Previous State of Decay games have been fairly straightforward zombie survival games that have never been impressive in the technical department, nor cutscenes. But shortly after the release of State of Decay 2, Undead Labs was acquired by Microsoft.
When State of Decay 3 was announced about 3 years ago, we saw a stunning looking cinematic CGI trailer, and it seemed like this type of presentation and storytelling was what we should expect from the new game. Twitter users Idle Sloth Note, senior film artist Alan Diekfuss revealed on LinkedIn, “In-Game Cutscenes” is something he’s currently working on for the game.
Idle Sloth also pointed out that Simon Sherr, director of animation and animation technology, wrote on LinkedIn:
“Developing a new Microsoft Studio under Undead Labs in Orlando, FL, directing animation and animation tech for Microsoft XGS Undead Labs’ “State of Decay 3” in UE5, and facilitating cross-studio animation tech collaboration and animation for XGS technology plan.
Basically, it seems like we should expect Undead Labs to raise the bar for State of Decay 3 when it comes to in-game cinematics and animations. Unfortunately, we still don’t know when the game is expected to release, but considering it’s coming out in 2020, hopefully it won’t be too far away.