Dead Island 2 has been in development for a long time, but it seems the final game won’t be stuck in the past. According to recent job ads, current Dead Island 2 developer Dambuster Studios is looking for people to work on an “established AAA title” on “next gen consoles and PC platforms.” These specific job ads don’t mention Dead Island 2 by name, but Dambuster isn’t known to be working on any other “established AAA title” (they also have a game called Chorus in development, but it’s a new IP). Dambuster also mentions they’re looking for programmers with DirectX 12 and ray tracing experience. As of a year ago, the company’s job ads were still saying Dead Island 2 was coming to “current and future platforms,” but plans may have changed since then.
For those who haven’t been keeping up, the development of Dead Island 2 has been a bit rocky, to say the least. The game has been in development since at least 2012 and is currently on its fourth studio – over the course of almost a decade the game has passed from Techland, to Yager Developments, to Sumo Digital, and finally, to Dambuster. Publisher Deep Silver have promised the following features in the past…
- California! Vast exploration and outlandish survival, welcome to the Golden State as zombie playground.
- Characters! Choose from an elite crew of heroes who are immune to the zombie virus and eager to run headfirst into the apocalypse.
- Combat! Fight against hordes of zombies as well as human enemies – visceral melee combat at its best.
- Crafting! From motorized grinders to electric machetes, decide how to dismember these zombies.
- Co-op! Seamless zombie multiplayer evolved for up to 8 players, letting you drop in and out of shared survival adventures.
Shifting development entirely to next-gen platforms would be a good way for Dambuster to start fresh with Dead Island 2 and perhaps avoid a lot of the challenges and pitfalls associated with developing open-world games on dated Xbox One and PS4 hardware. Maybe this time the game will actually get finished!
Dead Island 2 is currently without any sort of release date. What do you think? Is focusing on newer platforms the right move? Will we actually be able to play this game someday?
