It's been five years since it was announced, and yet Dead Island 2 continues to drag its feet on the long road to release, which is actually kind of fitting for a game that's supposed to be about decomposing corpses shuffling slowly towards you.
While the more sensible folk among you probably assumed a while back that the zombie sequel was long dead, it's actually been lingering in development hell for half a decade now, flitting between developers like a real-life zombie virus.
THQ Nordic shocked everyone back in August this year when they confirmed that Dead Island 2 was not only still alive, but that development had been moved over to Dambuster Studios, the studio behind 2016's Homefront: The Revolution. I don't know if you remember, but Homefront: The Revolution... wasn't great.
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Dambuster is the third studio Dead Island 2 has managed to infect in the span of five years. Development originally started at Yager Development, before Sumo Digital took over in 2016. Will Dambuster Studios be the one to get it over the line? A new report seems to think so.
A Reddit user named MrJaxerino who claims to have some insider info on the troubled game suggests that the current development team is currently aiming for a 2020 release, so that it can launch alongside the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett.
"Also, the team is also apparently working on some new gore technology that utilizes 'sub polygon displacement.' I am in no way an expert on these things but that is what I was told," writes MrJaxerino. "Finally, as a kind of obvious statement, the team at THQ Nordic does have PS5 dev kits and they do in fact look like the leaks."
I'd advise you take MrJaxerino's comments with a pinch of salt for now. They don't seem to have any kind of proven track when it comes to leaks, and no proof was offered beyond them claiming to know someone close to development on Dead Island 2.
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I would say that at this point, it's probably a safe bet that if Dead Island 2 does release, it won't be coming this generation. Although I do wonder how much of the previous work would have to be thrown out so that Dambuster can get the most out of releasing the game on next-gen hardware.
Certainly, I don't think anyone wants to see the scraps of a game that was in-development for years for PS4 and Xbox One hastily ported over to PS5 and Scarlett just so it's released in time for the next-gen launch at the end of 2020.
Then again, I thought we stopped caring about Dead Island 2 years ago but people still seem to be hung up on it, so what do I know?
Featured Image Credit: THQTopics: Dead Island 2, THQ Nordic