‘Days Gone’ Creative Director Upset Deacon Is In ‘Astro Bot’

In one of the weirdest stories to come out of Astro Bot’s brilliant launch, which pays tribute to almost every major and minor PlayStation-centric game in history, one character’s creator is actually upset his hero made it into the game as a Bot.

That would be former Days Gone creative director John Garvin tweeting that he’s not amused that his game’s hero, Deacon St. John has been “reduced to a cartoon schill [sp] promoting some small game.” Seriously:

Garvin goes on to say he “doesn’t’ know” Astro Bot and while he wishes them well he doesn’t want it to be at the “expense” of Days Gone. And that something he’s created is used again, as a shill to “promote product.” He spends a number of other tweets fighting with people pushing back on that.

It’s a truly bizarre take as Astro Bot is clearly meant to be a lighthearted tribute to the entire history of PlayStation, and acknowledging each game with Bots is an honor not stealing IP to promote itself.

Garvin has been upset about the cancellation of a Days Gone sequel for years now, at one point blaming “woke reviewers” for its not-amazing reception. The reasons he listed in a now-deleted tweet were, and I quote:

1. it had tech issues like bugs, streaming and frame rate;

2. it had reviewers who couldn’t be bothered to actually play the game

3. And three, it had woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass

This sentiment was later totally disowned by Bend Studio, so much so they had to put out a statement:

The game got an okay 71 on Metacritic when it was released in 2019, but that put it far below so many other first party Sony hits which were usually in the upper 80s or 90s. According to sales numbers, Days Gone was the 13th best-selling game of the PS4 generation with 7.3 million sales, just a notch below Bloodborne at 7.46 million. But yes, the critical reception did seem to have something to do with the game not getting a sequel, not just sales.

This is just the latest in a long string of Garvin controversies, but easily one of the weirder takes we’ve seen from him. You can find Deacon in the game and unlock his trademark motorcycle. Him and 170+ other PlayStation themed bots. It’s a cool thing to be featured and it never even occurred to me it was possible to think otherwise.

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