State of Decay 2 Interview

A number of high-ranking developers from Undead Labs, the studio responsible for the State of Decay series of zombie survival action-RPGs, recently had a chat with Polygon that focused on State of Decay 2’s robust and varied post-launch content and the team’s future plans for the title. An excerpt:

There was another thing that fans wanted, and that request would be much harder to fulfill. Fans of the first State of Decay wanted the sequel to return to its roots. Enter Heartland, an expansion that takes place in State of Decay’s original setting, Trumbull Valley.

“A lot of people were asking for focused narrative, and that’s what Heartland was really hoping to achieve,” said Richards. Both systems have been well received by different parts of the player base, and they both have different strengths and weaknesses. The team had to build new infrastructure in order to support Heartland’s predetermined characters, and the randomization system was put back on the shelf in favor of establishing stories for named characters in the world.

“The data structure that we created to make sure everything stayed consistent meant that we couldn’t just slap a name onto a character,” said Card. “That name had to be tied into a cultural background, which tied into the character model, which tied into their outfit tag, etc. We had to create an elaborate set of data for each character to fill in all those blanks and make sure the right name ended up hovering over the right face.”