[Grisham]

It's been a while since we heard anything about State of Decay 3, the third installment in Undead Labs' open world survival horror game series. Speaking on Xbox's Major Nelson podcast, however, Xbox Game Studios Head Matt Booty revealed some tidbits about the game.

We have a structure in place, we just call them summits, where we get subject matter experts together for one or two days. We've had animation summits, UI summits, Unreal Engine summits, physics summits, etc. I think we did in the last year close to 25 of these. That's our main mechanism for teams to share technology back and forth.

You mentioned Undead Labs, they're working with The Coalition up in Vancouver, our Gears of War studio, using some of the technology around Unreal Engine 5 and some of the stuff that's been in Gears of War before to bring that into State of Decay 3.

Last week before last, we spent all day at Undead Labs in Seattle, which was great, getting the update on State of Decay 3, which has really got some cool stuff, in addition to the fact that State of Decay 2 just continues to grow its user base. It's kind of this stealth thing that just keeps growing, and it was cool to get an update. I think we hit eleven million lifetime players on State of Decay 2 now, which is pretty cool. All of that, the things they are doing there, are really the testbed, the proving grounds, for all the stuff that's going in State of Decay 3

State of Decay 3 was formally announced over two years ago. At that time, developer Undead Labs said the game was still early in pre-production. However, five months ago, a report suggested that there were development troubles keeping the game still in pre-production, alongside issues of sexism.

In the interview with Major Nelson, Booty also pointed to inXile's next project as something very exciting that's coming up. He even said Phil Spencer got to play the game for a while during a recent visit. Rumors point to inXile's next game being a Steampunk-themed RPG led by former Arcanum developers.

State of Decay 3 Is Being Made with Unreal Engine 5 and Help from Gears of War Devs

Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty shared some new tidbits of information about State of Decay 3, the upcoming open world game by Undead Labs.

wccftech.com

 

[Vow]

I actually really like SoD. The potential this has to be good is huge. If they minimise the jank and bugs, remove the multiplayer tether and add the ability for players on a map to actually set up separate enclaves and rival each other it would be cool.

Imagine having your own group that you could swap characters with and you have a leader character that has to pull other people away from another player's group by succeeding. There could be some people who would leave if there was a bloodbath or whatever so you wouldn't just be able to murder your way to victory only. Rival sessions could only be played if all original players are online, limit it to four or something.

 

[regawdless]

If they'll be able to make it look great and lessen the jank, I'd be seriously interested here!

 

[Grinchy]

I could imagine a zombie game with this type of gameplay loop being fun, but nothing really about SOD2 stood out to me. It was honestly annoying to play IMO. And even when it all worked just fine, what was left was a pretty mediocre 3rd person shooter.

 

[Vow]

I could imagine a zombie game with this type of gameplay loop being fun, but nothing really about SOD2 stood out to me. It was honestly annoying to play IMO. And even when it all worked just fine, what was left was a pretty mediocre 3rd person shooter.

Played multiplayer with family, was fun up until the moment where we realised everyone sees different loot and is tethered. Became tedious as there was no splitting up, someone would get bored and fuck off on their own leading to repeated conversations like this:

Impatient nephew: [fucks off]
Me: Got some loot for you here man. Where are you.
IN: Killing zombies down the road.
Me: Ah I found an AR in my loot.
IN: Really ok coming.
IN: [Loots his loot] ah it's a fucking snack. Fuck this game.

 

[Grinchy]

Wow I didn't remember the loot being different between people. I played online with someone I know and we never realized that.

 

[Pr0cs]

I really wanted to enjoy the original titles but it just felt so messy. I love survival zombie games but State of Decay just felt so 'gamey' and random.

 

[Musky_Cheese]

I enjoyed SoD2. But the difficulty was weird. I think I started on normal and it was super easy. Just run everything over.

Went up a difficulty and the cars were glass.

And all the survivors were needy as fuck.