State of Decay 3 has been one of many Xbox games that seemingly have had no indication of it ever coming out until an alpha test was announced to be upcoming. You can sign up for that here. Our first look was in 2020, with the below announcement trailer that featured a woman in a snowy wilderness encountering a zombified deer. All these years later, and we finally know that that trailer was shown before the game even really started being made.
State of Decay 3 Announcement Trailer was Fake
Speaking in an interview with YouTuber Sunny Games, Undead Labs head Philip Holt revealed that at the time of that State of Decay 3 trailer, only about four or five people were working on the game, and it was in a Word document.
Starting at the 9-minute mark in that video, Holt says that the trailer was made by Blur and was essentially “a concept, our thoughts at the time of what might be cool to explore in State of Decay 3.” He says that some of the elements from that trailer could be in the final game, but zombie animals is definitely not one of them.
Stop Pushing Games That Don’t Exist Yet
In 2022, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach published an article detailing the state of Undead Labs at that time, which also included details that Xbox higher ups were pushing for studios to bring reveal trailers that summer to build up hype for the then-upcoming Xbox Series X. When developers saw the trailer, they became concerned since they had no idea what the game was at that point, and zombie animals was seemingly not really on the table.
It seems that every time a studio rushes out a reveal trailer before work is even done on the game, it turns into a net negative in the long run. No matter how State of Decay 3 releases, whenever it does, people will look at the game and that trailer and look at how it was all essentially a lie, or false advertisement. Compare this to Everwild (canceled), The Elder Scrolls VI (may not release until more than a decade since its reveal trailer), and Anthem (poorly received and now shutdown), and these situations never seem to turn out well. In short, stop showing game trailers for games that don’t fully exist yet.
