State Of Decay's Remastered Year One Edition Released
Intended for newcomers
I realise it's somewhat passé to compare a game to Dark Souls but look, State of Decay [official site] really is reminding me of Dark Souls. No, no, this is nothing to do with difficulty or death or mystery or structure: it's about revamp-o-rereleases.
Like Dark Souls II's Scholar of the First Sin, State of Decay's Year One Survival Edition is the base game and its DLC expanded and touched up a little for the new generation of consoles. Like SotFS, it comes to PC as a separate release rather than an upgrade. And like SotFS, it seems like a fine jumping-on point for new players but perhaps not worth buying again if you had the original.
State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition launched on Steam at the price of £22.99. It includes State of Decay plus its DLC expansions Breakdown and Lifeline, all tarted up a little with 1080p support, better lighting, textures and animation, tweaked combat, a few extra missions, weapons and vehicles, and other odds and ends. Ayup, that'll probably make it the definitive version of State of Decay.
Whether it's worth buying if you already played the original is another question. Undead Labs offer a 33% discount to owners of SoD's Steam version, but are quite clear that this edition is intended for newcomers. Undead Labs community wrangler Sanya Weathers explains in a forum post:
"YOSE came into existence because our publisher wanted to bring the game to a brand new audience on their fancy new console. That's... pretty much it, right there. Remember, we were a brand new studio when we dreamed up SOD, and the only way the game got made at all was that we sold the IP to the publisher. They own it, and this was something they wanted to do ...
"YOSE has as much new content as it does (and the biggest discount we could negotiate) because we knew we'd have some repeat buyers and we wanted to show those players as much appreciation as possible. But see above - the intended audience was _new_ players. We appreciate, and are tremendously grateful for, any player who wants to buy the upgraded version. (It's people like you that gave us the option of even HAVING the unannounced project, if you know what I mean.) But we do not, and never did, expect it.
"Is it worth your twenty dollars? (It's 30 for new people, 20 for returning people, in US dollars.) I don't know. I'm not you."
Here's the Xbox One version's launch trailer:
