The same rule that applies for most games you play online applies to State of Decay 2: You simply cannot pause when you are online. Even if you are only playing by yourself, you can’t pause if your game is online.
If you know you’re going to need to pause, or just like to have the feature available to you, you can enable the ability to pause the game by turning multiplayer off.
You can turn multiplayer off by doing the following:
Press the Start button on the Xbox One controller (Esc on keyboard) to open up the Pause Menu Go to the Multiplayer option Switch it to “Offline”
After you’ve done this, you’ll be able to fully pause the game when pressing the Pause Menu button, rather than simply open up the menu as it does when you are set to online.
The downside to all this is that there is no way to pause in multiplayer at all, but that’s typical. It doesn’t make sense to be able to pause a multiplayer game. But if you intend to play by yourself and need to be able to pause from time to time, it’s best to simply set the game to be completely offline so you can press that magic Start button/Esc key when needed.
Having to turn your entire gameplay experience offline isn’t a huge deal if you’d rather play by yourself anyway, and if you generally play multiplayer, having to set the game to offline just makes sense. Good luck out there!
Be sure to check out our other, more comprehensive State of Decay 2 guides, including the best base locations, how to rack up unlimited food, and more!
