From the start, State of Decay 2 had a lofty goal: transition the series from a linear, tightly-scripted narrative to a dynamic, responsive, open-ended mission system. I collaborated with an engineer to establish the system that would accomplish this, and build the tools we would need to actually create the content. We used a casting system, looking for best-fit in characters, locations, items, and so on. This system prioritized status changes that had been caused by player activity (e.g. if we want you to deal with a hostile human, we prioritize a human that is hostile as a result of your previous interactions over a character spawned that way), which gave players a strong sense of ownership and influence over the narrative. Casting criteria, objective logic, mission branching and more were all integrated into a single tool. The resulting toolset was then used by the team to create hundreds of hours of dynamic content. State of Decay 2 went on to be the best-selling game of May 2018.