| Dead Island 2 | |
| Developer: | Dambuster Studios |
| Publisher: | Deep Silver |
| Release: | April 21, 2023 |
| Designer: | Adam Duckett |
| Artist: | Adam Olsson |
| Composer: | Ryan Williams |
| Series: | Dead Island |
| Engine: | Unreal Engine 4[1] |
| Genre: | Action role-playing |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
Dead Island 2 is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Dambuster Studios and published by Deep Silver. It is a sequel to the 2011 video game Dead Island and the third major installment in the Dead Island series. Set about 15 years after the events of Dead Island and , Dead Island 2 sets itself apart from its predecessors by taking place in a zombie-infested Los Angeles placed under quarantine.
Announced in 2014, Dead Island 2 languished in development for the next eight years or so,[2] with various studios attached to the project. Yager Development was to develop the game in 2012, but was removed in 2015 and replaced the following year by Sumo Digital. Sumo Digital was later removed as well, with Dambuster (an internal studio of Deep Silver) taking over in 2019.[3]
Dead Island 2 was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 21 April 2023. The game received generally positive reviews from critics and had sold 3 million units by May 2024.
Like its predecessor, it is an action role-playing game played from a first-person perspective. Dead Island 2 takes place in Los Angeles in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. At the beginning of the game, players have to select from one of six playable characters as their player avatar called a slayer. Each of them has their own unique skills and abilities.[4] They also have to choose from one of two defensive abilities, either learning to block hostile attacks, or dodge them.[5] The game's world is divided into 10 different zones. While the player can freely explore each zone, they must travel between different zones through Zone Exits. As the player progresses in the game, they will also unlock fast travel points, allowing them to travel to different locations quickly.[6]
Players can pick up both ranged and melee weapons. Each weapon can be further customized with mods, which add elemental effects, and perks, which can alter the player's stat.[7] The game features a system named "FLESH", which stands for "Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids". It is a procedurally generated dismemberment system which can create weapon-appropriate wounds on zombies, allowing players to break their skin, bones and internal organs.[8] Weapons are divided into different rarity, with Rare and Superior weapons being generally more powerful.[5] In addition, players can use the environment to their advantage. For instance, an electric weapon can be thrown into a puddle, electrocuting all enemies standing on it.[9] Weapons will gradually degrade and eventually break, though players can repair them at workbenches found in the game's world.[10]
Unlike previous games in the series, Dead Island 2 does not have a skill tree. Instead, it uses a deck-building system which allows players to alter their character's strengths and weaknesses. The Skill Deck sorts cards into four different categories: Abilities, Survivor, Slayer, and Numen. Abilities cards unlock new active abilities for players, some of which can be used during the Fury mode, which allows players to unleash devastating attacks on enemies for a brief period of time; Survival cards boost the player's health and stamina; Slayer cards grant players passive perks that enhance their combat abilities; Numen cards unlock special abilities that have a large damage output. Players can also equip "Autophage" cards. While these cards will provide perks to the player, they will also debuff them, making them weaker. Cards can be earned through completing quests, levelling up, and killing special enemies.[11]
About 15 years after the events of "Dead Island",[12] the US military is forced to put Los Angeles under a full quarantine restricted zone due to a new and stronger zombie outbreak.
As Los Angeles is being quarantined, six individuals (dubbed "Slayers") board one of the last evacuation flights out of the city: hustler Bruno, mechanic Carla, retail worker Dani, firefighter-themed stripper Ryan, athlete Amy, and stuntman Jacob.
In the confusion, an infected person ends up on board, and the military shoots the plane down. The Slayers narrowly survive the crash but are bitten trying to help some other survivors. They manage to make their way to the home of one of the crash survivors, actress Emma Jaunt, who reluctantly shelters them despite their infection. Sam B, Emma's ex-boyfriend, arrives at the mansion intending to get Emma out of the city, and, revealing he is immune to the infection, the Slayers realize they are also immune. With the Slayers still intent on escaping the city, they head to the nearest evacuation center at the Halperin Hotel, only to find it overrun with infected. They recover a radio and contact Dr. Reuben Reed, a CDC doctor who asks them to come to his safe haven in Santa Monica to use their immunity to synthesize a cure. Sam warns the Slayers not to trust Reed.
The Slayers head through the sewers to get to Santa Monica, discovering that the zombie corpses the military have been dumping into the sewers have melded together into a massive, tumor-like growth spreading underneath the city. They are stopped by another group of survivors led by Lola Konradt, who drops the Slayers into a pit full of zombies, temporarily triggering a bestial rage in them, which they use to kill all the zombies. The Slayers manage to reach Reed's haven at the Serling Hotel, where he informs them that the military will not extract them unless they provide proof of immunity, which means using Reed's testing equipment at the overrun CDC HQ. The Slayers recover the equipment and return to discover that Reed and Konradt are acquaintances. The Slayers are then sent to find Reed's missing daughter, Tisha, who is working with a team of hackers investigating mysterious encrypted data being exchanged by the CDC. Tisha gives the Slayers a way to contact Konradt directly in return for them giving her more time to investigate the CDC.
Konradt tips the Slayers off about a secret lab where Reed sent other immune subjects. While fighting an infected test subject, the Slayers succumb to their feral instincts and attack Tisha, who apparently kills them, only to be revived by Konradt. She explains that she, her followers, and the Slayers are a new species of humans dubbed "Numen," who can assimilate the infection, called the Autophage, while retaining their minds, gaining extraordinary abilities such as increased strength, speed, or the ability to enter into a rage of fury, and a telepathic hive mind with other Numen. Before leaving, she warns the Slayers that Reed is not actually searching for a cure. The Slayers return to the Serling Hotel to confront Reed, only to find that he has fled with Tisha to a lab on Hollywood Boulevard and that he was responsible for the city-wide Autophage outbreak.
Furious at constantly being lied to, the Slayers gather Emma, Sam, and helicopter pilot Patton, intending to steal Reed's helicopter and leave the city. They reach Hollywood Boulevard, where Sam starts succumbing to the Autophage, his immunity deteriorating. The Slayers go on ahead and confront Reed, who admits that he released the Autophage in the city in order to filter out Numen, explaining that the Autophage is not a plague but a "clock" fundamental to the human genome that is hard-coded to wipe them all out and turn them into zombies at a predetermined time, but also turn 1 in every million Humans into Numen. The Numen, who he considers either anomalies or "puppets" of the Autophage, and their "god blood" were his only way to find a method to neutralize it, which is why, according to his journals, he used a retro-virus carrier of the original Pathogen HK to spoof the zero-clock state on a smaller scale to create the outbreak and Numen. He gives the Slayers a single dose of Autophage cure and reveals that Tisha also carries the remedy in her body as he secretly injected her with Numen blood prior to birth to harvest the cure for the rest of her life. Reed succumbs to the Autophage, forcing the Slayers to kill him while Tisha flees.
The Slayers return to Sam, Emma, and Patton and administer the cure to the former, saving his life. The Slayers decide to stay behind to find Tisha and help the other survivors trapped in the city. As Emma, Sam, and Patton escape Los Angeles, Konradt and her followers watch over the Slayers as they fight another horde of zombies.
Techland was originally set to develop Dead Island 2, but decided to work on Dying Light with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment instead.[13] Deep Silver went looking for a developer until Yager Development made a successful pitch to Deep Silver in Q3 2012.[14] Yager established a new division, Yager Productions GmbH, for development of the game. As announced at Sony's E3 2014 media briefing, Dead Island 2 was to be more vibrant than its predecessors.[15] The game was originally scheduled for a Q2 2015 release.[16]
At Gamescom 2014, Deep Silver demonstrated gameplay footage from an early version of the game. According to the presented content, the game was to be set in California, including landmarks such as the Santa Monica Pier and Hollywood, as well as many locations in San Francisco. Furthermore, Deep Silver stated that the game was to feature four playable characters, though only two were shown at the Gamescom Demo. It was originally planned to feature eight-player cooperative multiplayer.[17]
In July 2015, Deep Silver announced that Yager had been dropped and that development would be moved to another unnamed developer.[18] The managing director of Yager Development, Timo Ullmann, later stated that the company's departure from the project occurred because "Yager and Deep Silver's respective visions of the project fell out of alignment".[19] Yager Productions filed for insolvency in July 2015.[20]
In March 2016, UK-based studio Sumo Digital announced that it had taken over development.[21] In August 2017, Deep Silver reiterated that the game was still in development, making a similar statement again in July 2018.[22] [23] In August 2019, THQ Nordic announced that development of the game had changed hands to Dambuster Studios, an internal studio of Deep Silver.[24]
A playable version of the still-under-development game from 2015 was leaked in June 2020.[25]
The game was shown at Gamescom 2022, and was initially scheduled to release on February 3, 2023. In November 2022, it was announced that the game would be delayed until April 28, 2023, to allow additional development time.[26] In February 2023, the release date was moved up a week to April 21, 2023.[27] The German version is censored. The player cannot further maim fallen enemies.[28]
The game's first story expansion, titled Haus, was released on November 2, 2023. It introduced a new location (a large villa in Malibu, California), three weapons, and eight skill cards.[29] A second story expansion, titled SOLA Festival, was released on April 17, 2024.[30]
Dead Island 2 was released on April 21, 2023, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. On Windows, the game was released with a one-year exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. The game released on Steam on April 22, 2024.[31]
Dead Island 2 received "generally favorable" reviews for the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions, while the PlayStation 5 version received "mixed or average reviews" from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game was nominated for "Best Action Game" at The Game Awards 2023.[32]
Dead Island 2 sold 1 million units in 3 days since release.[33] By May 2023, the game had sold over 2 million units.[34] By May 2024, it had sold 3 million units.[35]