Dead Island 2 is Still in Development says Deep Silver

With the announcement of Dead Island Survivors last week came an interesting question: where’s Dead Island 2? First announced at E3 2014 during PlayStation’s press conference, the game has seen a rocky development cycle since then. Developers coming and going, bite-sized news bits here and there, and now this little kerfluffle has me wondering: official word is the game’s still on its way, but is it?

For those that missed it, Deep Silver did come out after Survivors started to make the rounds and say “nah guys, DI2 is still coming:”

Dead Island 2 is still in development and we will share more on this at a later stage.

— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) July 4, 2018

That’s all well and good, it’s exactly what I would expect Deep Silver to say when the inevitable questions started popping up. However, in the interest of making Dead Island 2 avoid that not-so-mythical Duke Nukem Forever status, we’re going to have to see some fruits of this zombified labor at some point.

I was in the hands-off demo for Dead Island 2 back at E3 2014. I saw what Yager Entertainment was planning for the game, and I thought there was a solid foundation there. The idea of moving Dead Island from an island resort to the state of California made sense, as it gives us players more room to bash some zombie brains in (even if it does invalidate the name of the game....but Dead California doesn’t sound as cool). The zombies were scary and gross, the weapon modding was cool looking, and the first-person perspective put us right in the thick of things just like the first two games. There was potential here... But then, nothing.

Yager Entertainment parted ways with the project in 2015, with Deep Silver tapping Sumo Digital fresh off of LittleBigPlanet 3  to take over soon afterward. Since that announcement Sumo has worked on Forza Horizon 3, Snake Pass, Team Sonic Racing and Crackdown 3, the latter two due out late this year and early next year respectively, but not a peep has been uttered about Dead Island. It’s worrisome, because a game as high profile as that one should have had something new come out since that first demo four years ago, even with the change in development team, but here we are still in the dark.

Meanwhile Techland, the team behind the original Dead Island, broke off and started its own zombie-killing adventure Dying Light. After four years of support, 13 million players total, and half a million players still logging in the studio just announced the sequel at E3 2018. While it’s unfair to say that Techland’s departure was the death knell for Dead Island, but I can’t imagine Deep Silver hasn’t at least once looked at Dying Light’s success and thought of what could have been.

So what’s next? If I’m Deep Silver and Sumo Digital I have to get something out as soon as possible. A trailer, new gameplay, screenshots, something more than just a Tweet saying “yup, everything is still on schedule!” The gaming public needs to know this game is still coming, lest we all move and it gets added to the list of games never coming out like StarCraft: Ghost and Scalebound. In fact, I think I know a pretty good time to bring Dead Island 2 back to the surface: Gamescom 2018. The largest gaming show in the world in terms of sheer numbers, what better place for a European publisher and its European studio to re-reveal their high profile game than in the heart of Europe?

Dead Island 2 has had a tumultuous life in the public eye, but Deep Silver and Sumo Digital can eliminate all of that angst and replace it with excitement with a large Gamescom presence. I’m not saying they have to blow the doors off of the place, but at least some sort of news that the game exists would be enough. Otherwise Dead Island: Survivors could be the last Dead Island game we ever see...and that’s just not fair to the franchise.

Speaking of zombies, battle royale game H1Z1 is making a return to the apocalypse with their new mode recently. Check it out!