The dead are on the move again and Chris Capel talks how best to bash them in the face with Yager's Isaac Ashdown

With Dead Island and Riptide developer Techland off doing Dying Light for Warner Bros, the gap was there for another developer to take the reins for Dead Island 2. Enter Yager, fresh off the well-received Spec Ops: The Line, and they're keen to put their stamp on the sequel. How do I know this? Well, I sat down with a member of their team at EGX to talk zombies, walkers, undead and infected. Just like most of my conversations with people.

Strategy Informer: Okay, first could you introduce yourself please!

Isaac Ashdown: I'm Isaac Ashdown and I'm a Senior Gameplay Programmer at Yager working on Dead Island 2.

Strategy Informer: Now, how did Yager get involved with Dead Island 2?

Isaac Ashdown: Well, we're big fans of the first game, we played a lot of it in the office in down-time while working on Spec Ops, it was a lot of fun getting into that and playing co-op. Essentially when Yager heard that they could pitch for Dead Island 2 they went for it!


Strategy Informer: What was the pitch?

Isaac Ashdown: Basically what we're making now! Seamless multiplayer in a blood soaked but beautiful California!

Strategy Informer: You definitely seem to have gone for a more fun, less serious vibe with the sequel. What made you decide to go this way?

Isaac Ashdown: After playing Dead Island ourselves and watching others play, we noticed that people were having a really great time playing with each other through the storyline, having fun with the crazy weapons, the intense combat and all that, but perhaps weren't that invested with the story. I can't speak for everyone but I felt that the story itself had some disconnect between the tone it was going for and how you were playing the game. So we looked at that and tried to work the tone around how people played. People are having fun and doing lots of crazy things, and with our story - you're in California and you're living the life you've always dreamed because the apocalypse allows you the opportunity to do what you like! And that's how people wanted to play the game!

Strategy Informer: Does the story go deeper than that?

Isaac Ashdown: Yes, that's just the setup. You're one of the immune characters, someone who before the apocalypse was a bit run down and sees it as a new lease of life and the opportunity to be a hero. You're there helping out the rest of the population. You can make the things they want happen for them, basically sorting out the zombie problem.

Strategy Informer: Will there be set characters like the first one?

Isaac Ashdown: Yes, we have four playable characters. There's a Speeder, who's good with fast weapons and combat. Then there's a big hulking guy who's into large, heavy weapons. Then there's two other characters we haven't revealed yet, the Bishop and the Hunter. We've carried a lot of character progression stuff from the first game over. You'll get skill points, you can level up, customise your character and play style, all that.

Strategy Informer: Speaking generally, what areas are you looking to improve on from the last two games?

Isaac Ashdown: Well we've certainly made a big effort on the co-op experience. There's seamless multiplayer with up to 8 players now. The idea is that when you're playing it you don't have any barriers to playing with your friends. Maybe you're in different parts of the story or different levels, you can still play together and don't have to wait for each other or anything like that. Also the world is self-populating with players who you might not know, they might be having trouble with a hoard of zombies and you might want to help them, or you can leave them to it and do your own thing. It's an open-world sandbox with multiplayer tied in well.

Strategy Informer: Will the zombies scale depend on your level? So if you're a level 8 player and go into a battle with a level 2 player will that player get slaughtered?

Isaac Ashdown: We definitely want to make it so that if you're playing with someone of a different level you can still find ways to play together and still have a great experience. We don't want the high level player to not get the loot they want to make it worth their while, or the low level player to not do enough damage to make a difference in combat. The exact specifics of how we're doing that we'll have to get into later.

Strategy Informer: It is still a free-roaming open world then? Not smaller, segmented levels?

Isaac Ashdown: Absolutely open world, yes.

Strategy Informer: How free will it be?

Isaac Ashdown: Well, we've got three main areas: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. The demo we've got represents just under 10% of the Los Angeles area. There won't be any loading screens, but we can't really quantify how big it all is yet.


Strategy Informer: The last couple of Dead Island games were infamous for being very buggy, how are you aiming to counter that happening this time?

Isaac Ashdown: Obviously bugs are never a goal. We're focused on stability as much as possible. No one wants bugs in the game. It's certainly something Deep Silver are helping out with, giving us all the resources we need to do that.


Strategy Informer: You're only on current-gen systems (PC, PS4, XB1), has that freed you a lot?

Isaac Ashdown: Absolutely. Just having that raw additional power in and of itself allows you to do a lot more. Previous gen titles that were also next gen and doing multiplayer, they can do a lot of interesting things but certainly the game we're making we wouldn't be able to do on PS3/360. Having eight players, playing together, across the world on a really large map, and with more players you have to have more enemies. Just having that "more more more" thing is certainly something the new gen gives us.

Strategy Informer: Obviously co-op's the focus, but are you supporting single-player as well? It was a bit tough to do that in the previous games.

Isaac Ashdown: First off, we certainly support offline true single-player, if you unplug your ethernet cable it'll still work! Even if you are playing online you can still have a single-player experience. We've got a big world, maybe all the other players are far enough away that they won't be affecting you. We still have to make that experience fun. There's still stuff you can do by yourself, you can progress your storyline, you can fight enemies, you can still have a meaningful rewarding experience. The game has to take into account situations where players are nowhere near each other as well as right next to each other.

Strategy Informer: What new Special Zombies can you tell us about?

Isaac Ashdown: In the demo we're showing at EGX we've got two, based on concepts from the original. We've got the Thug and the Suicider. Those are the only two we can reveal at this time, but if you compare them to the versions in Dead Island you can see that they look and play different. We've re-imagined old enemies but we will have new ones.

Strategy Informer: How are you "building" on the crafting system?

Isaac Ashdown: Nice one.

Strategy Informer: Yes, I was amused when I wrote it.

Isaac Ashdown: We've taken a lot from the building blocks of the crafting system from the last game. You still find blueprints, new weapons that already have bonuses, you find lots of different materials, and you put them together to create new ones. The main difference we've made from the last game is that you no longer have to find a workbench. We found that this was one of those things that could block people from playing together, because one guy in order to continue might have to go back to the hub and repair the weapon that they're using or want to make a new one and the others have to wait for them. It's a little frustrating to do that, so you can do that anywhere now. But you'll be vulnerable while you're doing that! You either have to find a safe space or get your friends to protect you.

Strategy Informer: Will there still be weapon degradation then?

Isaac Ashdown: Yes, your melee weapons will slowly get damaged over time and you'll have to repair them, and yes you don't need a crafting bench for that either. It's also worth mentioning that you'll always be able to repair a weapon, it'll never be destroyed for good.

Strategy Informer: I presume of course there'll still be special weapons stashed around the world to find.

Isaac Ashdown: Yes, there will be stashed weapons. The loot system's pretty intricate, there are a lot of different pre-modded weapons. A lot of the best weapons though you'll have to craft. The "Home Strike" for example is a baseball bat with a bowling ball on the end! That you'll need a blueprint for.

Strategy Informer: How does the area "regenerate" over time? With the first game zombies and even items would reappear.

Isaac Ashdown: We've tried to make our world feel as alive as possible. You can interact with people when you help them or complete a mission of course, then they'll reward you or even take over part of a building. Maybe you don't help them out and they might have to fall back, their house could get overrun again. We've tried to tie the way that the world changes into those dynamic events. If you come back to an area you've been to before you'll find it's different to how you left it, but often it's because another player has been there in the meantime. We certainly want to make it so that when you clear out an area it's not going to be cleared out forever because the world has to stay alive. But your actions still have meaning or permanence to what you do affecting the world.

Strategy Informer: Does it change as you progress, like get harder?

Isaac Ashdown: As you keep playing the challenges change. Areas that were a bit tough to begin with obviously get easier as you level up. The world itself does change as you play in lots of different interesting ways. Some of the details we can't really go into yet unfortunately, but it'll be fun to see.

Strategy Informer: And when's the current release date?

Isaac Ashdown: We are aiming for Spring 2015.

Strategy Informer: For the last question, do you feel in competition with Techland and Dying Light?


Isaac Ashdown: I'm totally looking forward to playing Dying Light! I'm a big fan of zombie games, and it's nice to see all the different ideas that other developers are using.

Strategy Informer: Friendly competition then?

Isaac Ashdown: Yeah! I do know some people from Techland, so friendly is definitely the word.

Strategy Informer: Glad to hear it! Okay, we'll wrap it up there, thank you for your time!

Thanks again to Isaac for speaking with us and both Yager and Deep Silver for setting this up. The open-world first-person zombie-smacking genre is hotting up so it'll be fun to see the differences between Dead Island 2 and original creator Techland's own Dying Light when they both come out next year, but it's good to hear that the rivalry isn't quite as bitter as we feared. I'm just hoping both games are great and aren't released too close together, because I really don't want to have to choose.