When you really think about it, every landmass is an island, isn’t it? For the purposes of designing a sequel to your first-person Diablo, even the Americas are potential water-bordered dead zones.
While Techland busy themselves with Dying Light and Hellraid, Yager have taken up the reigns for Dead Island 2. Their zombie apocalypse makes a “vast” open world of California, where “paradise meets hell once again”.
Developed in Unreal Engine 4, Yager’s Dead Island 2 features dedicated classes. There’s a berserker, whose action-oriented playstyle constituted pretty much the only option in the original Dead Island. But they’ll be complemented by new types, like the stealth-first hunter.
Eight-person multiplayer will return in the Dark Soulsy fashion it was first implemented in the series – players can cooperate, fight, or simply get on with their separate business in the same world.
Also returning is that segmented melee system, which we’ll now use to take down human enemies as well as zombies.
We’re promised characters, too: an “elite crew of heroes” immune to the virus and seeking adventure in the Golden State – now a huge quarantine zone several months after the happenings on Banoi.
Maybe Yager have the dramatic chops to infuse Dead Island with some proper moral nail-gnawing? That and other questions (didn’t we already have a Dead Island 2?) to be answered in Spring 2015.