It was probably too good to be true. The Day Before is a triple-A-caliber multiplayer survival game with RPG mechanics, set to release in just over a month, without a peep of promotion or hoopla for the last several months… Yeah, that sounds like something that’s going to get delayed.
Sure enough, when Fntastic announced that The Day Before is officially moving to Unreal Engine 5, they also dropped the news that the game would now be coming out March 1, 2023, as opposed to the original date, June 21, 2022.
I can’t say I’m surprised. And really, I guess I’m not really even that disappointed. After all, it’s not like there was really much word from the developers after the most recent trailer showed the same gameplay footage we had seen before, and was merely extolling on the virtues of running The Day Before with GeForce RTX for that crisp 4K visual presentation. I just wish Fntastic would’ve been a bit more upfront about the state of the game, and perhaps a bit more tactful in their marketing in general.
After all, updates on The Day Before had slowed to a trickle, and everything seemed to go dark. It wasn’t until May 5 when Fntastic tweeted this now infamous, barebones message:
As you can see, even this was ushered in beneath another Tweet concerning the studio’s current game — and I imagine current source of income — Propnight. The studio couldn’t even muster the effort to give this update its own thread. So of course, what felt like a cryptic afterthought wasn’t going to be the harbinger of good news.
Looking at the gameplay footage we’ve been treated to so far, The Day Before is looking pretty darn good, and definitely not like it was running into game engine issues. But hey, if moving over to Unreal Engine 5 is for the best? Sure, I’m about it.
Like I stated, I’m not even mad or disappointed there is a delay of almost a full year. It’s not like there was much to get excited by outside of the snippets we have seen thus far, so it’s hard to get upset that the rug was pulled out this close to release. This certainly isn’t the first game to slip its release date so close to launch, and it probably won’t be the last.
I guess in the end, Fntastic’s mishandling of this news may have been a mixed blessing, since it was so low-effort that it doesn’t seem like there is much of a negative impact. I myself will more than likely go back to not thinking about The Day Before, outside of seeing it taunting me in my Steam Wishlist, until the day it does finally come out.
