The Dead island franchise is both treading water and paddling ahead with upgraded versions of the franchise incoming. Well, most of the franchise at least.
Deep Silver is corralling the majority of their open-world zombie bashing franchise onto the latest consoles and PC. The Definitive Edition will bring players old and new the original Dead Island, Riptide, all of their respective DLC offerings, and a brand new game to the series subtitled Retro Rampage. The two main games will be upgraded and “greatly improved” when compared to the original – released in 2011 – and Riptide which came just two years later.
Retro Rampage, as first ousted by the infamous Australian Classification Board, will be a 2D brawler that will apparently feature zombies, characters from the two games, and health bars. This seems to be just an added side tale and will have no official lore implications, for those that are concerned about the series’ lore.
The missing link in this edition would be Escape Dead Island, which was almost universally shunned by fans, critics, and now even by Deep Silver themselves. While not many will mourn the loss, the exclusion still seems noteworthy.
Meanwhile, Dead Island 2 continues to meander down a dark, hidden alley all by its lonesome without much of an update. It wasn’t all that long ago that the game was tentatively set for a 2016 release date, but with a studio change somewhere in mid-development plus the release of this collection, 2017 seems more likely for this now Yager-less project .
Either way, the Dead Island Definitive Edition is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on May 31. Check out the announce trailer above – conspicuously much different than the original, emotional trailer for the first game – to prime yourself for zombie-flavored ultra-violence.
