State of Decay 3 Trailer Misleads Fans About Zombie Deer Features

State of Decay 3 was first unveiled back in 2020, just before the launch of the Xbox Series X/S, with a cinematic trailer that showcased no actual gameplay. This teaser hinted at ambitious narrative goals for the zombie survival series, but the reality was that the game was still in its infancy, with only broad concepts and early prototypes being explored by Undead Labs. Studio head Philip Holt recently admitted that the trailer was essentially misleading, noting that the zombie deer featured in it won’t be part of the final game.

“In reality, there wasn’t a game or a dedicated team when we were working on that trailer; it was very early in development,” Holt explained in a recent interview following the reveal of State of Decay 3’s alpha playtest in May 2026. “At that point, the game existed only as a Word document,” he added, mentioning that the core development team consisted of fewer than a dozen people.

“It was truly the very beginning of the software,” Holt continued. “The trailer was created by Blur and was entirely pre-rendered. It represented a concept, reflecting our ideas at the time about what could be exciting to explore in State of Decay 3. As we’ve built our team and progressed with development, some of those ideas will make it into the final game, but others, like zombie animals, are off the table.”

As reported previously, Microsoft was soliciting trailers from its studios in 2020 to generate excitement for the upcoming console generation. Current and former developers expressed surprise at the trailer’s content, particularly the inclusion of the zombie deer, which led fans to speculate about infected animals being a new feature in the sequel. The showcase also featured reveals for other titles, including Rare’s Everwild, which was later canceled, and Playground’s Fable, set to release this fall. “We didn’t want to announce the game because we didn’t even know what it was at that point,” one developer shared.

This isn’t the first instance of a rushed game reveal. Microsoft previously showcased a reboot of Phantom Dust for Xbox One using a pre-rendered trailer that had no input from the actual developers at Darkside, and the game was ultimately never released. Such issues have led to many game trailers now including disclaimers about whether they are in-engine, with players often expressing sentiments like “no gameplay, no hype.”