Prerelease:Overkill's The Walking Dead
This page details pre-release information and/or media for Overkill's The Walking Dead.
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There's not much info on the development of Overkill's The Walking Dead beyond it being a complete disaster. Even so, if you dig really, REALLY deep, you might find something...
Contents
On July 9th, the developer's website added a countdown. Small, 2-minute audio clips would be changed out on a regular basis, though how regular is unknown. For example, the archived site for Day 05, for example, doesn't seem to play audio, but Day 10 does.
Announcement
The game was officially announced on August 13, 2014, oddly through a Payday 2 event. No footage of the game proper was formally shown off, just a teaser, presumably animated in the Diesel Engine. A QA was also held, which contains this little tidbit:
Q: I’m a PAYDAY 2 heister - how does this affect me? A: PAYDAY 2 and OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead are two separate games - but, in true OVERKILL spirit, we’ll make some unprecedented crossovers. When Washington falls, what will Dallas do? If you own PAYDAY 2, you can answer this question in OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead.
This is the first, and only time such a thing would be brought up, as Payday 2 ran its course by the time the game shipped.
Engines
Development can be separated into three periods, as follows.
Diesel Engine
For a very brief time in its life, the game was using the Diesel Engine, which also powers Payday 2 and RAID: World War II.
E3 2015 is quite possibly the only time the game was shown off before moving to Unreal Engine 4. The footage is likely from a build using the Diesel Engine, as the Valhalla Engine was only recently announced at the time of its reveal, not to mention that it was noted to be grueling to develop for. In-game footage is stated to have come from a VR build, which along with its console ports never actually materialized.
Also, note the playable characters shown at the end: even in silhouette form, it's very apparent that they're completely different from the four who show up in the final game.
Valhalla Engine
Despite taking up the bulk of development time, very little is actually known about this period. Anonymous Starbreeze/Overkill employees have gone on record as saying that development was tedious and slow due to the engine being in a fairly incomplete state.
Unreal Engine 4
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UE4 was brought in roughly one year before the game's release, and the bulk of the work done up till then could not be salvaged. At one point, Overkill mysteriously stated that the Valhalla Engine would be brought on as a plug-in, though it's not exactly known what that entails, if anything. While a folder for plugins exists in the final game's engine files, it's unknown how much of it (if any) is related to the Valhalla Engine.
By this point (E3 2018), the game is near retail. Some UI elements, such as the health kit, have inverted coloring.
Unreleased Levels
The reputation of the game following its launch was so bad that the licensor had decided to pull the IP a few months after the game came out, in February 2019. The news came on February 28th, the same day an update was to be added, and a ton of content that was either planned or in the process of being finished was left out of the game. Through their public Trello, which hasn't been updated since the IP was pulled, we know what the names of these cut levels were, as well as some other planned features, such as weapon skins, a tutorial, and basic features that should have been in the game at launch. The names of these episodes are:
- The Fugitive
- Best Served Cold
- Tightening the Noose
- Sixty Feet Under
- Search and Rescue
- We the People
On the game's official Discord, an Overkill representative claimed that the episodes, if not Season 2 as a whole, were finished.
Unnamed Level
"Opening shot, roughly one minute into the mission."
"Interior shot of the base, where not being stealthy would lead to a tough shootout."
"Shot of the miniboss stage."
Unnamed Level: Retrofitting an existing level for a new mission
Screenshots with mouseover descriptions of this lost level can be found on the level designer's portfolio.
In the leaked 1.4 version, this "retrofitted" version of the level is nowhere to be seen, but Tightening the Noose is a level that recycles another level, No Sanctuary, which in itself is a recycling of another level, Hell or High Water.
Best Served Cold
Unreleased DLC level: Developed with a striketeam, unreleased content.
Screenshots for a DLC Level, S02E05.
Achievements
The game's achievements since cancellation have been updated with multiple hidden and unfinished achievements. Their names are as follows:
NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_3 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_8 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_7 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_6 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_5 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_4 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_3_30 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_2 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_1 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_0 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_3_31 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_3_29 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_3_28 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_3_27 0.5% NEW_ACHIEVEMENT_NAME_4_9 0.5%
Additionally, each and all of them have the same unlock rate, likely from the game's testers, or Steam Achievement Manager users.
Here's an explanation of what each Achievement is, they can be obtained if the Leaked 1.4 version is linked with Steam somehow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OvkTheWalkingDead/comments/17wy9rd/v14_achievement_list/
Unreleased Character
With these, there was also supposed to be a new character, named Tanner. Tanner is mentioned multiple times in the episodes that did release, and the objectives of those episodes revolve around getting to him. He was supposed to be in Episode 3 but was delayed due to not being finished.
