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We finally got a decent look at the future of State of Decay with a gameplay trailer during the Xbox showcase. As many fans and I hoped, State of Decay 3 will feature more chaos, more zombies, and a lot more carnage in our favorite co-op survival game.
There’s also a couple of surprises I didn’t quite expect to see.
First, the release date. Given how long it's been since State of Decay 3 was first announced, each and every showcase has left fans wondering when the game would be out. After another trailer last summer and a gameplay testing sign-up earlier this year, we were finally told that 2027 will be the date.
Even if State of Decay 3 could make late 2026, given how packed the holidays are with the release of GTA VI, choosing to release in 2027 with more time to polish makes sense. It seems to be a route a lot of development teams are making this fall.
What’s pushing that date a little bit more might be the team's latest platform they’ll be developing for: PlayStation 5.
Exclusivity will be a case-by-case basis
In the development blog, they talk about everything except why State of Decay will no longer be exclusive to Xbox. It seems, as many guessed after Asha Sharma’s interview on Bloomberg Tech, that games coming will be made exclusive on a game-by-game basis, with State of Decay 3 being one of those non-exclusive games.
Perhaps it's the whole cooperative aspect, where players and communities come together to survive the wastelands of post-apocalypse zombie hordes. Online community-style games may remain across all platforms, but then why does a game like Gears of War: E-Day stay exclusive? Who knows!
More answers about State of Decay 3
Pointing once more to the Xbox Wire post about State of Decay 3, we get a lot of questions answered about the upcoming title.
First, weapons will come with variations:
“So, you can see in the trailer, you’ve got a machete that’s now got a serrated blade on it. Like the golf club example, all of the machetes you can get from a hardware store are shattered. Now you can find altered weapons in the world that embody this maker culture concept. Some machetes are homemade with a serrated edge, others have rebar welded on the back of the blade, some have both! One of my favorite early concepts was the slicing weapon, but you might think, “Boy would I like a little more weight for better dismemberment.”
Undead Labs is also introducing Plague Nests, a new form of high-risk reward looting for players to take part in:
“They represent some of the most dangerous areas, but because they’ve been dangerous for so long, haven’t been looted nearly as much as other locations. So, it’s got some of the best loot, but at a very high risk.”
No two Plague Nests will be the same as the last, or at least, in practice: “Nests also have multiple ways they behave and grow. We call them personas, where every time you roll one, it might take on a different form, a different behavior set, a different way that it comes at you. This is going to keep things fresh not only within the play session, but save to save — no two saves are ever going to play the same.”
State of Decay 3 will also come with a massive world map that will be four times larger than the previous State of Decay 2 play space. As more worlds become available post-launch, expect each map to be massively replayable given the size.
Not to mention, one of my favorite features from Grounded will be coming to State of Decay in the form of shared worlds. Players will each have access to a game’s save, whether one person is online or not. You won’t need the host online at all times!
Instead, if someone opens the game, they’ll begin hosting a session with the latest save, where others can join in dynamically. If the host leaves, the game host switches, and if they all leave, the latest save is updated, and any one person in that save can start it up at any time.
Make sure to come back as we unravel more about State of Decay 3 over the coming days! State of Decay 3 will launch in 2027 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.
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