TECHNO ITEM: Dead Island: Riptide

Full sequel or glorified add-on pack? Techland talks us through its zombie island return…

If Dead Island: Riptide is a sequel, why isn’t it called Dead Island 2 in this age of SEOfriendly internet nonsense? “It’s the next instalment in the series,” clarifies Deep Silver creative producer Sebastian Reichert. “Fans made clear that they want to have more of Dead Island and we also had a lot more ideas to add to the format. When the developer and fans want the same thing, we can deliver
something great!”

So, it’s not Dead Island 2, but it is a sequel being released a year and a half after the original – which implies the actual Dead Island 2 threatens to be something much more ambitious. With Riptide, though, Techland is using this opportunity to address fan complaints about the original game,
which was an undeniably interesting experience, despite its overall lack of mechanical polish. “Tons of stuff has been addressed,” says Reichert. “People were unhappy with the firearms so we improved everything about them. Of course, we’ll stay focused on close combat but when you use a gun in the
game now, it’ll pack a wallop compared to the first game.

“The interface was criticised indirectly so we did a lot there: how the minimap works, how the game
communicates that items are too old, mission guidance, etc. Close combat has been further improved, skill trees have been expanded and, of course, a high priority has been to get rid of the
bugs.” Dead Island was considered part of the generation of releases that just ship with a ton of bugs to be patched out later – a bit annoying, so it’s pleasing to know that one of Riptide’s priorities is to sort this out. Nobody wants a half-finished game on day one, and maybe this will help the follow-up
garner further critical acclaim.

“Taking place just after the original game with the same range of characters, plus a couple of new
additions, the new island sounds like a more geographically varied backdrop for players, headlined by the inclusion of water-strewn locales. “Water is an essential new element to the game! Exploring a flooded jungle with the boat is a great new experience that is now available in Dead Island: Riptide. A huge area within a flooded jungle is available to scout,” explains Reichert. Bodes well for
jumpy moments with zombies popping up out of rivers, we suppose – or not so much, if you’re the scared type.

“We also wanted to make sure that the city on the island is much better in terms of contrast. The city in Dead Island was already ugly before the creatures appeared. The new city is just beautiful and offers very interesting architecture.” Improved art direction, then, and an environment that offers a departure from what came before.

In terms of the story, there’s a gameplay-based logic to why Deep Silver and Techland opted to make it a direct continuation. “That seemed most logical as we wanted to continue the experience. You will be able to import your character from Dead Island. So simply take your old character and experience how the story continues – you don’t have to finish the game or reach a certain level. Just
continue your experience! Of course, it is also possible to start a new character.” As you’ve probably seen, Dead Island: Riptide came packaged with its own slightly lame announcement trailer – in the spirit of the original’s internet-dominating tale of a zombie child’s transformation (but ultimately not
representative of the vibe of the game or our experiences), there’s another slightly less ‘powerful’ one with a couple blowing up their boat in the face of relentless zombie hoards. If Tree Of Life director
Terence Malick made bad zombie movies, it’s the sort of thing he’d come up with.

We ask to what extent this marketing is viewed as a separate entity to the development of Dead Island titles. “They show off user stories, but not the actual story of the game,” is Reichert’s short reply. Like it or not (and we don’t really like it), these trailers are now part of Dead Island’s DNA, and we’re sure they’ll get more tenuous as the series rolls on.

Back to Riptide, though. The inclusion of new character John Morgan, who offers a slightly different combat vibe to the existing avatars, has an amusingly specific point of inspiration: a Dead Island mod on the internet. “John is our answer to a tribute video. Check out ‘Fist of the Dead Star’ on YouTube,” advises Reichert. “We love Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the North Star) and when developing
the game we always asked ourselves how we could implement fist fighting into the game to make it more than a just ‘last resort’ action. This video gave us some great ideas. John is of course
not as extreme as Kenshiro, but he is our martial arts expert. And we have a lot of goodies in there to make sure you can enjoy his skills.”

In many ways, Riptide is a reaction to the way players engaged with the original Dead Island, as Reichert recalls. “What we learned is: give players a playground. Don’t force them into a story. Let them tell their own stories. With Riptide we are already looking forward to hear from players how many insane ideas they had to get rid of the zombie plague!”

Right now, we’re getting a bit of a Dragon Age: Awakening-style vibe from Dead Island: Riptide – no bad thing to be compared to one of the best and most-full-featured add-on packs released on PS3, but nonetheless, this looks like incremental progress from the original rather than a glimpse at what
typically comes next with a big sequel.

Nonetheless, we’re intrigued, as those who persevered with Dead Island found it to be a rewarding co-op experience that, at times, felt like a smart interpretation of what it might actually be like to survive in a zombie apocalypse, with a certain ingame logic to the quest system that we’d like to see replicated in Riptide. Whether this turns out to be a semi-sequel or an actual follow-up, Dead Island is a series with serious room to grow.

ZOMBIE GENERATION
PS3’s five most important zombie games

1. THE WALKING DEAD
The new king, just because the zombies in it aren’t actually the point – they’re just a backdrop to human drama. This is probably the first zombie game released on any PlayStation format that isn’t just about killing them, though that’s obviously part of it. Buy the complete series now if you haven’t already.

2. DEAD ISLAND
Like it or not, the trailer for Dead Island guaranteed it a big audience from day one, because people are easily confused by smart marketing – nevertheless, Dead Island was a very good mixture of Borderlandsstyle gameplay and survival horror that could easily be excellent if its ideas are developed this time around.

3. DEAD NATION
Sophisticated twins tick zombie slaying from House marque that most of you probably own, thanks to the free PSN giveaway following the hacking saga in 2011. We love it, since, rather than just plonking players in random levels, it has a terrific sense of progression throughout its undead infested
world.

4. RESIDENT EVIL 5
Are they zombies anymore in Resident Evil? Well, yeah, in all but name. They may not wander slowly towards you in Dawn Of The Deadesque fashion, but they still feed on the flesh of the living. Resi 5 is a terrific coop experience and a very good singleplayer game, too.

5 BORDERLANDS: THE ZOMBIE ISLAND OF DR. NED
We enjoyed this good value DLC pack, since it applied zombies to Borderlands and somehow made it work wonderfully well – £8 for one of the best zombiebased experiences on PS3. That’s ruddy good in our book.

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Dead Island: Riptide

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