Hacked By Ahmed 01 Nerd News & Needs
Undead Labs’ State of Decay hit fans right in the sweet spot that’s comprised of horror, zombie, and survival elements! Now, the company’s CEO Jeff Strain has finally revealed some details of the highly anticipated State of Decay 2 game that was announced last summer. As huge fans of the first game, we were stoked to learn a little more about the sequel!
Strain opened up to GameSpot while at PAX East in Boston and you can get the full interview from them here. For now, we’re pleased to share a several of the highlights. First off, expect a larger world than the first. I thought the first world was huge but it looks like we’re getting a much, much larger world to explore, scavenge and fight in this time around. Strain says that fans often said one of the things they love was the world the game was set in, but that they also wanted it to be bigger and more polished. How big wasn’t specified (for now) but the dev team for this game versus the first is “about four times as large.”
Along with the scope of the open world, he discussed that State of Decay 2 will introduce a four player co-op mode as well. Will more friends make for harder enemy AI? Not so says the CEO. He states that the concept of finite stamina, resources, etc. are still in the core nature of the game. That means mistakes – especially those that are very costly – can still be made by the player(s) so there’s really not a need to up the zombie density for more players. “It just all balances out in the end.” As for an adversarial multiplayer mode, the answer was no. “As far as the multiplayer component, it is a very joyful cooperative multiplayer” says Strain. You can playfully grief each other but no headshots or anything like that. He says that there great games out there for gamers looking for that kind of PVP experience. It’s just not what State of Decay is about though.
One last bit of information that was discussed by the Undead Labs CEO was the decision to include or leave out the offline progression system from the first game.
The offline progression system was by far the most…the feature that players were most ready to see go, because the thing about State of Decay is, it’s permanent. The way that works is we have a contract with players, and that contract is: “If you die, it’s your fault.” It’s not the game throwing some random thing at you. You have all the tools at your disposal to see the threat, to make your own decisions, and if you die, we want you coming away from it thinking, “Ah, if only I’d done X or Y!” Or, “Here’s where I made the mistake or stayed out too long.” The offline progression system kind of broke that, because that stuff could happen while you were logged out of the game. It violated the contract, and it didn’t work well. That was probably the biggest area that we had to address.
State of Decay 2 is expected to drop sometime this year on Xbox One and PC.
