Dead Island 2 : Deep Silver and Yager part ways. (Edit: Yager files for insolvency.)

[Mikeybb]

As said in the title.

The delayed Dead Island 2 now has another bump on the road to release.

The developer, Yager (spec ops the line, currently working on Dreadnaught) have parted ways with Deep Silver.

Deep Silver have stated that they will continue working on the title and give no specific reason why the partnership was folded, though a lot of commitment to 'delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve' and other such statements of intent to continue development are made.

Yager has released no comment as of yet.

So...

Do you think we'll ever see the release of this title?
I have to admit that the first dead island was a guilty pleasure of mine, though it never quite lived up to the promise of that frankly haunting trailer.
I was quite looking forward to seeing what a team like Yager could do with it, given their work with Spec Ops.
Now though, it looks like everything is up in the air again.

Ah well, at least there's still Dying Light.

Any thoughts fellow forum people?

Edit: Not Forum Necromancy on my part, but a further development.

Yager Productions have filed for insolvency according to some sources.
Linked here http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-29-yagers-segmented-dead-island-2-team-files-for-insolvency

As soon as I saw the headline, I got a little worried for the future of the team.
Partly out of concern for another team dissolving, partly out of concern for the upcoming Dreadnaught.
Turns out it was worry over nothing.
Given that Yager Productions was a sub studio specifically created to develop Dead Island 2, it seems to have been some form of a financial/legal bulkhead between it and the other branches of their studio.
So, it seems Yager is safe and still developing the impressive looking Dreadnaught.

Yager lives on in a more focused form, though whether this means they'll take on another project with staff now blessed with free time, or fold them in to the Dreadnaught project is yet to be seen.

 

[Zhukov]

Well, there goes my already fleeting interest.

Dead Island was utter shit( as was Riptide, the sequel) and the only reason I even bothered noting that there was another one on the way was because of the new developer.

 

[Loonyyy]

"Dead Island fans"

Yeah, these people don't exist. The game was utter shite, a piece of worthless crap, not worth the space it takes up on a hard drive. The only reason I can imagine anyone having a favourable opinion on that game was that they don't have something better to play.

They shouldn't be trying to follow in the original, or Riptide's footsteps to appeal to some "Dead Island fan". They should be burning it down and starting from scratch.

Dying Light is the only worthwhile thing that came from that direction.

 

[Zhukov]

The game as a whole wasn't too bad. It was fun co-op, had some interesting and satisfying violent gameplay mechanics. It was fun enough to load up, go around and slaughter some zombies. Obviously Dying Light is basically what it should of been. Dead Island still wasn't the colossal turd everyone made it out to be.

It was fun in co-op in the way that most things are fun when you do them with a few friends.

The interesting mechanics boiled down to what? Left click to hit, left click again to hit again. Press Z (I think it was Z) for generic rage mode. Oh, and I suppose you could throw your weapons and risk having them glitch out of existence.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Jesus, Zhukov and Loonyyy, just how did Dead Island torture your beloved pets to death? On the rack or was it something more contemporary a'la Hostel?

OT

Can't say I'm particularly fussed: Dead Island 2 looked to be going the quirky, zany Dead Rising way I despise. Maybe if a new developer is found, one to build on the tone of that trailer and the gritter in-game parts....

 

[Zhukov]

Jesus, Zhukov and Loonyyy, just how did Dead Island torture your beloved pets to death? On the rack or was it something more contemporary a'la Hostel?

You don't understand man, someone is making statements contrary to my opinion, on the internet.

One must nip that shit in the bud, forthwith.

 

[Loonyyy]

"Dead Island fans"

Yeah, these people don't exist. The game was utter shite, a piece of worthless crap, not worth the space it takes up on a hard drive. The only reason I can imagine anyone having a favourable opinion on that game was that they don't have something better to play.

They shouldn't be trying to follow in the original, or Riptide's footsteps to appeal to some "Dead Island fan". They should be burning it down and starting from scratch.

Dying Light is the only worthwhile thing that came from that direction.

Someone's salty today.

No, just capable of using my eyes when playing Dead Island.

The game as a whole wasn't too bad.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

It was fun co-op,

And only in co-op. Playing it single player is a mess. If you can get some friends together, and pay between 2 and 4 x the original price of the game, then you can at least get through without dealing with the atrocious autolevelling system.

had some interesting and satisfying violent gameplay mechanics.

Yes. Let's list some of my favourites.
-The entire firearms character, whose skill tree is borderline useless, as are firearms for most of the game.
-Levels on the weapons in general.
-The kick, which you will abuse, because it is godlike, and the only way to deal with the appalling stamina system.
-The weapon degradation, which makes keeping a supply of level appropriate weapons (Because the zombies level with you, and you don't get resupplied with level appropriate weapons regularly enough to keep pace with this, so most of the time, a good chunk of your weapons are doing insufficient damage to really matter).
-The broken saving system.
-The wonderfully inventive crafting system, which is rarely worth bothering with, because all of the weapons are expensive as shit to keep repairing and upgrading, and will quickly become useless as you level, and all the zombie trash level with you.

The gameplay sucked. The story, sucked. The game was trash. A waste of everyone's time. The mechanics started to come together with Dying Light, but failing that, Dead Island was a remarkably bad entry into an oversaturated genre. Players would be better spent picking up Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead (1 or 2), or Dead Rising. Any of which is far more entertaining that Dead Island, which doesn't even live up to it's own trailer. When the trailer for a game is better than the game, that's a bad sign.

It was fun enough to load up, go around and slaughter some zombies.

If by this you mean, a tiresome way to juggle the stamina bar while slowly chipping away at the health of poorly rendered zombies, in the service of quests that made you want the zombies to win, sure. It was "fun" in the same way that bashing my head against the wall is fun. Fun fun fun.

Once I got into the rhythm of throwing most of my weapons at the zombies, it was borderline amusing, especially taking the knives back out of them and throwing them again. And then the game reminds me of how shit it is with another level, another set piece, or god help me, I die and get sent to god knows where because the saving and checkpointing system sets a new high water mark for broken.

Obviously Dying Light is basically what it should of been. Dead Island still wasn't the colossal turd everyone made it out to be.

Yes, it was. Salty today are we? (See how annoying that is) I did actually play the game. It was a colossal turd. And getting enough players together in co-op to make it tolerable enough to finish isn't particularly appealing. Dying Light isn't even what it should have been, it completely blows it out of the water. The main thing they share, the weapons system and crafting, actually works in Dying Light, and is engaging. The game actually makes the levelling and combat empowering, rather than frustrating and broken. The crafting is worthwhile and entertaining, and low-risk to explore. The game throws crafting materials at you, and gives you plenty of trash zombies to use them on.

Dead Island was more disappointing to me than Superman 64, because at least in that game, I cheated my way past all the bullshit to see what the thing was about. Whereas Dead Island got shut off in disgust, because there is only so long I can pretend that I am not above it in every way.

Jesus, Zhukov and Loonyyy, just how did Dead Island torture your beloved pets to death? On the rack or was it something more contemporary a'la Hostel?

*sniff* Poor Bonnie, she never stood a chance.

I would actually like to see a Dead Island like the trailer. Of course, the trailer tugs at your heart strings with the final moments of a family in a holiday gone wrong, whereas the game has you getting booze for alcoholics and their hangovers while playing as a manslaughtering drunken driver frat boy IIRC. Horses for courses I guess.

 

[A.K.B.]

Well....
the pressing question now is Where will the standard "creative differences" explanation/statement be posted now..

 

[gigastar]

Im guessing its becuase Yager care more about Dreadnaught than they do about Dead Island, and Deep Silver care more about Dead Island than they do about Dreadnaught.

Dev wants to do one thing, publisher wants them to do something else.

Publisher doesnt own dev, so dev leaves.

Seems simple to me.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I honestly believe that the only people who liked Dead Island were stoned and playing with friends.

Adderall + Co-op with favorite gaming friends = Still didn't like Dead Island

But seriously... To anyone who's legitimately bemoaning this news about Dead Island, do yourselves a favor and go get a copy of Dying Light if you haven't done so already. I was extremely hesitant to buy Dying Light in part because Techland developed DI and Riptide, and in LARGE part because I'm damn sick of zombie games and think that they represent the last resort of talentless, unimaginative writers.

That said, I stand before you all and declare Dying Light to be my favorite game released so far this year. No sarcasm.

Yes, the story is weak. Yes, the characters are formulaic. Yes, zombies. But holy blue balls the game is FUN to play! I'm not yet halfway through the story and my achievement tracker says that I've only done ~25% of the side missions, but I've spent over 20 hours laughing my ass off at the many ways you can make your enemies go splat. Better still, if you don't mod weapons or use duplication glitches, nighttime is a bona fide nail-biter. I haven't experienced this level of self-preservation anxiety in a video game since Silent Hill 2.

Techland said that Dying Light is the game they wanted to make before Deep Silver chewed up their project and shat out Dead Island. Considering yet another developer parted ways with Deep Silver, I'm totally convinced that Techland is telling the truth. Breaking away from a short-sighted dictator is the second-best thing Techland could have done - Dying Light itself takes the top honor.

Spoiler: Who doesn't want to do THIS?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Didn't they already make like 5 of these brain dead games...
And their least awful one was probably Dying Light although the content was weak as fuck, so do that one instead of going back to a worse formula.

If I was any kind of self respecting dev I wouldn't want to work on Dead Island either.

 

[OhNoYouDidnt]

As much as I appreciate Deep Silver's dedication to making sure their games have both physical and digital copies available, it's rather laughable that they cite "quality concerns" as the main reason for their repurposing of Dead Island 2. This is the publisher that brought us Ride to Hell: Retribution, after all.

 

[Loonyyy]

Adderall + Co-op with favorite gaming friends = Still didn't like Dead Island

But seriously... To anyone who's legitimately bemoaning this news about Dead Island, do yourselves a favor and go get a copy of Dying Light if you haven't done so already. I was extremely hesitant to buy Dying Light in part because Techland developed DI and Riptide, and in LARGE part because I'm damn sick of zombie games and think that they represent the last resort of talentless, unimaginative writers.

Oh god yes. I remember when I saw the first Dying Light material I was so excited, and then my brother pointed out that it was the DI devs. Almost crushed my hopes for the game. But it works, damn it.

And I haven't even had a decent co-op session in it, and I don't mind, whereas without the co-op, DI is close to unplayable, let alone possible to enjoy.

 

[Erttheking]

*Reads thread* Good or bad I'm glad I never played the game so I can sit this little shitstorm in a teacup out.

OT: Oh boy, Yhatzee's comparison of a child custody case certainly seem a lot more accurate now.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I know I've said it before, but I'm legitimately surprised that Dead Island shambled on to become a franchise after how abysmally stupid the original game was in pretty much every conceivable way.

The only thing that made the game worth playing was Co-Op, and even then, because we spent the entire time making fun of how badly designed it all was. Oh, and that one time that we crashed the game after finding out that you could take a pickup truck out of the garage hub, and have it immediately respawn the next time you enter the garage. We built a gigantic wall of pickup trucks around the hub - because it was more fun than any of the stuff we were supposed to be doing.

 

[Mikeybb]

New information in first post.
Reposting here for convenience.

Not Forum Necromancy on my part, but a further development.

Yager Productions have filed for insolvency according to some sources.
Linked here http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-29-yagers-segmented-dead-island-2-team-files-for-insolvency

As soon as I saw the headline, I got a little worried for the future of the team.
Partly out of concern for another team dissolving, partly out of concern for the upcoming Dreadnaught.
Turns out it was worry over nothing.
Given that Yager Productions was a sub studio specifically created to develop Dead Island 2, it seems to have been some form of a financial/legal bulkhead between it and the other branches of their studio.
So, it seems Yager is safe and still developing the impressive looking Dreadnaught.

Yager lives on in a more focused form, though whether this means they'll take on another project with staff now blessed with free time, or fold them in to the Dreadnaught project is yet to be seen.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Jesus, Zhukov and Loonyyy, just how did Dead Island torture your beloved pets to death? On the rack or was it something more contemporary a'la Hostel?

You don't understand man, someone is making statements contrary to my opinion, on the internet.

One must nip that shit in the bud, forthwith.

Look, I'm as fond of brutally crushing dissenters as the next commissar, but I'd like to think that outside of the GID the Escapist forums actually have standards for posting activity: namely, not using insane levels of hyperbole which should be relegated to those who physically harm us, not videogames!

 

[Dragonlayer]

The snipped howlings of the damned, evidently suffering the most unspeakable of agonizing torments for all eternity, like everyone on the Event Horizon

Different strokes for different folks I suppose: I thought the game's tone managed to do a relatively decent job of conveying tragedy at times. Like the vacationer weeping over what he had to do in a pool of the butchered remains of his friends and family, or the apocalyptic end-of-civilization partying you mentioned, which I felt was a thin veneer over desperate terror. Game certainly wasn't perfect (god the sewers and prison sections sucked....) and it never truly reached the quality promised by the trailer, but it definitely wasn't pure execrable hatred of humanity compressed to a disc.

Though it should be noted I had the game before seeing the trailer, so maybe I would have been a bit ticked off had it been the other way around.