Days Gone would have been much better if everything before Iron Mike's camp was heavily edited, removed or arranged to become new content after ending the main story. The disconnection between that endless first act, barely a bloated tutorial, and all coming next is so big and apparent, that by the time its narrative gets going, there's not a single reference in the script, never, to those two starting camps and whatever you did there, both as a player and the character.
What's essential from all those hours is, simply, that your partner is hurt and you can't go back to IM for reasons. Except that, after going through who knows how many filler/introductory missions, you end up going there anyway. It's a big part of the story that could have been rewritten differently and do a favor to the overall flow of the game.