State of Decay 3 – the reportedly troubled new entry in developer Undead Labs’ zombie survival series – has resurfaced after four years, in the form of a moody cinematic trailer.
State of Decay 3 was initially announced during Microsoft’s 2020 Xbox showcase. Two years later, with the game still nowhere to be seen, reports began circulating alleging sexism and mismanagement at Undead Labs, with staff claiming the game had been announced too early, and at a time the studio “didn’t even know what it was”.
Finally, though, State of Decay 3 has resurfaced – appropriately enough during Microsoft’s latest Xbox Games Showcase – albeit with not a second of gameplay in sight. Instead, Undead Labs has opted to reintroduce State of Decay 3 with an atmospheric cinematic trailer focusing on the plight of some of the characters central to its story.
To accompany the trailer, studio head Philip Holt teased some of the ideas driving State of Decay 3’s development over on Xbox Wire. “The first thing that I hope people pick up [from the trailer] is that there’s four player characters we’re highlighting,” he explained, “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.”
Undead Labs has apparently had help from Obsidian Entertainment, Gears developer The Coalition, Blind Squirrel Entertainment, and Wushu Studios to get State of Decay 3 to this point, and the studio says it wants to create an experience heavily emphasising more reactive co-op combat, more visceral zombie dismemberment, and more realistic enemy reactions, among other things.
That’s not a lot of information to go on admittedly, and there’s still no word on an arrival date, but when State of Decay 3 does eventually shows up it will – like all Microsoft first-party titles – be a day one Game Pass release.
