Dead Island 2 is a name that has been around for a while, and a game that has been in a seemingly perpetual state of development for the best part of a decade. We’re talking about Duke Nukem Forever levels of history here, and one that includes multiple developers, restarts, and shake-ups. So, it came with great surprise to us that not only was the game in the final stages of development - but that we’d have the chance to play through a polished and impressive 30-minute chunk. And then have a candid chat with the game director and creative director over at Deep Silver Dambuster Studios to talk about the game’s history and groundbreaking melee combat.

It’s the latter, alongside the visual quality and overall polish, that impressed us most from our hands-on time with Dead Island 2 (read those impressions here). Even more so once Dambuster’s David Stenton (Game Director) and James Worrall (Creative Director) let us in on the little nugget that you can melt zombies in the game thanks to the game’s “flesh engine”. Yeah, it’s equally nuts, disturbing, pulpy, and fun. Much like the game itself.

So strap in, as we talk about the return of Dead Island 2. The interview took place after a brief introduction and hands-on time with the game.

You mentioned that development started in 2018. Dead Rising 2 obviously has this long history on top of that. When you came in as a studio, what was the state of the game? Was it a complete restart on your part? What were those first few months like?

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James Worrall: “We really wanted to focus even more on close combat and that kind of evisceration, by keeping things down at street level. You know, right in your face. To do that we kind of had to start from scratch. We kept Los Angeles as the location because we thought that was cool. It’s iconic and well-known, so if you're going to take somewhere and smash it apart what better place than somewhere almost everybody in the world knows through that Hollywood lens. It's also a diverse location, with many cultural influences and a lot of creativity. So we wanted to keep the location, but everything else we built from scratch. The flesh engine, and yes we did have to do a bit of squeezing to get that acronym to stick, you've seen the results of that. That's all brand new work.

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"We kind of had to start from scratch. We kept Los Angeles as the location because we thought that was cool. It’s iconic and well-known, so if you're going to take somewhere and smash it apart what better place than somewhere almost everybody in the world knows through that Hollywood lens."

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David Stenton: “With regards to development, we had the combat tech working really early on. Obviously not in as nearly a finished state, or as high fidelity as you see now, but we had that core visceral combat pillar executed and fun to play really early on. That's been really positive for us because Dead Island 2 has always been fun to play throughout development. That was one of the main pillars that we wanted to push”.

Love the focus on melee combat where you’ve got your light attacks, and your heavy attacks, but depending on the weapon that you were using - that impressive contact and gore system kicks in. Heavy attacks are specific to a weapon, you can see the connection, an axe going into a head or a mallet crushing a body part. Developing that system, what were the challenges? Could you talk about how complex it gets?

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David Stenton: “It is complex, if you speak to our tech art director, this has really been his passion project, and for the tech team. It has been through a few different iterations because this is new tech and we’ve been trying out and testing different things. We always knew that we wanted it to be fully procedural. With some games, you might chop a limb off or damage a limb and you might just model-swap that for a damaged version. There's a limited number of variations that you can get from that kind of thing. We knew that we wanted to go the whole hog and have it fully procedural, and it was trying to find what was the best way to deliver that. It's definitely tech worthy of a GDC talk in the future.”

Related: We Played Dead Island 2 - And It’s Melee Combat is a Game Changer

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“One of the most fun things to do in the game is to melt zombies because that shows the potential of it. We've modeled the clothes and the skin, and then it melts through to the organs beneath that where there are individually modeled and simulated gallbladders and intestines and that kind of thing. Right down to the skeleton. Performance obviously has been a challenge, making sure that we can get all of this stuff running at 4K 60 frames-per-second on gen nine [Xbox Series X|S and PS5].”

“Balancing performance with the fidelity that we wanted and the level of procedurality. If that's a word. And with this being an action RPG, balancing that arcade instant visual feedback with the RPG side. Where there are stats and data and rolls and randomisations. Hopefully, we've struck a really good execution of all of that.”

James Worrall: “It’s not just getting the hit locations and the evisceration and everything. It was also all the other reactions. On one hand, we want them to be clearly zombies. Just so there isn't any moral question about beating people up to that degree. But you also want to see the flip side of that and get glimpses of their old humanity. That thing when you see a zombie stagger or perhaps trip over something.”

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“One of the most fun things to do in the game is to melt zombies because that shows the potential of it. We've modeled the clothes and the skin, and then it melts through to the organs beneath that where there are individually modeled and simulated gallbladders and intestines and that kind of thing. Right down to the skeleton."

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“Back to the melting, the best thing about when a zombie is melting is that most people [players] naturally back away. It's like they don't want the melting stuff to drip on their shoes or something. That's been a good indication that we've got something that really sits in your subconscious where those cognitive modules kick and you're in survival mode.”

The skill system and the perks, the RPG side. Being able to create your own build and sort of like class, could you go through a few dramatic examples of what skill cards can do? It kind of sounds a little bit like Fallout 76’s Perk Card system. How drastically can you change the way you play?

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David Stenton: “Outside of the skill card system characters have base stats like Agility and so forth and these can differ from character to character. The Skill Card deck, it's separated into tiers. The top tier is what we call abilities and they're very much physical skills, defensive abilities, and kick abilities. You've also got your Fury abilities because we wanted to bring Fury back which was in the original Dead Island.”

“Take defensive abilities, two that you can choose from is the ability to block where you can block and that's more of a Tank approach so you can regain Stamina by soaking up damage. The flip side is Dodge, which keeps you out of the fight a little bit longer. That's more of the Rogue style, I suppose, where you can dodge to the side, to the back, and keep that distance. For the kicks, you've got a flying kick ability, which is more damage dealing versus a drop kick, which knocks the zombies back. We've also got moves like Ground Pound and Dash Strike. Those are the sort of top-tier abilities and then we have Survivor Tier and Slayer Tier, where Survivor tends to be more of the sort of modifier type cards. In some cases, those would be stat modifiers, and they reward more in-depth different play styles.”

“So if you were the type of player that decides to be more agile and you wanted to go for fast attacks, you might choose a Slayer or a Survivor Skill Card that gives you bonuses for attacking faster. Building your damage output based on speed. Through the various combinations of these modifiers, the physical abilities, and the weapons, you can really change how you play quite drastically. Do I want to play more with precision weapons and have a standoff approach where I'm aiming with polearm-style weapons, or do I go for brass knuckles and claws and get up close.”

The original Dead Island had a bit of a Fallout feel with it being first-person, especially with the way that the RPG stuff worked. In terms of like NPCs and side quests, how is the world structured? Is it completely linear or is there going to be some non-linear stuff where you can chop and change and choose what story threads to follow?

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James Worrall: “We have what we call the Crit Path, which is the main story path that leads you from location to location and unlocks them in a certain sequence. But once that location is unlocked, depending on the location, some of them are quite open. Venice Beach is probably our biggest, most open area, and that’s a good half a kilometre long and maybe a third of a kilometre deep. And you can wander around, there are side quests, and each area will have hubs populated with survivors. They’ll give you missions and reveal all kinds of detail about the world. We've got a lot of deep world-building, so almost everywhere you look you will find little clues and little hints. Of what's to come not only in the story but perhaps in future situations and DLC.”

Dead Island 2 is currently on track for a February 2023 release on PC and consoles.