Currently ranked at the top of Steam’s top wishlists chart, there’s no doubt that everyone is excitedly anticipating Fntastic’s The Day Before release date. This open-world survival MMO is set in a post-pandemic America overrun by the infected. As a lone survivor, you must explore a beautifully rendered land, scavenge for resources, and team up with a colony of other survivors. It’s basically The Division meets The Last of Us.
The Day Before was first introduced on January 27, 2021 with an announcement trailer that showcased the engine and gameplay. It was originally scheduled to launch on June 21, 2022 and gathered quite a lot of buzz and hype over the looting, gunplay, and vehicle mechanics. Unfortunately, in early May, the developers announced that the release date for The Day Before will be delayed to March 1, 2023 – nearly a full year later. This statement came after their decision to shift the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 in order to “transition to a more advanced and adapted open-world engine”.
While we applaud Fntastic’s efforts to keep the game as updated as possible, this could mean a lot of work required to port a nearly finished game into an engine with new and different technology – possibly resulting in extra bugs, glitches, and perhaps the removal of certain mechanics. This also means that, while The Day Before will be coming to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, it very likely won’t be available on last-gen consoles. There have been no official statements about that yet, but we’re not holding our breath.
Don’t let that diminish your excitement, though. The Day Before is still set to be an incredible game with a focus on sound design over HUD markers, weight management, vehicle liabilities, no loading screens, and Discord-like integrated communications. All these features wrapped in Unreal Engine 5’s beautiful graphics means we’re in for a fantastically immersive MMO unlike any other.
