Dead Island 2 has existed in one form or another for some time now (it was first announced back in 2014, remember), but it never seemed like it was getting close to launch. Much like the walking dead that inhabit the Dead Island games, it only seemed to be slowly wasting away as it shambled around idly.
The original developer, Techland, must’ve seen the writing on the wall. After finishing the first Dead Island and the follow-up, not-quite-a-sequel-but-not-quite-DLC Dead Island Riptide, they dropped the series like a bad habit and went on to develop the far superior Dying Light, leaving the Dead Island series to fester in its own miasma (resulting in the abysmal Escape Dead Island). Unfortunately, Techland’s most recent offering, Dying Light 2, was better left for dead, but that’s a story for another time.
However, on August 23, 2022, at this year’s Gamescom event, Deep Silver pulled back the curtain. They finally revealed that not only does Dead Island 2 exist, but it is actually releasing on February 3, 2023 for everything except the Switch and Steam.
And truth be told, at least from the highly edited and stylized trailer, it looks pretty good. In fact, let me show you:
The one thing that stands out to me — aside from all the carnage and destruction and head-smashing — is the fact that Dead Island 2 is apparently set in Los Angeles, California. Now, forgive me if I am mistaken, because it’s been a little while since I’ve actually been to L.A., but I don’t think it is an island. I mean, at least not yet.
Now, we haven’t gotten a huge look at the entire game or the map, so it could be that in Dead Island the in-game version of L.A. has actually become an island, at which point I confess that the title is apt. But if it is the same L.A. that exists today, only infested with the living dead, this seems like a bit of a misnomer –especially considering how many perfectly fine and actually-an-island islands there are in the world.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things shake out as more is surely revealed in the coming months. At the end of the day, I have to admit that I am actually looking forward to checking out Dead Island 2, considering how disappointed I was with Dying Light 2. And wouldn’t it be quite the scene if Dead Island 2 managed to garner more praise than Dying Light 2? I don’t mean as a sleight to Techland, but rather as a come-from-behind underdog story about a zombie sim that could.
In the meantime, you can check out IGN’s four-and-a-half-minute hands-on video below to see the game in action.
