Dead Island 2's Development Hell 'Wasn't All Bad'
The studio responsible for Dead Island 2, Dambuster, believes that the game's bumpy development cycle has helped the game gain favor with gamers.
Dead Island 2 has had a particularly bumpy development cycle - the game was announced in 2014 (although work on it had begun two years earlier) and since then it has changed developers twice. The studio responsible for the final version of the project, Dambuster, believes that all these perturbations have served the project well..
- In an interview with VGC the developers admitted that such a long development cycle has made people look on Dead Island 2 with more favor.
- As they explain, after such a long development cycle and multiple changes of developer, everyone expected that Dead Island 2 would be a disaster. The fact that the game actually looks good, therefore, turned out to be a pleasant surprise for the players. As a result, audience sentiment toward the project is now quite positive.
- The folks at Dambuster may display such attitude, as the team's work on Dead Island 2 proceeded mostly smoothly. Therefore, from this team's perspective, the development hell the project went through was "not all bad."
- Dambuster took over the project in August 2019 and decided to do a complete reboot. Developing a high-budget game in less than four years is a good pace, especially considering how much trouble the pandemic has caused.
- Dambuster has developed its version of Dead Island 2 from scratch. However, the developers decided to keep the California setting, as it suited the game's character, providing a great variety of locations and characters.
Recall that Dead Island 2 was announced nine years ago and at the time the game's developer was sudio Yager Development. Two years later, it was replaced by Sumo Digital, and in 2019 the project was taken over by the Dambuster, known for developing Homefront: The Revolution.
The latter studio finally managed to complete Dead Island 2. In February, the developers boasted that the project had gone gold, so we should no longer fear further delays (the case of Cyberpunk 2077 was a rare exception from this rule).
The game will debut on April 21, 2023. The title will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
