The map from the original State of Decay was rebuilt from the ground up, Undead Labs says, with special care taken to revisit old landmarks. Players need to build, prepare, and survive until the endgame event, the Gauntlet. Every single enemy is infected, which means that I cannot stop screaming, because that not only amps up the difficulty dramatically but it’s also incredibly spooky. That includes the “Freaks,” special characters like the Juggernaut and Screamer. Every zombie you encounter on the map has the Blood Plague. These enhanced survivors are necessary, because Heartland kicks up the difficulty. The order you encounter them in, and the decisions you make, can change, but the survivors are far more set in stone than in State of Decay 2’s main mode.

Gone are the randomly generated survivors instead, Heartland introduces a band of hardy folk across the map. The campaign features two new stories - one woman is trying to find her father, and one man is attempting to find his hero, who he has only spoken to over the radio. Players choose between the two survivors at the start of the Heartland campaign. The survivors that players meet in the world, to compensate, have powerful perks and passive abilities that bolster the base and its operations. Instead, players are locked down and forced to work with the singular base. There’s no more roaming and trying to size up for a bigger, better situation. The biggest change is that the player’s band of survivors is set at one base. A starting pair of survivors make their way to the titular heartland, and that’s when State of Decay 2’s gameplay loop starts - with some big changes. As zombies and plagues are wont to do, they’ve mutated. Heartland is a traditional narrative with some twists that picks up 18 months after the end of State of Decay. It’s also a mode that relies far less on the emergent narratives and focuses more on a deliberately paced experience. Heartland, the biggest State of Decay 2 update yet, is a love letter to the first game.

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