As promised, NVIDIA showed off some new footage of the highly-anticipated MMO survival game The Day Before at its CES 2023 showcase, highlighting the game’s use of RTX (ray tracing texel extreme) to create beautiful looking environments.
The trailer comes in at 58 seconds and it doesn’t really show off much, which would have raised the ire of fans hoping for a much juicer showing. But truth be told, it was always unlikely that NVIDIA was going to show off large chunks of gameplay at its tech-focused event.
Probably the biggest takeaway from the brief footage is that there is likely to be a first-person mode (about 34 seconds into the trailer), something that was previously unknown. You can check it out below:
Where fans were more hopeful of seeing something substantial was Fntastic’s own video, Life at Fntastic, which premiered not long after its CES 2023 appearance. The video preview had the tag “How we work on The Day Before,” leading many fans to think that with the game’s March 1, 2023 release date (March 2 in Australia) not far away, the marketing campaign was about to kick in. However, what we got was one of the strangest dev vlogs I’ve ever seen, with Fntastic using this opportunity to essentially plug its new remote workplace software, Continent.
Technically, Fntastic did say they were going to show how they worked on The Day Before, and Continent seems to be an integral cog in its development setup, but the video raises a few eyebrows when it promotes how good it is to work (or volunteer) at the company before showing one developer about to be evicted from his apartment.
Speaking of volunteers, the vlog gives a few shoutouts to some of the many volunteers working with Fntastic on The Day Before, such as one person who appears to be in charge of marketing and another who is the game’s Lead Sound Designer, confirming that volunteers are indeed working on the game’s development. It’s a truly bizarre video and the latest baffling move in a laundry list of moves that have made no sense. If you want to give it a watch you can do so below.
It’s not all bad news though, with a few new morsels of information scattered throughout the video. Firstly, we got a decent look at the character creator, with players seemingly having the option to customise face type, hair style and colour, and facial hair style and colour, as well as more by the looks of it. We still don’t have confirmation as to whether players will be able to create female or other gendered characters, however at one point in the video a developer is seen working on a female model, so perhaps a subtle confirmation there.
We also got a look at some of the Capabilities of the characters, which use Skill Points to unlock/upgrade. From what we can see there will be Positive Capabilities, such as medication giving greater amounts of health and food items increasing the satisfaction of your hunger, as well as Negative Capabilities that include a decreased carrying capacity and requiring more water to quench thirst.
The last snippet the video showed was a look at the weapons screen, with one weapon having modifications attached. It also showed the weapon’s stats and that weapons can be repaired.
Perhaps most encouraging is that NVIDIA promoted the game’s March 1, 2023 release date, giving hope to players that the game will actually launch this time. Of course, there’s still plenty of time for Fntastic to delay the game further, but hopefully this means that won’t be the case.
What did you make of Fntastic’s vlog and the latest The Day Before footage? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
