There may be some good news for you if you've been craving more of Dead Island's zombie slashing action.
Dead Island is probably better remembered for its trailer more than for the actual game itself. The trailer told the tale of the end of a family, as they are torn apart by a zombie outbreak at a tropical resort. It was an emotionally moving piece, showing the entire event in reverse chronological order, with stirring violin and piano music playing. It was a heartbreaking scene, and made everyone think that Dead Island was going to be a truly special game.
Then it turned out to be a standard action game where you go around cutting off zombie heads with axes. Needless to say, the trailer overhyped it just a smidge.
Still, there’s hope that Dead Island 2 could be a far more exciting game than the first one, if it ever comes out that is. The game was announced in 2014 with yet another fun trailer, which always seem to be better than the games themselves. There hasn’t been much sign of it since, leading many to assume the game was either cancelled or put on hold indefinitely. However, it looks like there may be some signs of life in the old Dead Island series yet.
THQ Nordic, which holds the publishing rights to Dead Island 2, mentioned the game during their earnings call, and indicated that it was still coming out. Not only that, they also said the game would release on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. That might be a sign that it could be coming out pretty soon, seeing as how this current console generation is potentially coming to an end within the next year or so. You’d kind of figure they would want to release the game on those systems while they’re still relevant.
That being said, it’s hard to deduce exactly what kind of shape Dead Island 2 is currently in. The sequel was originally being designed by original Dead Island developers Techland. They’ve since moved onto the Dying Light series, which has generally been received as a better version of what Dead Island was trying to accomplish.
Yager was then tapped to design Dead Island 2 for Deep Silver, but development was apparently not going according to plan, and they were dropped from the project as well. The game was then given to Sumo Digital, and since then everyone has mostly gone radio silent, leading many to assume the worst for the zombie chopping sequel.
With THQ Nordic revealing that the game is still scheduled to come out, that does clarify Dead Island 2’s status a bit, but beyond knowing that it exists that’s about all we got. They didn’t give any other details on it, just a quick mention in the call.
It’s possible that we may get more information soon, seeing as how E3 is but a few weeks away, and THQ Nordic has announced that they'll be present. Hopefully the date of our next tropical undead adventure will be revealed there and then.
And maybe we’ll even get another cool trailer.