Is Dead Island 2 coming back from the dead this year? Multiple insiders promise a re-reveal by the end of 2022
Do you remember Dead Island 2? The zombie shooter with a big focus on melee combat and co-op gameplay was announced back in 2014, but has struggled with development issues since then and even changed studios several times. Now Dead Island 2 is still supposed to return from the dead in 2022 – at least that”s what several insiders promise.
We clarify what these industry experts reveal about the re-reveal and release of Dead Island 2 and what they say has changed about the game since 2014. Incidentally, in keeping with the theme, Dead Island 2 is of course not the only gaming concern.
Is Dead Island 2 coming back from the dead?
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The latest info on the re-reveal
New signs of life probably by the end of 2022: On August 2, in the course of a report on (TryHardGuides), the established industry insider revealed that Dead Island 2 will still be re-announced by the end of the year. However, there is no concrete date for this.
There have been reports before that Dead Island 2 could make its comeback at gamescom 2022 in August or at this year”s Game Awards in December. At this point, however, we can only speculate about the exact unveiling date.
What this means for the release
Release rumoured by March 2023: This April, there were already rumours that Dead Island 2 could be released in the foreseeable future. Games journalist Colin Moriarty spoke explicitly on the Sacred Symbols podcast that Dead Island could be released in September to October at the earliest.
First there was a statement from Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors himself about the potential release, according to which Dead Island 2 could be released by spring 2023 at the latest. Considering the new info from Tom Henderson, we think the latter is more likely.
What new info is there about the game itself?
The current status: Tom Henderson wants to know that Dead Island 2 is still in a decent condition
. After the first playthroughs, the expectations for the final product are quite high.
A handful of gameplay details: Dead Island 2 is still supposed to be a zombie game with a (semi-)open game world, in which several players beat the undead to a pulp or shoot them in co-op. Meanwhile, Dead Island is said to have been given five to six brand new characters, while there are several locations – including Hollywood and San Francisco.
What has been released so far: There has been little to no real final gameplay of Dead Island 2 in the public domain. For example, we were allowed to try out the zombie game at gamescom 2014(!). Instead, in the past months and years, early builds of the game have been leaked from time to time, but they probably no longer reflect the current state of Dead Island.
You can still watch at least one official trailer – and that”s the one for the original E3 2014 announcement:
The problematic story of Dead Island 2
After being announced, Dead Island 2 was already postponed to 2016 in April 2014 . The reason for this was the current quality of the game, which was not satisfactory. In the summer of 2015, the responsible developer studio Yager was fired by publisher Deep Silver – a short time later, Yager”s subsidiary Yager Productions, which was explicitly founded for the production of Dead Island 2, filed for bankruptcy. Yager Development itself was not affected by this, however.
In March 2016, Sumo Digital took over the project. However, it then became suspiciously quiet around Dead Island 2, so that there was speculation about the game being discontinued – Deep Silver denied this. Summer 2019 then followed the next bang: Now Sumo Digital Dead Island 2 was taken away and the Dambuster Studios were up.
Since then, there have been small updates on Dead Island 2 every now and then, but no official statements on the re-reveal or release. Maybe we will finally find out more this year.
What are your hopes and expectations for Dead Island 2? Are you excited for the possible return of the co-op-focused zombie shooter? Let us know in the comments!
