Dead Island 2 was first unveiled at E3 2014 and has been dead in the water since then. Yager Productions, the studio behind Spec Ops: The Line, was initially developing the project before the zombie apocalypse became their undoing. The game was left wandering in the void until Sumo Digital found the corpse in March 2017. Word on the street is Sumo Digital has been pumping life back into the lifeless project, despite the lack of evidence.
In case your memory has gotten a little foggy. Dead Island was a revouluatiory open world zombie game. That tasked you with exploring a topical resort turned to hell while helping survivors and tackling the island in any order you saw fit. Side quests, skill trees, and other major RPG elements usually saved for other games where present here.
The Dead Island 2 timeline starts in 2014 when it was shown at the PlayStation press conference. It was well received across the board, and the industry was hyped. The trailer was shown again at Gamescom 2014 followed by a gameplay demo. We also learned that the game was scheduled to drop sometime in 2015, and people were already talking Game of the Year contender. Thinking it would somehow change the way we look at zombie games.
Everything was gravy until Yager Productions had a falling out with the publisher Deep Silver. What exactly happened no one knows, but in July 2015 Deep Silver botted Yager Productions. They eventually landed on Sumo Digital, and all information on the game went dark. Since then we have been left with speculation and rumors. With nothing else to go on people started to believe that the game wasn’t coming out, or didn’t care anymore.
Recently Eurogamer reached out to Deep Silver for a status update and surprisingly they said the project was still being developed.
“Dead Island 2 is in development at Sumo Digital, and we are excited by the progress the team are making with Deep Silver’s most successful IP. When we are ready to share more information, we will.”
Chance of E3 Appearance: 2%
So Dead Island 2 is still alive, undead or whatever the proper term is for a zombie game that has been a ghost. So with E3 around the corner can we expect an appearance? I’m going to say no. I assume the chances are pretty much zero. But fret not all you zombie enthusiast because I heard there would be another zombie game at the show. It’s supposed to be a big deal. It was The Last of Days Gone or something like that.
