State of Decay 3 is currently in development by Undead Labs, which were acquired by Microsoft back in 2018. While State of Decay has always been a Microsoft console exclusive, Undead Labs hasn’t been a first-party Microsoft publisher until a few years ago, which means this time around it has some serious money behind it.
That doesn’t mean previous iterations of State of Decay have been lacking, those two games were very well-made for the budget that they were made on. But it does mean that State of Decay 3 could really make use of that Microsoft money that it has access to and become the premiere sandbox survival game, a genre that’s filling up more and more by the second.
Bigger doesn’t always mean better, but State of Decay‘s open worlds have never been very big, either because that wasn’t the intention with those worlds, or because of budget restrictions. They’ve always been serviceable: each game has always included large enough horror open worlds, but they’ve always seemed a little bit lifeless. Not in the undead kind of way, either; the worlds never really evokes any semblance of a living world. It feels like the characters are existing in a video game world, which isn’t necessarily the right environment for a game with some simulator-ish mechanics about surviving the zombie apocalypse.
Many buildings, especially houses, have the exact same layouts, making rummaging through looking for loot much less interesting than it could be. Even the bigger buildings, ones that do have unique layouts, struggle to necessarily seem authentic. They were likely designed to be easy for the player to thoroughly explore, but not in a way that is cohesive.
That doesn’t mean the open world needs to be convoluted or complicated; it simply needs to be a little more detailed. Days Gone is a great example of this, and that’s a game that didn’t have a comparatively massive budget. Days Gone created an open world that’s worth revisiting. It felt like exploring a world that people had abandoned in the best possible way, and if State of Decay is going to show off its new budget, it’s going to have to do something similar.
An issue that’s plagued State of Decay in the past is some occasionally questionable AI. While zombies can be a little forgiven in this instance because they are, after all, mostly-mindless flesh-seeking missiles, other NPCs make the problem a little more noticeable. While AI companions don’t do too many bizarre things, enemy NPCs will sometimes run in tight circles for no discernable reason, have problems with terrain, or otherwise do something that makes it very clear that they have no idea what to do.
State of Decay 3 should have the resources from Microsoft to really push the AI of both the zombies and the human NPCs to something special. Zombies could have some really cool features, reacting more subtly to the player before the zombie necessarily knows about them, perhaps. The player makes a small noise, and instead of rushing at the player as soon as the zombie hears the faintest rustle, it could meander over here, slowly, to investigate. Little things like that would make the zombies feel more like creatures and less like obstacles.
Other human NPCs could have some different behavior, too. Instead of wandering around and either shooting/ignoring the player depending on their ‘friendly’ setting, maybe some of them could stalk the player for a while, unbeknownst to the player. They could make note of what they’ve seen the player take, who they’ve seen the player attack, and so on, all factoring into how the NPC decides to deal with the player. This would all make the characters in the game seem real, instead of moving resources that the player can take advantage of, or else a zombie with a gun.
State of Decay 3 is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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