State of Decay 2 Interview
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Jeff Strain, the CEO of Undead Labs talked to GameSpot about the upcoming zombie apocalypse-themed sequel for Xbox One and Windows 10, State of Decay 2. The game also may or may not be released on Microsoft's next console, Project Scorpio, but the news on that will be revealed at E3, later this year. What this interview does talk about are the lessons taken from the first State of Decay, the challenges of balancing four-player co-op, the canceled State of Decay MMORPG, and more. An excerpt:
GameSpot: Are there any particular lessons that you took away from the first State of Decay that you were looking to improve upon?
Jeff Strain: Oh yeah... When we started working on State of Decay 2, we sat down and put everything into three buckets. We had [to think about] what are things that work well the players loved that we're gonna double down on, what are things that we want to innovate on and bring new things to it, and then what are things that didn't work well that we either need to completely overhaul or ax? Of those, 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.
Have there been any games that have come out since State of Decay that you've looked to for inspiration for this one?
You know, inspiration for us is always the really well done, big, open-world games. Red Dead Redemption, the GTAs--those games do a phenomenal job of making you feel like you're in a world that's believable and real. Beyond that, we've actually been a little bit surprised that this genre we've built, this survival fantasy genre, is still very much home for State of Decay. There's no other games that really bring that blend of role playing elements, third-person action, and the simulated world and community-based character development. Lots of inspiration, yes, but we're also very happy that we still feel like the State of Decay experience is fairly unique within the industry.
