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After years in the development wilderness, Dead Island 2 is back—and its developer also wants to go back to the basics of zombie fiction. At a preview event in London earlier this month, British studio Dambuster Studios told gathered journalists that one of the game’s four pillars — alongside “heaven gone to hell,” “visceral combat” and “pulp tone” — is a “zombie core”. “
Seems like stating the obvious. Dead Island 2, like its 2011 predecessor, is a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse and fighting the confused undead. Of course, zombies are central to it; why does dambuster have to repeat this? But the developers have something more subtle here.
“A lot of the zombies… not just games but franchises, especially in the last five to 10 years, a lot of times the message is that the real enemy is the people. The real bad guy is other people, hell it’s other people,” lead narrative designer Ayesha Kahn (who goes by the professional name Kahn) told Polygon. She can easily talk about Living Dead or The last of us. “Zombies can become almost background, almost just a choice of setting. This could be on the moon, but it’s with zombies instead. But really, it’s about people and relationships. And, you know, sometimes that makes for beautiful, gorgeous games, movies, and TV. We do not discount this in any way.
“But we wanted to keep the zombies as an enemy, as a visual, as a focus, as a game. Always at the core, at the forefront,” Khan said. “That’s the focus of the game.”
Image: Dambuster Studios/Deep Silver
Dead Island 2, therefore, is not a game about warring factions of survivors or about the human cost of living in an inhuman world. This is a game about smashing horrible undead monsters in the heads with heavy tools. His zombies are not a socio-political metaphor or a dramatic catalyst. They are scary, ugly and funny.
In this Dambuster wants to go even further than the original Dead island, from Polish developer Techland, was an unlikely hit in 2011 thanks to its colorful, brutal melee gameplay, if not its narrative. “We were watching the complete madness of the fight in the original Dead island, but the tone of the story and the narrative sometimes didn’t quite match up, it tended to be a little more serious, a little more focused. It’s something other games have doubled down on,” Han said, perhaps referring to the two Dying Light games Techland has made since then. Dead islandthe release of.
“So we looked a little bit at what’s not being done as much right now […] And one of the things we really wanted to do was just make zombies entertainment again. Just have fun with it, make the characters have fun with it, you know, make it all wonderful, ridiculous, larger than life, over the top. Just really double that because that’s the battle, you know? It’s hard to combine a very limited story with combat that lets you pull off a [zombie’s] backbone and show it to them, won’t you?’
Image: Dambuster Studios/Deep Silver
“We have a core [melee combat] a system that we think is pretty amazing,” added Technical Art Director Dan Evans. “But it is terrible violent. If we didn’t have a slightly lighter tone, I think it could have been a really dark murder simulator.” Evans cites filmmakers Paul Verhoeven and Quentin Tarantino as inspirations for their ability to push gory violence into the realm of the absurd, even funny.
“This kind of game is a love letter to Hollywood horror B-movies, right?” Hahn said. “We’re almost talking like a modern person watching [George] rosemary, do day of the Dead. That’s the feeling, you know? Then it was more shocking, more unusual. But a modern person is just like, “Oh, they really doubled down on the zombies!”
Evans intervened with a call for Return of the Living Dead, while Khan pays homage to the master of zombie comic horror, Sam Raimi. “I mean, [our game] it’s not so much a slap in the face as An evil death, but it’s on that spectrum of similar, ridiculous, and gory, but everyone still has fun here. You know, we’re all here to have a ridiculous, fun time.
If anything, it seems like a noble goal for a zombie game developer in 2022. Dead Island 2 will be released on February 3, 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Check out our hands-on impressions of the game for more.
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