State of Decay 3 uses Unreal Engine 5 with help from The Coalition

State of Decay and its sequel State of Decay 2 were both great games that got massive support from the developers, and also performed very well commercially. One area where they didn't impress though was graphics.

Even though State of Decay 2 got a graphical upgrade later on, it still wasn't pushing any limits technically. But after the release of the game in 2018, Microsoft bought the studio and in 2020 they announced State of Decay 3. Even though it only was CGI, it showed a completely different ambition in presentation and graphics.

Unfortunately, there has been troubled development at the studio, which has been accused of having a toxic work environment and key people leaving the studio, something that has got Microsoft involved in improving the situation. And hopefully, things are now moving in the right direction.

In Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb's latest podcast, the Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty talked about the game and revealed it is using the game engine Unreal Engine 5, which should make it possible to deliver something really special, and that Undead Labs is getting help from The Coalition. This is the studio making the Gears of War series, and they definitely know a thing or two about both Unreal Engine and graphics in general:

"So, you mentioned Undead Labs, they're working with The Coalition up in Vancouver, our Gears of War studio, using some of the technology around Unreal 5 and some of the stuff that's been in Gears of War before to bring that into State of Decay."

Will still don't even have a release year for State of Decay 3, but we probably shouldn't expect it to be released before 2024 at the very earliest.

Thanks Pure Xbox