Dead Island 2

At this point, Techlands Dying Light is clearly the best of the zombie games, and Im certain its based on how well recieved that one was, that DI 2 is delayed. I do hope they rise to the occasion, though!

Koch Media is still all in on Dead Island 2, which after passing through Yager and Sumo Digital is now being helmed by Dambuster Studios, the team responsible for the underrated gem Homefront: The Revolution.

Despite being in development even longer, there’s still no sign of another important Koch release: Dead Island 2. The game was originally being worked on by the series’ creators at Techland, before that team moved onto Dying Light. It passed to Yager Developments in 2012, to Sumo Digital in 2016, and earlier this year to Dambuster Studios, the Koch-owned developer staffed by former Free Radical and Crytek employees.

Has such a tumultuous history, and the inherent delays, damaged expectations for Dead Island 2 at all?

“My favourite question,” Kundratitz laughs. "Look, Dead Island is a very important brand for us and we’ve got to get it right. It’s just a testimony of our dedication to get it right.

“It’s a great story to tell everyone that it’s on its third studio, but we like to be judged on the end result and we’re really confident that when it comes out it’s going to be a kick-ass zombie game. We’ll certainly give it all our power.”

Despite the split over the original iteration of Dead Island 2, Koch still retains close ties with Techland – in fact, it’s distributing Dying Light 2 when it launches next year. But Kundratitz insists there’s no conflict of interest here.

“It would be conflict if we were launching on top of each other,” he acknowledges. "But that’s not going to be a problem.

Do people really care that much about the Dead Island brand? I never played so have no idea what kind of impact it had.

Probably not so much in a world where Dying Light exists, but I assume it sold really well.

Arise! After moving from Yager to Sumo Digital, Dead Island 2 will finally release with Dambuster, the studio behind Homefront: The Revolution, Feb 2023. I imagine there will be a preview blowout to coincide with Gamescom.

https://youtu.be/u6Qypoo0a8w

https://youtu.be/7OaKFPh2rGg

Looks decent. Zero chance of me preordering unfortunately.

I think it’s looking better than just decent, I’m actually surprised how modern and polished it looks. At the same time, I also don’t see anything that feels new/bold/innovative, AND I still have DL2 pending to play, so yeah, no preorder for me either.

I have room in my heart for both the Dying Light and Dead Island games. DI2 looks like a shiny happy colorful zombie game that’s really leaning into an over the top Saint’s Row-esque take on their world. It’ll be interesting to see if the RPG and quest elements are any good - Dying Light’s quests and writing weren’t exactly great, but nailed the day night cycle and the parkour.

I’m definitely interested, but I too still have DL2 on my backlog, so I will not get to this soon, but I’m rooting for it to be good!

I see that this was eventually turned over to Dambusters, the team who did Homefront: The Revolution. That game had decent enough gunplay, but did a fantastic job of situating it in an open map for you to gradually take over. It was one of the better unsung “paint the map” shooters, and the designers at Dambuster deserve a lot of credit for elevating a mediocre shooter by giving it a larger context. So, naturally, I look forward to seeing what they can do with a California zombie apocalypse. Sign me up! April 28, marked on the calendar!

Probably not gonna be anything like that in this, but it does look fun and I am going to be there, hopefully day one.

I am one of the few that loved Homefront Revolution, it was such a fantastic Terminator: Future War-like game so I am a fan of this team.

Looks like Dead Island, yep.

For some reason, this comes across as more of a zombie theme park where you get to kill zombies in many ways, as opposed to more of a survival game. Is this a real shift in tone from the first game (which admittedly I haven’t played in a long time)? My memory (which is probably partially conflated with Dying Light) is of a vacation paradise that is now inhabited by enemies that are scary, and resources to fight started off fairly scarce, so you had to be be thoughtful with your resource usage.

The voiceover work makes it seem like the main character is running through a non-threatening theme park and suffering from a major dose of ennui.

I think the part where you had to be frugal with your resources fell off after the first hours, once you had some decent weapons, and in any case there were so many resources everywhere.

I may be misremembering it, I played when it released several years ago.

I wonder if they’ll ever address the elephant in the room?

Where’s the “island” in this game?

Here it is in 4K, for some reason the xbox upload is just 1080p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHOqRtA4OK8

You know, for some reason I didn’t think of that , during all these years since it was announced!