State of Decay 3 from Undead Labs was revealed as part of the Xbox Game Showcase this past weekend. Like its predecessors, State of Decay 3 once again will task players with surviving and building up a small community in the midst of a zombie outbreak.
As part of their announcement interview, Undead Labs does say something rather interesting. Fans have been wanting for the State of Decay co-op experience to be more of a persistent shared experience. As it stands, State of Decay co-op has one person host with the partner basically being a "guest" in the host's world. The co-op partner would be unable to make improvements or meaningful choices in the host's world. Plus, any game progress made would only apply to the host's world, which made for a rather lacking co-op experience.
Something that has always worked well for State of Decay is its open world, effectively allowing you to create any narrative for your party that you’d like to come up with. But, building on the originals, State of Decay 3 will feature a much larger, truly shared open world, allowing Undead Labs to bring emotional weight into that aspect of the game, with more context in how they want to be telling stories.
Undead Labs offers some more information on how co-op will work in State of Decay 3, which all but confirms that what fans have wanted for years is finally becoming a reality in this sequel. They also say that there will be four-player co-op for State of Decay 3.
“The first thing that I hope people pick up [from the trailer] is that there’s four player characters we’re highlighting — three of them start in different places in the world — so we’re implying this idea of a shared world experience, not just a ride-along, and that the boundaries in which you can go off independently are going to be much, much greater than they were in State of Decay 2,” explains Studio Head and Head of Product Philip Holt.
Undead Labs has been collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment on the shared world feature, enabling more flexible online co-op. The acclaimed Grounded released with Undead Labs’ shared save technology and State of Decay 3 will build on that to deliver a truly open co-op world owned by multiple players.
Undead Labs has been collaborating with Obsidian Entertainment on the shared world feature, enabling more flexible online co-op. The acclaimed Grounded released with Undead Labs’ shared save technology and State of Decay 3 will build on that to deliver a truly open co-op world owned by multiple players.
There will also be a greater focus on crafting gear in State of Decay 3.
Speaking of ingredients, you can also expect to see survivors that have become quite adept at… well… not getting eaten, by surviving several years into the apocalypse. This, in turn, has evolved into a resourceful era where clothing, supplies, and weapons have been modified to accommodate their needs — expect weapons to have mismatched barrels with heavily modified magazines, or clothing reinforced with armor plates. They’ve “leveled up” in this maker culture to be more eclectic because the world of State of Decay 3 has been “picked over” by now, and finding components to modify their existing weapons will be much more likely than looting a wholly formed one that’s ready to go.
This also means that players will be able to customize their play experience to a greater depth than they have in the past. Undead Labs believes that investing time to craft “your” crossbow vs finding a few generic crossbow types is going to be a lot more fun and will help reinforce State of Decay 3’s unique setting.
This also means that players will be able to customize their play experience to a greater depth than they have in the past. Undead Labs believes that investing time to craft “your” crossbow vs finding a few generic crossbow types is going to be a lot more fun and will help reinforce State of Decay 3’s unique setting.
