Incoming Class: Can 'State of Decay 2' Elevate the Original?

Welcome to the Waypoint High School Class of 2016 Yearbook. We're giving out senior superlatives to our favorite games, digging into the year's biggest storiesvia extracurriculars, and following our favorite characters through their adventures together in fanfic. See you in 2017! 

A quick peak at the upcoming releases calendar, and it's clear that 2017 will be a year filled with games I want to play: Valkyria Revolution, Gravity Rush 2, Yakuza 0, Nioh, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, Star Trek: Bridge Crew. And all of that is just between now and the end of the winter. Then there's Persona 5 and Battletech and Crackdown 3 and, likely, dozens of other great, independent games that wouldn't show up on a "games of 2017" Wikipedia page.

And yet, the game that I'm most eager to play in 2017 is State of Decay 2. I want to play it so much that in the first draft of this piece, that last sentence was "the game I'm most eager to play in State of Decay 2 is State of Decay 2." It's fully, totally wormed inside my head. It's not even just that I'm excited to play it, I'm anxious about it. I'm so curious to see how they change what worked so well about the first game.

When developer Undead Labs first released the first State of Decay in 2013, it was sort of a janky, buggy mess. But it also did something that made me look past all of the rough edges. In State of Decay, you play as a group of survivors in America's Pacific Northwest, trying to, well, survive a zombie apocalypse. Nothing new about this premise, except for that one key phrase: "a group of survivors."

In most games, you'd be placed in the role of the leader of the survivors, or as its newest member, or some sort of badass zombie killing expert. But in State of Decay you really play as the entire community. You play as Bill, used car salesman and failed collegiate athlete. Janice, the waitress at the diner in town, who has a secret love of archery. Miguel, a rookie cop. Jennifer, a tourist who was in the area to go camping.

Above: State of Decay 2 Debut Trailer courtesy of Microsoft

See, in State of Decay, you can take control of each member of your slowly growing community of survivors. Though some of them are hand crafted for the sake of the game's story, most of them are made procedurally, a collection of likes, dislikes, skills, flaws, and complicated histories.

If that sounds like one of those things that's "interesting on paper," then I'm underselling it. It's the coolest shit. Because here's how it plays out: Maybe you have like eight recruits. A couple of them might be your stand out characters: Maybe a hunter and an ex-soldier, someone with skills that would show up in another, competing post-apocalyptic zombie game. Others might have some obviously great abilities for you to use back at your home base—electricians or chefs, also obvious boons.

But a few of them, without fail, well, they'll just seem useless: Bill has incredible beer pong skills… Great. Thanks, Bill. Janice is a waitress with the "Folksy Charm" and "Drummer" traits… but those don't seem al that useful when all you have is a single can of beans to eat and zombies are knocking at the door.

But because characters get sick, get injured, get lost… At some point, Bill and Janice are going to have to leave HQ and go out into the world. And at that point, one of two things is going to happen.

Either you'll be proven right: Bill's "Bro" trait  istotally useless… or you'll be surprised by how useful these ordinary folks are. After all, Janice was a waitress—that means she knows how to move quickly and quietly, making her  great at scavenging for that second can of beans you need.

Eventually, you'll get some of these procedurally generated characters who really feel like people—their skills will have improved and they'll have earned special traits from finishing certain missions. More than that, they'll have made friends and you'll have started really personifying them. There were characters who, in my head, had specific shovels and crowbars they liked to use.

State of Decay made every character feel unique, and every death a real loss. When Bill got distracted during his patrol, zombies didn't just break in to kill my best scavenger. They killed Janice.

Above: My favorite trailer for the original State of Decay emphasizes' the slow, peaceful, base building more than the tense action. Trailer courtesy of Undead Labs

It's for this reason that I'm so anxious about State of Decay 2. When the first SoD was in development, the biggest community request was multiplayer, and State of Decay 2 will be launching with four player co-op. Similar to games like Fable 2 and 3, this will be "drop in" co-op, where you join up with your friend's ongoing settlement but keep your own settlement at home.

And as excited as I am to play with friends, I'm curious if this will erase some of the tension of the original—part of what made it so good was that digital AI character Bill isn't as reliable at scavenging as a real player would be.

Still, when I think about what's ahead of us in  2017, I get excited about the notion of playing as a community again. What I want even more than multiplayer is further evolution of the State of Decay's interpersonal and community mechanics. It was a game with lots of rough edges, but was also the first time I felt like a zombie game really understood the genre. In comics, books, movies, and TV shows, the best zombie stories aren't about buds killing zombies together, they're about  learning how to live with other people. State of Decay gets that. I hope State of Decay 2 does too.