In case you've missed the most recent media outlay from ex-Sony Bend Studio's Jeff Ross, who served as game director on the divisive Days Gone, he's been throwing out barbs and misquotes and all sorts of other things of late, in what largely appears to be basic disappointment that Sony passed on a Days Gone sequel and showed more faith in other IP over his and Bend's zombikerpocalypse.

Via Eurogamer and originally USA Today, Ross laments the decision by Sony to not allow him or the studio to expand on their long-gestating open-world game, seemingly admitting the first attempt wasn't all it could be and that a sequel would definitely allow them explore new and better ways to build on the Days Gone universe.

"We have to be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run," Ross said to USA Today. "So you create the minimum viable entry and then hope you get to build the second one. Because you're not arguing over the foundations, you're arguing over the epic new ideas that you're gonna be putting into it.

"We would have kept the heavy, strong narrative. We would have kept the bike, obviously. And I think we would have expanded the tone a little bit in a more technical direction, kind of like, "alright, now we have all this Nero tech, what can we do with it?" he continued. "The tone would have expanded one ring outward towards some of the new reality. I think this would have been a little bit more -- I don't want to say Avengers, but something where the player had resources, he had some sort of the remnants of whatever the government had."

The problem with his first reasoning is that Days Gone -- the so-referenced "minimum viable entry" took seven-odd years to make. That's a lot of gestation from an investment perspective for a "minimum" outlay. The second issue here is there's a key element of sour grapes coupled alongside some very sobering hindsight.

"I would add more systems," Ross said of how the experience would be expanded in a Days Gone sequel. "Systems are very simple. And if they're simple, they can be elegant and very rich for the player. I knew adding one or two more layers to the systemic elements of it would have been something that we could have wrapped our heads around, it would have led to a ton of richness for the players and a ton of unique open-world moments and responses that we haven't seen before. Let's sink our teeth into this and do something even more epic."

Ross' recent tirade is a fascinating one, seeing as he's no longer with Bend or affiliated with Sony. He recently appeared on a David Jaffe YouTube livestream, which is a great choice of co-anger and anti-industry sentiment. (Jaffe is a well-known voice of frustration that often hilariously mimics those of Kratos, the God of War he created.)

The stream itself is over four hours long, but within it he talks about a failed pitch to reboot Insomniac's Resistance: Fall of Man IP and the many issues Sony and various press saw with Days Gone, but that he either had an answer for, or just didn't agree with at all. (Totally fine, by the way.)

The most interesting thing, however, is his apparent beef with Ghost of Tsushima and even Death Stranding, and how those games basically stole all of Days Gone's spotlight, Tweeting this beauty after Sony dropped a bit of Ghost sales data on the socials.

At the time I left Sony, Days Gone had been out for a year and a half (and a month), and sold over 8 million copies. It's since gone on to sell more, and then a million+ on Steam. Local studio management always made us feel like it was a big disappointment. #daysgone #PlayStation https://t.co/KMZr2pGe9r

— Jeff Ross (@JakeRocket) January 5, 2022

A Jeff Ross-less Bend is currently hard at work on an entirely new IP, according to multiple sources.