Undead Labs’ open world zombie sandbox title State of Decay 2 will be huge. In a recent blog post, the developer announced that the game would have three maps at launch and each would be “roughly the size of the original.”
The maps themselves will also be quite varied. “You should expect to see slightly different environments, definitely different landmarks and locations, different layouts lending themselves to different strategies, unique home sites, and even different mission types.” This is being done to prevent a sense of deja vu among players along with expanding the overall world.
“Why’d we do it that way? Well, primarily, because it makes the game more fun. It really feels like you’re moving from one small town to another, and creates a tremendous sense of immersion. And perhaps counter-intuitively, it makes the world feel even bigger.
“You know how on one map (even one three times the size as the original game’s) the longer you play, the more you start feeling deju vu with every mission?. That’s less of an issue with separate maps. And see above about strategies and missions. Oh, and one more detail – the multiple map set up makes it easy to expand the world down the line, if you know what I mean.”
Undead Labs is also working on allowing players to transfer all their survivors and items from one area to others, with a refund to players when shifting buildings. These features aren’t guaranteed though.
“We’ll have all the vehicles parked in our home site parking spaces, along with whatever’s stored in the trunks. We’re also going to get at least a partial refund on what we sunk into building our facilities. That’s the intention, anyway. As always, specifics may change a bit as we get deeper into testing…”
State of Decay 2 will be heading to Xbox One and Windows 10 with release date info coming at E3 2017. Stay tuned for more details.
