Can build 42 shoot new life into Project Zomboid?

 At just over a decade, Project Zomboid holds the distinction of being one of the longest running games still in beta stage of development.  The small Canadian/English based Indie Stone has been feverishly working on their latest update for the wildly successful open world isometric game. Despite promising a complete overhaul of many essential game systems, and piles of new content, one can't help but wonder if the upcoming update will address the games single biggest flaw; The game still lacks an objective. 

"This is how you died."  Project Zomboid makes no promises to it's players.  The game is brutal, unforgiving, complex, merciless and insanely addictive.  The game launches you into the world that immediately makes every attempt to destroy you. So, at it's base, the unspoken objective of the game itself is simply to survive.  This objective alone can keep players entertained for days on end.  There is so much area to explore, and the many, sometimes infuriating, nuanced micro managing necessities are a delight to discover and explore for people who suffer from OCD. 

    The small team of developers have been hard at work serving a legion of very loyal fans. Adding heaps of new content, in a build that they are promising to release sometime before the end of the summer.  Some of those new features include all new lighting dynamics, new sounds, crafting benches with all new recipes, new weapons, farming and animal husbandry.  The coders have replaced the lighting dynamics, increased the elevation of the buildings in the map, and added all new areas to explore. They have addressed performance issues in both single player and multiplayer.  But even with all of these things, which has the community salivating for a release date, the underlying flaw of re-playability still exists. 

     Because of the nature of the game, it's location centered around Louisville Kentucky, the map is static.  Essentially, the topography never really changes.  So what probably amounts to the games most exciting feature; exploration, is diminished after the first couple thorough playthroughs.  We found ourselves harkening back to our childhood imagination days of self imposed meaningless goals for the game such as; Everyone has to build a base from scratch with harvested materials. Or, we can only walk backwards with a baseball bat and see how many zombies we can kill that way before we die.  (it was 2137 by the way). 

    Because of the nature of the game itself. it could be argued that the game does not really need an objective beyond staying alive.  One could further argue that to put objectives in place would stifle the open world exploration feel of the game.  It undeniably one of the largest sleeper hits of the last decade.  PZ has an almost cult following in it's player base and it's modding community.  So, perhaps the task of adding arbitrary objectives may be best left to those modders.  In the meantime, the zomb-o-philes anxiously await build 42.