Five years on from the original teaser trailer for State of Decay 3, we got some official news about the game’s alpha testing phase. Undead Labs has been quiet ever since that first reveal trailer, and the community has been waiting for even a shred of information since then. However, it turns out there’s a reason for the radio silence.
When you’re affiliated with the likes of Microsoft, some things are bound to be out of your control. Xbox sometimes has a say in things like announcing a game or marketing, and it seems that’s what may have happened with Undead Labs and State of Decay 3. According to studio head Philip Holt, the game practically didn’t exist when the announcement trailer was released.
Also, There Will be No Zombie Deer
“So that trailer – there really wasn’t a game or game team when we were working on that trailer, like, it was so early,” said Holt in an interview with Sunny Games (via GamesRadar). He added that the studio wasn’t even fully focused on the game, and that “there was four or five people” working on it back then.
“You know, the game was in a Word document,” he revealed. “It was really the very beginning of [the] software. The trailer was done by Blur, it was all pre-rendered, it represented, I think, a concept – our thoughts at the time of what might be cool to explore in State of Decay 3. And as we’ve had a chance to build a team and get going on the game, some of those elements I think are gonna persist in the game that we deliver and some of those things are just, like, we’re not doing zombie animals.”
The zombie deer was one of the highlights of the trailers, making fans believe that even the wildlife in the next game would be something to worry about. However, it seems that a lot has changed since then, and the zombie deer has been retconned. In fact, Holt made sure to drive home the point, saying, “No zombie deer. No zombie deer. No zombie deer.”
As for what will feature in the game, we’ll just have to wait for the alpha testing phase. But, even then, things could still change for the final version.
- ESRB
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m
- Developer(s)
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Undead Labs
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
