It Sucks The Original Dead Island 2 Will Never See The Light Of Day

Even two years later, it’s hard to believe that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dead Island 2 ever saw the light of day. When it was first announced at E3 2014 with , many of us thought we’d end up playing it just a couple of years later on the PS4 and Xbox One. It was an open-world title where you killed zombies and completed quests in a real-life setting. Surely it can’t have that many probl꧑ems during development? Oh, how wrong we were.

Dead Island 2 made a handful of public appearances following its blockbuster reveal, but it was after that that things began to get weird. Techland was originally poised to helm production, only fo🎐r it to shift focus to Dying Light. Yager Entertainment was then brought in after pitching a successful take to publisher Deep Silver, only for this vision of the game to limp along very much like an undead corpse .

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spec Ops: The Line was an absolute banger anꦜd went on to become a cult classic in its own right, so for a long time it felt like Dead Island 2 was in safe hands with Yager.

Eventually, Dambuster Studios of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Homefront: The Revolution fame took over Dead Island 2, delivering a surprisingly enjoyable game back in 2023 that I had so much fun with. Now, we have some greater insight into the sequel’s origiဣnal vi⛎sion, and why it was canned in the first place.

Dead Island 2’s Original Form Is A Game We’ll Never Get To Play

At Develop: Brighton last week (via ), former head of communications for Deep Silv🦩er Martin Wein shed new light on Dead Island 2’s troubled development and why it was rebooted before reaching the finish line:

"I was working on that with the creative team, and we were mightily proud of that [trailer]," Wein recalled. "But then, about 3 to 4 weeks later, we had a major milestone with the ♈development studio that was in charge at that time. And boy, that game sucked."

Wein continues: "It had nothing to do with what [made] the original Dead Island [...] really fun. So we commissioned a playtest and got horrific feedback. And🍷 we sat down with the development team and said, 'Okay, what's the course of action?' And they said, 'Yeah, leave i🥃t with us'."

Player Grabbing a Zombie By The Neck in Dead Island 2.

Later on, Wein goes on to say that if Dead Is⛦land 2 was released in that current state under its old developer, there was a chance it could have “killed the franchise” altogether. With only one game and a mediocre spin-off under its belt at that point, this certainly seemed possible, so it was the right decision. I shou🦩ld know, because I played Dead Island 2 a decade ago when it was struggling to find its feet. And boy, it did kinda suck.

The original Dead Island wasn’t great. It was clunky, cheesy, and repetitive in both its story and gameplay. But this relative mediocrity at 💮least built a solid foundation to expand on, a foundation that its sequel🔜 could have done some incredible things with. If it didn’t, chances are Deep Silver would have called it quits for good. Riptide was also a terrible experience, feeling more like a rushed expansion marketed as a full game rather than a premium title.

Deep Silver needeꦿd to prove that Dead Island was a major franchise, and if its sequel was dead on arrival, there wasn’t a chance of ever clawing back good will from consumers and critics. So, it opted to slowly but surely slip into deve🌼lopment hell that lasted almost a whole decade.

How Did The Original Dead Island 2 Play?

A character holding an axe with zombies coming towards them in Dead Island.

Thღe build I played originates from Gamescom 2014, and also made its way around smaller consumer shows in the UK and Europe after the fact. You chose a character and were then placed in a small suburban neighbourhood defined by little houses, winding roads, and a few beautiful palm trees in the distance. It had the same cel-shaded look as the reveal trailer with a saturated aesthetic that bled through eꦫnvironments, characters, and all the zombies you’d tear to pieces. On the surface, this sounds like a good time, but the second control falls into your hands it begins to feel oddly static and unintuitive.

Parts of the finishe💃d game’s incredible gore system are at work in this early footage, although it doesn’t seem to integrate into the moment-to-moment gameplay vไery much at all.

Firstly, the zombies don’t really do anything. Yes, I know they’re meant to be a shambling lot of corpses ripe for slaughter, but they need to put up some sort of fight for the act of ❀survival to feel engrossing. Otherwise, it’s going to get very boring, very quickly. Enemies didn’t react in a convincing way to your actions either, with hands-on footage showing a zombie refusing to move an inch after a shotgun shell to the back. Combine this with canned voice lines and a selection of repetitive, clunky weapons, and it’s easy to see why this virtual slice fell so flat.

Dead Island 2 screenshot of zombies rising from the sand on Venice Beach.

And that’s exactly what it felt like. The ten -minute timed demo had you collecting resources to craft weapon modifications, which in turn could be used against foes with thrilling elemental effects. Beyond that, though, aside from playable characters who refuse to keep quiet, there’s no personality here in spite of the excessively colourful visuals. It fee𓃲ls hol🌃low, empty, like a proof of concept for a pitch that, as we all know at this point, never got off the ground.

But I can’t help but picture a world where this vision of the game did make it to the finish line but was met with critical mauling and negative player sentiment. It would have sucked hard for everyone involved in its creation, but there’s value to be found in failure, and loads of fun to be mined from video games that don’t rea꧅ch their full potential. I’m still struggling to believe Dead Island 2 was revealed with such an excellent trailer when the game it was meant to represent didn’t really exist. Deals were still being made, and slowly but surely that version was left behind.

After playing the 2023 reboot, I’ve no doubt it was the right decision, but we lost something♔ pure during the eight years of development hell that we’ll never get back.