Dead Island 2’s developer wants to make zombies fun again

Years spent in the wilderness of development, finally it is over. 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, U.K. studio Dambuster Studios told the assembled journalists that one of the game’s four pillars — alongside “paradise gone to hell,” “visceral combat,” and “pulp tone” — was “zombie core.”

You might say the obvious. Dead Island 2.The game, which is similar to its 2011 predecessor, focuses on surviving the zombie apocalypse as well as fighting the unshambling undead. It is obvious that zombies are central; Dambuster doesn’t need to reiterate this. The developers make a better point.

“A lot of the zombie… 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 humans. The real bad guy is other people, hell is other people,” lead narrative designer Ayesha Khan (who goes by Khan, professionally) told Polygon. This could very easily have been about The Walking Dead Oder Last of Us. “Zombies can become almost a backdrop, almost just a setting choice. This could be on the moon, but instead it’s with zombies. But Really, it’s about the people and the relationships. This can sometimes make beautiful and stunning games, movies, and television. We’re not dissing that in any way.

“But we wanted to keep zombies as the enemy, as the visuals, as the focus, as the gameplay. Always at the core, at the forefront,” Khan said. “That’s the focus of the game.”

Image: Dambuster Studios/Deep Silver

Dead Island 2.The game of Survivor isn’t about fighting for survivors or finding out the cost of living on an inhumane planet. It’s a game about mashing horrible undead monsters in the head with heavy implements. Zombies aren’t a symbol of sociopolitical power or an ominous catalyst. They can be scary, gross and hilarious.

Dambuster has a vision to do more than just the original. Dead IslandTechland from Poland created ”. It was a surprise hit, thanks to its brutal, colorful melee gameplay and storytelling. “We were looking at the sheer madness of the combat in the original Dead Island, but the tone of the story and the narrative sometimes didn’t quite match, it tended to be a bit more serious, a bit more focused. That’s the sort of thing that other games have doubled down on,” said Khan, perhaps referring to the two Dying Light games Techland has made since Dead Island’s release.

“So we were looking a little bit at what is not being done as much right now […]One of the most important things we wanted was to just create zombies Fun again. You should have some fun. Let the characters have fun. Just really double down on that, because that’s the combat, you know? It’s hard to marry a very strait-laced story with combat that lets you pull out a [zombie’s] spine and show it to them, right?”

Image: Dambuster Studios/Deep Silver

“We’ve got a core [melee combat] system that we think is pretty amazing,” added technical art director Dan Evans. “But it’s Quite horribly violent. If we didn’t have just, like, a little bit of a lighter tone to it, I think it could just be a really grim murder simulator.” Evans cites the film directors 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 a game is a love letter to Hollywood B-movie horror movies, right?” said Khan. “We’re almost talking, like, a modern person watching a [George]Romero. Day of the Dead. That’s the feeling, you know? This was back when it was less shocking and was considered more rare. But a modern person is just like, ‘Oh, they really doubled down on the zombies!’”

Evans contributed a shoutout The Return of the Living DeadKhan is paying tribute to Sam Raimi, the creator of comic-based zombie horror. “I mean, [our game]This storyline isn’t as absurd as it sounds. Evil Dead, but it’s on that spectrum of like, ridiculous and gory, but everybody’s having fun here, though. You know, we’re all here to have a ridiculous, fun time.”

This seems to be a worthy goal for a developer of zombie games in 2022. Dead Island 2.On February 3, 2023, the game will release for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Windows PC), Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One. You can read our impressions from the game.