Dead Island 2 E3 Previews and Video Interview

We’ve rounded up a few more previews and interview for Deep Silver’s sequel to Dead Island, which moves the zombie apocalypse from an actual tropical island to California under the care of Yager (Spec Ops: The Line).

VG247:

You’re not just fighting zombies

Dead Island 2 features human factions who you’ll interact with (fight) and fight with (also, fight). You’ll need different skills and techniques to combat psychopathic humans, looters, prisoners and ex-Marines who’ve been abandoned by the military but you can play them off against the undead. As humans attack the player in a relatively safe zone, you’re able to unlock the gates to the world outside, inviting in a horde of hungry zombies who attack the other humans. Of course actions like that could go either way, so you’ll need to keep on your toes. But it sounds like it’s worth embracing Dead Island 2’²s chaotic opportunities.

Now you can smash brains with your pals

As Dead Island 2 is going open-world (isn’t every game?) it is also going multiplayer with players able to drop in and out, to help and/or hinder others (isn’t every game?). Play through the game like Left 4 Dead in co-op or just be a grumpy old single-player lone wolf, it’s up to you.

It’s got a motion-captured cat

Some games have fish AI or realistic dog fur. Dead Island 2 has a motion-captured cat. He’s called Rick Furry. I’m not sure if that breaks any animals-in-the-workplace laws, but I like to imagine a little tabby wearing spandex with pingpong balls all over it. Imagine the confusion on it’s stupid little moggy face.

Destructoid:

With this being on Unreal 4 and current-gen only, it now means there will be more zombies than ever. A “zombie playground,” as we were told. There’s more types of infected than ever before, and we were promised that zombies will never look the same from one another.

Zombies aren’t the only threat this time however, as you’ll encounter other humans trying to survive themselves. There are different human factions in California, some friendly and some that will attack you. It makes for an interesting dynamic when you’re seeing a three-way battle going down between yourself, hostile humans, and the zombie hoard.

Dead Island 2 is an open-world game again, and this time up to eight players can share the same world. You can compete with others, work together, or just simply co-exist in the same place while doing your own thing. From the sound of it, it seems developer Yager is trying to do the Journey or Destiny thing with seamless multiplayer. You can however play offline too.

Wired‘s interview goes fairly in-depth:

What do you think the biggest difference is between the first games and your approach here?

We don’t see it in terms of differences. We loved the first games so we looked at them and asked ourselves what we had to do to take things further. We’re not trying to out-compete them so much as tweak things, make a few things better and live up to the expectations of users now — those expectations, especially online, are drastically changing. A platform to leap from for that would be Dead Island and its seamless co-op, so that’s what we’re trying to do with eight players online on a dedicated server. It’s like the world’s smallest MMO. Micro-multiplayer online? We need more acronyms for it.

A “MiMO”, perhaps?

Hah, yes. But it was a really solid foundation to build on with eight player co-op and bringing persistency to the world as well. With that persistency, when you’ve got your players there you can return to the world as it was and continue with your games. That’s what players expect now and it just made sense to use Dead Island for that.

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Let’s delve into the online side of the game a little. How will the co-op system work?

It’s going to be pretty seamless. In Dead Island, if someone wanted to join the game you’d get a prompt and an input. We’re using a lot of the new match-making techniques in online games on PS4 and Xbox One. So, if you and I are playing and when I join you’re on my friends-list, you’re always going to find me and we’ll always drop into each other’s games. But if you don’t have any other friends who play, it’s going to go by stat ranking with other online players. Maybe there are people online you’ve played with before, acquaintances. Then it goes by your level or region. It’s all to make sure you get a great online experience.

Finally, Zoomin.TV Games has a video interview with game director Bernd Diemer: