State of Decay 3’s original trailer wasn’t even a game yet, admits Undead Labs: “The game was in a Word document”
Undead Labs reflects on the early reveal and what has changed since.
It has been almost six years since Undead Labs unveiled State of Decay 3 as one of several titles coming to the Xbox Series X|S. Since then, we hadn’t heard much about it—until a few days ago, when it was revealed that the alpha test for Undead Labs’ game would begin in May of this year.
The teaser released back then showed us a desolate, snow-covered landscape and a zombie deer—enough to pique our interest in this new installment of the franchise. But in a recent interview with Sunny Games, studio head Philip Holt noted that the trailer was essentially for a game that didn’t even exist yet.
“So that trailer, there really wasn’t a game or game team when we were working on that trailer, like, it was so early,” Holt said. “You know, the game was in a Word document,” he said, adding that the core development team was less than a dozen people at the time. 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.”
A Step Forward for State of Decay 3
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After so many years of silence, it’s good to hear news again about a franchise that, while not the most successful in Xbox history, has remained steady since its launch on Xbox 360 in 2013 and its first sequel in 2018 on Xbox One. Although we haven’t heard anything about the game yet—not even an official release date—we can hope that this alpha test in May will allow us to perhaps see something during the already-announced Xbox Games Showcase in June of this year.
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