Dead State Design Update

DoubleBear’s Brian Mitsoda fills us in on the game’s interesting “lore” system in yet another design update over on the official Dead State forums. I really dig this sort of thing:

What I mean by (lore) is the data you can find in the game that reveals fragments of the zombie outbreak pulled from emails, message boards, browser caches, and text that can be found on phones, hard drives, and other pieces of scavenged technology. These are news transcripts, personal stories, leaked memos, and scraps of info that gradually reveal the bigger picture of how the zombie problem spread and what was done to combat it. These range from self-contained data fragments to 10-part sets. Each perspective gives a better understanding of how the world fell apart, as it would have been recorded by individuals or organizations. It’s a collection of observations and interpretations – if you’re looking for some grand conspiracy to be revealed, you’re going to be disappointed.

Every time you find a new data object and bring it back, it will be uploaded to a working computer in the shelter. From the computer, you’ll have a chance to select fragments and decrypt them to make them readable. Currently, the data decryption process involves receiving a partially recovered password and using the leftover letters to guess the password. Here’s an example of an easy one:

GR_ _ T (A,E)

If you typed in (Great) for the data fragment, you’d unlock it, making it readable. Data is organized by set (message board posts, emails from one individual, blog post set, for example), so it is auto-arranged as you find more of it. Once you’ve decrypted data, you can read it as many times as you want. To collect all the data in a set or in general, you’ll need to find those data objects out in the world. But if you do complete this optional task, you can gain some extra skill points for your trouble, though decrypting info and collecting data is totally optional in the game and not necessary for any quests or the critical path.

The data collection system exists simply for the people who want to know more about how an event like the zombie apocalypse might affect the world. It’s very similar to (lore) in other RPGs. Want to find out what happened to major cities? Want to try to track the spread of the zombie outbreak and attempts at containment? Have an interest in reading people’s personal correspondence? If you answered (yes) to all of those, you’ll definitely want to collect and decrypt data in Dead State. If you’re a fan of the writing in the game, you’ll be elated to know that there’s a lot of story to find.