It's been a long road for Deep Silver's Dead Island 2, a sequel that was initially announced in 2014 and eventually underwent several revisions at different development studios. Fans who were excited about the prospects of another first-person, co-op zombie game in that tropical setting were left without much news for years, and the franchise seemed all but lost. That was until Dambuster Studios was announced as Dead Island 2's new developer, which led to one of the most unexpected gaming comebacks in recent memory.
The first Dead Island game originally filled a unique niche in RPGs, especially for those that leaned into more action-heavy combat systems. It was released in 2011, a time when Bethesda led the industry in first-person, multi-platform ARPGs. Still, Dead Island established its own audience by focusing on simple, survival-inspired fun with co-op features that also brought friends into that adventure. RPGs have continued to grow since, coming in many shapes and open-world varieties while Dead Island 2 was internally rebooted. Now that it is released, it might be worth checking just how much gaming has changed in the years that followed its original announcement.
A New Generation of Games Followed Dead Island 2's 2014 Announcement
Initially, Dead Island 2 was revealed during Sony's 2014 E3 press conference, almost three after the release of the first game. E3 was a phenomenon within itself, and even though it's questionable whether fans will see E3 recover from its 2023 cancelation, that particular event set the stage for major titles slated for the then new Xbox One and PS4 systems. Over a year before the sequel's announcement, a spin-off called Dead Island: Riptide was released to middling critical reception, but it was a major entry nonetheless. For fans of Dead Island, there may have been a feeling that the franchise was heading places and would keep up with all the technological innovations happening at the time.
2014 was a very important year in retrospect; the Xbox One and PS4 were just beginning to gain steam, and a new generation had begun. Some of the bigger gaming trends that came out of that generation were the popularity of multiplayer online battle arenas, or MOBAs, as well as the sudden surge of battle royale games that persist to this day. In 2017, PUBG became one of the first mainstream battle royale titles on the market, only to be overtaken by Fortnite shortly after. Live-service projects such as these are a massive part of the industry now, demonstrating how games can function as persistent platforms with their own dedicated communities.
Dead Island 2 Arrives During a Competitive Time in the RPG Genre
By the end of 2020, Microsoft and Sony would move on to new machines with the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, respectively. Around this same time, CD Projekt Red released the much-hyped Cyberpunk 2077, a first-person, open-world RPG designed in a similar vein to Bethesda's single-player Fallout games. Two other prolific Western RPG developers, InXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment, were also acquired by Microsoft just a couple of years before. It's apparent that RPGs have become important for AAA publishers, as a great many gamers have come to appreciate the non-linear, player-driven stories found in that genre.
Original Dead Island developer Techland even went on to create another zombie RPG series with Dying Light, which has seen multiple entries released between 2015 and 2022. There's undoubtedly much more competition in the RPG genre than there was in 2014, so fans should be delighted to see Dead Island 2 persevere. Despite starting Dead Island 2 from scratch years after its announcement, Dambuster Studios still managed to ship the long-awaited sequel as a cross-generation title - maintaining its promise to gamers on last-gen consoles.
Dead Island 2 is now available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
