KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

It's been a long time since I played Dead State (completed ReAnimated one time only at launch), and I overall liked it (probably 6.5/10), but from what I remember it suffered from three cardinal sins:

1) Technical issues. Enemy turns could sometimes take minutes to complete, and that was after multiple patches that (allegedly) reduced the time. For a game as fugly as Dead State there is no excuse for that.

2) Combat/encounter design and itemization were pretty purely linear progressions. No real meaningful decisions to make when equipping characters or deciding combat tactics; there's always a "best" option.

3) No end-game content. I can't remember at what point exactly it happened, but I think it was somewhere around Day 50 (our of 80ish?) that I ran out of content and would just immediately go to bed upon waking up because I had already fully explored the map and there was nothing else to do except wait for the scripted sequences. Just really embarrassingly retarded, and a clear result of either no play-testing or solely play-testing with game journos.

I also remember reading here that the game has a surprising amount of C&C, but is very bad at telegraphing it and as a results players often complain about being rail-roaded. Like I said I only played it once, but I find that interesting if true.

Can confirm all of this. That's why I say this game truly is the posterchild of why you shouldn't give up in hard times, when you've got something with amazing potential going strong. Mitsoda worked on this since 2009 and his worst mistake was what I said, plus the fact that he was using a garbage engine to do all this in, with soaring ambition. I'm extremely impressed by the amount of choice and consequence this game has, and if he had built upon the combat system to be less barebones, given it more content, iron out the bugs, it could have been stellar.

To reiterate this game would be pure incline and it would have been on "Top 10 Most Overrated RPGs" thread right there next to DE and Planescape Torment. That's how much potential it had. Ideas done so shoddily, they sufficed, but couldn't hit that legendary mark.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

incredibly underrated due to how nonlinear it is + how fleshed out all the characters are despite there being such a huge cast

minuses:
combat can get repetitive
the portraits, haha oh wow

 

[OSK]

Dead State has so many rough edges it's hard to recommend, but I loved the hell out of this game. More please.

 

[Old One]

The game would be vastly improved if the zombies would simply walk around instead of standing stationary all the time.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

The game would be vastly improved if the zombies would simply walk around instead of standing stationary all the time.

Could be a mess for pathfinding in that case, especially in regards to stealth.

 

[Old One]

Since they don't ever move, all you have to do is make a noise to lure them into whatever trap you want to set. That's what made it boring for me.

 

[lightbane]

If not said already, it bears repeating:
I hated that update that made zombies auto-detect you from certain range, even when approaching from behind, which means stealth was useless*. Also, I noticed zombies usually ignored nearby enemies to beeline to you, conveniently enough.
Even better, if your MC doesn't specialize in picklocking, you'll notice lots of locked stuff you have no way of opening and, since you have no way of modifying your allies' skills, you could be stuck with no way of opening these things without bashing and making noise, attracting every enemy in the damn map.
The music was also maddeningly repetitive, probably to drive how soul-crushing the situation was.

Some NPCs that you could recruit were also a literal negative, such as one leader of these subfactions that was seemingly programmed to make things hard for you for no fucking reason. The devs probably knew this, as no matter how he disliked you (and he was easy to piss off if you didn't humor him at the expense of everyone else), he never betrayed you, unlike the other potential leaders.
I liked that the military for once wasn't evil or stupid, and you could join them in fact. Shame the endings were shit.
*The update broke the tutorial as it made you approach a zombie from behind that was no longer possible to do without being detected, and also made human enemies instantly spot you across the map due their exaggerated reaction times. Oops.

 

[JarlFrank]

The game would be vastly improved if the zombies would simply walk around instead of standing stationary all the time.

Do you want turns to take 20 minutes instead of 5? Because that's how you'd get that!

 

[Roguey]

The update broke the tutorial as it made you approach a zombie from behind that was no longer possible to do without being detected,

You're supposed to manually enter combat before it detects you to use up some action points to get right behind it.

 

[lightbane]

The update broke the tutorial as it made you approach a zombie from behind that was no longer possible to do without being detected,

You're supposed to manually enter combat before it detects you to use up some action points to get right behind it.

That's not what the tutorial states, as it said you have to get behind the zombie BEFORE activating combat to start at melee range. With the update, enemies auto detect you at certain distance, even while being stealthy, and it's not always clear how many tiles before you're considered too close.

 

[Roguey]

That's not what the tutorial states, as it said you have to get behind the zombie BEFORE activating combat to start at melee range. With the update, enemies auto detect you at certain distance, even while being stealthy, and it's not always clear how many tiles before you're considered too close.

It's been so many years I can't remember, but I don't recall noticing any discrepancy. That's funny if they didn't actually update the tutorial text.

 

[lightbane]

That's not what the tutorial states, as it said you have to get behind the zombie BEFORE activating combat to start at melee range. With the update, enemies auto detect you at certain distance, even while being stealthy, and it's not always clear how many tiles before you're considered too close.

It's been so many years I can't remember, but I don't recall noticing any discrepancy. That's funny if they didn't actually update the tutorial text.

Ditto, it's been years, but I swear I played the tutorial BEFORE the update and immediately noticing that discrepancy later, once I made a new playthrough. IIRC there was a review on Steam that complained about that.

It sounds plausible to me, as one big bug I remember before the "Reanimated" update is that upon becoming zombies, some NPCs absorbed their inventory in a very weird way, so that you have for example a former punk that once wielded a knife with the left hand, but now used a claw attack with such hand and not letting you access said crowbar upon being killed, as it was now part of the character's texture or something. That too was a bug mentioned in a guide somewhere IIRC.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

That's not what the tutorial states, as it said you have to get behind the zombie BEFORE activating combat to start at melee range. With the update, enemies auto detect you at certain distance, even while being stealthy, and it's not always clear how many tiles before you're considered too close.

It's been so many years I can't remember, but I don't recall noticing any discrepancy. That's funny if they didn't actually update the tutorial text.

Ditto, it's been years, but I swear I played the tutorial BEFORE the update and immediately noticing that discrepancy later, once I made a new playthrough. IIRC there was a review on Steam that complained about that.

It sounds plausible to me, as one big bug I remember before the "Reanimated" update is that upon becoming zombies, some NPCs absorbed their inventory in a very weird way, so that you have for example a former punk that once wielded a knife with the left hand, but now used a claw attack with such hand and not letting you access said crowbar upon being killed, as it was now part of the character's texture or something. That too was a bug mentioned in a guide somewhere IIRC.

I've been wondering about that due to my own suspicions recently, gonna check that out next I load it up.

I have this strategy that ties into my personal satisfaction of luring zombies towards looters and watching them have that nice screaming audio when they get overpowered and eaten.

 

[PanteraNera]

I was really excited and hyped for Dead State, especially because of Brian Mitsoda and his writing in VtMB.

I couldn't stand the game, it didn't felt like being the leader, but an errand boy for all sorts of strange folks, who wants some luxury shit for some nonsense like playing games. I do not remember them all to good, but there was the tech nerd, the LARP nerd, a stewardess that refused to do shit because of "trauma" (while other people had to go out risking their lives to get shit done) and the game never gave me a option to handle these folks the way I would like to "get your shit together and help or get kicked out". Also there was some mentally disabled people a mechanic with, autism (?) than some fuss about abortion and uh ... .

Than this supposedly big "shelter events", basically two options: do the smart thing and everyone hates you or do the stupid thing and everyone loves you.

I tried to play the game countless times, as in theory I should really love it, but just couldn't. Maybe I should give it another try

 

[zool]

the game never gave me a option to handle these folks the way I would like to "get your shit together and help or get kicked out".

I remember being really surprised that there was no way to manually kick people out of the shelter, whether because they had fucked up or in case you didn't have enough food / medicine left and needed to reduce the number of NPCs in the shelter.

 

[lightbane]

You could take out that single somewhere with you and shotgun him. Most NPCs had a special line when you did that for what's worth. Nevertheless it's clunky, and I swear your other followers were telepathic as they would assume what happened and reduce happiness accordingly.
I also loled at how NPCs recycled lines for low happiness regardless of how it came to that, so there was that time an ex-Vietnam veteran complained about my tyrannical regime... For the crime of shutting down the lights for a few days to save fuel.

The horror!

There were also trap survivors that literally did little else but to reduce happiness levels. Realistic I guess, but annoying.

 

[JDR13]

Trying this now, and I really want to like it, but boy does it feel clunky. The combat is just not fun in the least. There are some weird design choices too. Like why can doors be bashed open but windows are apparently indestructible and can't be used?

Also, the camera is terrible. When I open a door, I should be able to see into a building before walking into it. A real stealth system would have been good too.

It's a shame because the base managment layer seems like it could be fun, but I'm not sure if this is worth the time investment. Does the game get better as it goes on?

 

[Fargus]

Man, i like Dead State no matter what people say. Best parts of this game were exploration and the character and dialogue writing. Roleplay options are pretty good as well, you can be a dickhead and terrorize your fellow school dwellers but if you are not careful enough you will get shot by wheelchair Mitsoda self insert for failing the group. I managed to become enemies with multiple characters but also bought up some of the council (there is a survivor council events where your group makes decisions) members with supplies to exile a survivor who righteously conspired to remove me for my wrongdoings, and i murdered the faggot marine by arranging a zombie swarm accident for him outside and made other hilariously bad decisions. After that i almost lost the game because morale nosedived at the end but i pulled through and got the (best) ending whereyou and pilot Lloyd betray everyone and run away after stealing huge amount of supplies, then you decide to betray him before he betrays you. So yeah you can have fun in this game with asshole character.

Base\community management is decent.

Zombie killing is ok, but you'll get tired of it later on. And battling hostile survivors while fun will get trivial with a proper build. I think the hardest battle for me was storming the military bunker, after that i just stopped giving a fuck and was able to mow down dozens of mercs left and right. Combat shotgun is a beast.

 

[OSK]

It's a shame because the base managment layer seems like it could be fun, but I'm not sure if this is worth the time investment. Does the game get better as it goes on?

If the game doesn't pull you in within the first few hours, it's likely never going to.

 

[Sotomonte]

I played the game and finished it in about 100 hours. And the truth is that I really liked it. It gave me the feeling of being in a zombie movie from the 70s/80s... no running zombies or special zombies with superpowers, just the classic slow zombies that have the advantage of numbers.

When I got to a map where there were zombies and hostile survivors, it was best to throw a firecracker or one of those alarm systems to get their attention, let the zombies and hostiles meet and watch them kill each other. The good thing is that when the hostile survivors were killed by the zombies, they came back and attacked their companions. Then my group would go in to get the loot...wonderful.

Although it is true that sometimes it was repetitive, since many locations were only there to simply kill all the zombies and take the supplies.

And yes, the combat was a bit meh, especially with firearms... no cover systems, just withdraw to force the enemy to spend their AP to get closer to your group and not be able to shoot at you while you were shooting at them with shotguns.


EDIT: and one more thing, Dead State has very different ways to end the game,...not many RPGs can say the same in these days of decline.

 

[JDR13]

100 hours? Yeah...I'm definitely not up for that. I do like it in a lot of ways, but I've got too much of a quality backlog right now to spend that kind of time on this. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point.

If we could take the better parts of Dead State and blend them with the combat and stealth system from Urban Strife, we'd have an awesome game.

 

[Sotomonte]

100 hours? Yeah...I'm definitely not up for that.

Well...I'm a very slow player



It took me 100 hours to finish but my way of fighting didn't help. Basically I was trying to lure zombies in one by one to avoid taking too much damage (I was playing ironman mode with the possibility of getting infected so I was very careful). Also explore each and every zone (with all its combat).

The tactic I mentioned in the previous post didn't help either, since when I made hostile survivors and zombies face each other I had to stay in a corner while pressing the "pass turn" button constantly until one of the two groups died... and sometimes it took a long time.

Possibly with a much less careful playstyle you could finish the game in less than half that time.

 

[OSK]

Well...I'm a very slow player

You're slow? I wasn't doing any of that stuff and it took me 118 hours.

 

[Fargus]

Dead State is a long game in general. 70-100 hours is normal.

If we could take the better parts of Dead State and blend them with the combat and stealth system from Urban Strife, we'd have an awesome game.

Then they should hire Mitsoda to write dialogue and ask him to go nuts like he did in Bloodlines and Dead State and forget about 'current year' faggotry

 

[Zombra]

Does the game get better as it goes on?

The basic systems are all the same from beginning to end. The only thing you might have missed so far are the shelter crises, where something happens and your leading citizens meet in the gym to make big decisions (do we cut rations in half or turn people out to starve so the rest can eat, do we execute someone who stole the medicine or slap their wrist, etc). These are fun events but rare, if you find the game a slog they will not change your mind.