however, there are a total of over 40 hordes in the game’s world. These hordes can be of varying sizes, and can be populated by anywhere between 50 to 500 Freakers. What’s even more interesting is that these hordes will be persistent, which means that if you were to come upon a horde of 300 Freakers and take out a hundred of them and then run away, no matter when you come back to it, the dead Freakers won’t have respawned. Those numbers will remain persistent- but the horde might pick up stragglers along the way.

The hordes, incidentally, also won’t be gate behind story progression- they’re always existing out there in the world, doing their own thing, and you can chance upon them at any point in the campaign. But of course, seeking them out right at the beginning might not be ideal (unless you want to get mauled to death in a matter of seconds).

Quite recently, Sony talked about its hopes to turn Days Gone into a long-term franchise, and with its combination of system gameplay and its focus on narrative, it’s looking like it might be able to do just that. Of course, we won’t actually know till the game’s out and in our hands- that happens on April 26. Stay tuned for more updates.