A decade has passed since the appearance of the first Dead Island, that title that invited us to survive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that found us in the middle of a tropical paradise. In that 10 year span, it would be hard even to think how many zombie and survival horror games have been released, even Resident Evil remakes and remakes.
Many were already beginning to have the idea that Dead Island 2 would never happen, but Deep Silver confirmed its development very recently to much fanfare, showing gameplay and trailers only to delay the announced release date a few days later. . Although it sounds annoying or awkward, if we go to see what happened with the original game, we’ll see a common pattern.
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Historical context
The first Dead Island was announced at E3 2006 (wow!) and left everyone very excited with a visual gamble made by Techland and deep silver. Past that initial impulse, the game fell into a limbo of misinformation. Neither Deep Silver nor Techland wanted to share any information with the press and when the game appeared, around 2011, many people already thought the title had been cancelled.
Dead Island 2 went through an almost identical situation. The game was announced at E3 in 2014 and the idea was to see the light of day in 2015, but we can already see that we are coming to the end of 2022 and that the title is still in development. The production changed hands several times after its initial announcement, then fell off the radar. The peculiarity that distinguishes it from the first part is the fact that it has already taken more than twice as long to develop as the first, a record not very pleasant to keep.
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Dead Island’s Tropical Hope
An important fact is the commitment that Deep Silver shows with the franchise, which, despite only having one episode, seems to have given the publishing company a lot. What we’ve seen from Dead Island 2 so far bodes well for the future, one with plenty of potential for the modern generation of consoles that it could squeeze to make the most of it. If he finally respects everything that is shown, he may leave a real mark in our life as gamers.
Gabriel Fuentes
Translator and localizer of video games passionate about retro titles and simulators. He’s never let go of a controller since he was given an Atari 2600.
