Popular Industry Insider Says Dead Island 2 could still Release Despite the 8 Year Hiatus

Dead Island 2 is a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

The title was announced in 2014, but has been stuck in development hell for a long time. Due to a series of delays, trouble in its production and changing studios more often than I change my mind. I digress but it seems that Dead Island 2 isn’t truly dead in the water. According to insider info, Deep Silver has still been working on the game and a cherry on top: the publisher might give us a look at what’s cooking later this year.

Well-known insider and information-leaker Tom Henderson claims he has been in touch with sources close to the Dead island dev team and they have all confirmed Dead Island 2 to be in “a decent state.” Dead Island 2 has still been in development under Deep Silver’s internal Dambuster Studios and has been coming along, slowly but surely.

Henderson further added that Dead Island 2 “could be announced pretty soon with some kind of gameplay trailer” with an tentative release window of either late 2022 or early 2023.

The plot of the game will see the player on a plane where a zombie outbreak forces the pilot to crash into Hollywood. As the sole survivor, the player will then go forth to scavenge resources and try to survive for as long as possible. The gameplay will be similar to the original title with all the “expected improvements.”

It is worth noting that, so far, Dead Island 2 has seen two entire console generations pass by without so much as a reveal or peep. The long-awaited sequel will reportedly become a cross-generation release with current-generation-exclusive release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC (exclusive to the Epic Games Store).

One can expect hype to start building around this game, post the huge success of Dying Light 2 which saw 5 times the users immediately after launch. This was a massive jump from the number of players for its first part, Dying Light. The parkour/ zombie survival games were an extremely novel experience, so the hack-and-slash zombie survival genre is definitely not dead (or un-dead?).