Now that Dambuster Studios' long-awaited Dead Island 2 has been previewed for games journalists, fans have finally got a sense of just how long the sequel will take to complete once it’s in their hands. Dead Island 2, the gory first-person zombie-slaying follow-up to 2011’s Dead Island, has been in development for quite some time and has reportedly hit several bumps along the way.
Developed by Polish studio Techland, the original Dead Island was first announced at E3 2006 and wowed fans with its intense cinematic trailer debut five years later in 2011, seven months prior to release. It was met with mixed reviews, with many critics and fans lamenting that Dead Island’s combat and storytelling didn’t quite reach the heights established by its slick, well-produced trailer. Despite the lukewarm reception, Dead Island sold over 5 million units two years after its initial release, enough to justify a sequel.
In an interview with Wccftech, Dead Island 2’s art director Adam Olsson said that while he’s not exactly sure how long the game is just yet, he estimates that if players complete the main story and at least some of the side quests and random activities found around their hellish version of Los Angeles called Hell-A, players can expect to put in around 20 hours of gameplay. He suggested that a more thorough playthrough of the game’s various modes and ancillary activities, like co-op and collectible hunting, could push completion times higher, but offered no firm estimate.
HowLongToBeat.com clocked the runtime of the original Dead Island at around 18 and a half hours to complete the main story. That number ticks up to around 27 hours when side quests are included. With Olsson estimating that Dead Island 2 will take around 20 hours to complete the story and some but not all side quests, it’s fair to assume the games will take around the same amount of time to complete.
While there has been quite a long gap between numbered installments, Techland did release a direct follow-up to the story events of the first game in 2013’s Dead Island: Riptide. The time between Riptide and Dead Island 2 has been a long and rocky one, with the game changing studios three times during production. When Techland chose to work on the 2015 survival horror title Dying Light instead, Berlin-based Yager Development was handed the keys to Dead Island 2 in 2012. Yager was removed from the project in 2015 due to creative differences with publisher Deep Silver and handed over to Sumo Digital, the developers behind the LittleBigPlanet series and its spinoffs. Finally, in 2019, a full seven years after development on Dead Island 2 began, the game was handed to Dambuster Studios who were finally able to drag it over the finish line.
Dead Island 2 launches on April 28 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Wccftech