The family had originally just been created for the trailer to set up the mood of the game, showing a hypothetical situation. According to Deep Silver’s brand manager Vincent Kummer, ”We wanted to show that a zombie apocalypse is not going to hold up or slow down for a family in a hotel, or for one particular person. And that sort of realisation can touch everyone… But, although we chose to present that particular part of the game, the entirety of Dead Island is not just about emotions. It’s not going to be a Heavy Rain with zombies.”
Thanks to the popularity of the trailer, Kummer has noted that the family in the CG trailer will appear in some capacity in the final game - whether as bit-part characters you meet or as playable entities remains to be seen.
Kummer was surprised at the reception of the trailer, too: ”Yeah, of course we were surprised. We were really happy with the feedback, and I think 90% of it was positive. With a trailer like that, you’re always going to have some people that say that it’s awful and they don’t like it. The response was really something that we were not expecting, but we’re really glad that it happened.”
