Dead Island 2's developers are aiming to make it the "goriest game out there".
After close to a decade without any kind of substantial update, Dead Island 2 was finally re-revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live, debuting with a flashy CG trailer and then a much briefer look at gameplay. One strange element of the reveal that was even pointed out by Geoff Keighley was the numerous censors placed over some of the more gory zombie kills.
As it turns out, those censors were a good indication of what direction Dambuster Studios is aiming to take Dead Island 2 in. During an interview with Eurogamer following Opening Night Live, Dead Island 2 game director David Stenton specifically brought up the blood and gore and how the team is trying to make the sequel the "goriest game out there".
Stenton said, "We’ve been working on this stuff for years and years and years. We love those 80s horror films, pulp horror films – our aim was to make it absolutely the goriest game out there. But it ties into the gameplay, with dismemberment, and melting, and electric charging, and burning, the zombies and all, so it’s not just there as a sort of window dressing, it genuinely ties into the way that you play the game."
Dead Island 2's creative director James Worral elaborated further on the gore mechanics, saying, "It's just fully anatomically correct models, we've basically done everything from hair, skin, fat, muscle, bones, and all the organs are stuffed in there. It's all procedural. Melting is our favourite."
He continued, "Sometimes when you hit two or three zombies with a serious caustic melting attack or something like that, they stagger towards you and you can see them falling to bits, and they don't quite make it because they've dissolved before they get to you. It's really rewarding. It's all part and parcel of making sure that our monsters are monsters, but there's enough humanity left in there that when you see them staggering around after explosions or hopping along because I've only got one leg, you have that moment of humour."