By John Walker on May 17th, 2011 at 3:01 pm.
Well, good. I’ve wanted a new in-game trailer for Dead Island, and now I’ve got one. Now I want £10m, and a speedboat. You can watch the trailer below. You can deliver the money/boat to my house.
Gosh, it’s looking awfully pretty.
We’ll be getting our hands on Dead Island in a few weeks. In the meantime, pretend to control it as you watch by waggling your mouse and thumping at your keyboard.
If this turns out to be a normal zombie blaster affair, I will be severely disappointed.
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Yeah, I’m really hoping its a beach holiday simulator.
Better than the real thing hopefully, with fewer guns!
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Reports I’ve heard from people who have actually played bits of it here and there are that it’s an average looking shooter that doesn’t really even involve the family you saw in the last trailer and doesn’t really have any character development at all (that is, you’re just a generic guy that swings weapons at zombies and nothing more). After hearing it described, I decided that I was not going to expect much from it other than to be an L4D clone.
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Oh John, what’s wrong? Surely the prettiness will cheer you up?
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Sadly they cover up all the actual engine shots with so much post production in this vid it’s hard to tell how good it’ll actually look, other than that the dynamic shadows look awfuly blocky
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One minute I hear you can play a rapper and use an electrified machete, the next minute they’re pushing an emotional narrative. I don’t want to be too judging before we really see anything, but I can’t see those two things gelling, and I know which one’s going to fall by the wayside (emotional narrative) and I know which one I don’t want to fall by the wayside (emotional narrative).
I hope I’m proven wrong, and I look forward to it regardless, but they could really push for something great here.
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What he said
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I think many games today suffer from incongruous marketing. There is often a disconnect between the tone established in promotional materials and that of the game proper. The choice of music in game trailers is sometimes particularly divorced from the game’s attitude towards its subject matter (e.g. Gears of War “Mad World” trailer) and I fear that may be the case here. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
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My understanding is that the trailers have nothing to do with the game. You aren’t playing the people in the trailers and they may not even be *in* the game in any capacity.
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@ Branthog
I don’t expect to play as them or anything to do with the events of the trailer, but I would expect/hope for the tone presented in marketing materials to reflect the one in the game.
And since they’ve explicitly stated in interviews that that’s the sort of tone they’re striving for… yeah. I expect it.
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it’s not “emotional.” it’s sentimental pap. of course gamers eager to fake sophistication are eating it up.
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What turned me off this trailer was showing snapshots of the people before they ‘died’, going for some emotional connection, and then mainly focusing on slo-mo shots of them as zombies in bikinis. I had no problem with the first trailer, which I thought had great atmosphere. This one’s too much though- sex sells, but get a fucking grip.
(eg I agree with there being a serious disconnect somewhere)
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Off topic, but Mr. Battles, every time I see your name I smile a bit since I love that band (new cd soon! Hurrah!) and clicked on your name thinking it was going to be pictures of a show you saw. As you already know (!), they aren’t but some very nice shots! That’s… all I wanted to say.
On topic, The Witcher 2 is awesome.
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From what I have heard there’s no “emotional narrative” planned whatsoever – that feature was limited to the first trailer.
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It’s like how cars never come with the half naked girl on the bonnet. So disappointing… :(
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My clan primarily plays L4D, and we’re all genuinely looking forward to this.
Heres hoping we’re not disappointed.
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Another excellent trailer, but it tells me nothing of the gameplay! ALAS! Wherefore art thou in-game gameplay footage?
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More like “Wherefore art thou NOT in-game gameplay footage?”
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I really hope the human angle is actually in the game. I’d love to be able to discover about the people at the resort (like in Fallout 3/NV where you discover the world pre-war through logs and terminals etc) like seeing holiday videos, snaps, unsent postcards etc and then finding that person as a zombie and actually thinking about that person and who they were before beating them to a pulp with a lead pipe.
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Personally I would find it hard to care about any of the tourists, simply because they’re rich enough to afford to go to one of those infernal resorts in the first place.
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Curse those people who have a higher income than ourselves! Curse them to hell!
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The trailer shows a sizable town though, so, local/general population is at least hinted at, if not represented. There was also a screenshot showing a bunch of survivors together, possibly figuring out what to do, so there’s hope that this isn’t going to be just a shoot-em-up. It’d be really exciting if it involves other more complex elements of survival.
And somehow, maybe the lack of gameplay footage bodes well? Because that could be an inference that the gameplay is not actually high-action-oriented — ironic then that the very people complaining of the lack of such footage also seem to want something that’s not of the norm of zombie-themed games. In any case, there’s nothing to lose to just wait it out and see what the game delivers.
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Yes, caring about people is directly related to how much money they have.
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Goodness me this is depressing.
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Not quite a dub-able as the big one was.
http://tubedubber.com/#lZqrG1bdGtg:yhOKhJaM1QE:0:25:5:0:true
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I really do hope that all the zombies in the game dance like the one that was on fire.
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Fits oddly well with the inception trailer… http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D66TuSJo4dZM&start1=&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DeI36BPAQ-jM&start2=0&authorName=Over+30
(mute dead island)
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http://tubedubber.com/#eI36BPAQ-jM:MXXRHpVed3M:0:100:0:0:true
I quite liked this one myself.
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Going to the beach is not celebrating life, don’t be silly.
EDIT: It would be amusing if all the zombies were on mopeds. http://tubedubber.com/#eI36BPAQ-jM:4atjIXO03zM:0:100:0:0:true
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I kind of worry that all the moving pictures we get are all cinematic type of videos. The gameplay was only shown, to my knowledge, by screenshots! That makes my geek senses tingle.
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Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks this that both this, and the previous trailer, is pure trite? I’m not one who normally cries “Oh, it’s a game! I want to see gameplay!” But it seems to me that the Dead Island trailers are attempting a Schindler’s List level of seriousness, for a game that will undoubtedly turn out like The Mask. The two do not, and should not, be associated with each other, and yet here they are.
In other words: what gives, internet?
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Yes, this.
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Very heavy handed to the point of corn, yes. Being understated about zombie disasters would be something new, not OMG SERIOUSX10. The first one was well done because of its clever use of structure. This hasn’t got that. I think they’ve just been watching The Walking Dead or something, which people seem to think is terribly impressive for some reason.
I mean “They came to celebrate life. Now they’re trapped forever in DEATH”
Wow. Stinging irony whose like you won’t find in just any ol’ highschool notebook margin. The margins of a highschool zombie literary genius, that’s who!
They should have followed up with some game. That’d be the thing to do I think.
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Anyone else feel a weird imperialist/orientalist trope running through this? It’s ostensibly set in a South East Asian paradise but (nearly) all those pictures of happy people are of European/Americans. And the only people we see who could be locals are zombified.
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I get a strangely imperialist vibe from your comment, what with it being written in English, are you using language to dominate and exclude non-white non-western non-English speaking readers of this site?
The preceding sentence was about as moronic as your comment. Seriously grow up, throw out your copies of Edward “Discredited Charlatan” Said’s Orientalism (subtitle: I’m from a rich Christian arab family of multimillionaires with American citizenship and millions of dollars in assets but I wish I was a poor Palestinian Muslim rock thrower) and start acting like a real person who doesn’t look for excuses to be offended wherever they can find them.
My only hope is that your comment was extremely dry satire of the whole Resident Evil 4 hubub, but otherwise, oh my.
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Anyone have an ax need grinding?
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Actually, Said’s work is now part of cultural studies canon, and aaronjwee’s comment is worth keeping an eye on. If anything, the locals might actually do better than the visiting tourists at adapting to a zombocalypse, so it’s worth asking why this doesn’t seem to be the case.
On the other hand, it’s also worth reserving judgment until the game. With RE5, for example, the actual game was far less problematic (in terms of racial politics) than the early trailer – until it got to the chapter where it was actually worse, of course. Heh.
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“Fewer guns please”
Agreed.
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How many guns have we seen then?
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@Teddy Leach
There were at least two in the screenshots. They seem odd things to find knocking around all over the shop on a tropical holiday resort island, so hopefully they, and their ammo, is uncommonly uncommon.
Just running around shooting the zombies would be dull, and a waste of the build-up and setting.
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If this is set in the Caribbean, as i seem to recall it is, there should be loads of guns. And machetes!
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kotaku played a preview build and said that, even though he found an assault rifle, he only had the ammo that was left in the mag, then it was back to blades.
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Money and boat delivered.
Haha, gotcha!
Game is at least inciting.
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The guy(s) writing/directing these cinematic trailers are *really* good. Too bad the game is looking to have very little to do with them.
What a shame.
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And how can you say that? Have you played the game? Enjoying your bandwagon ride?
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Freak out much? You have an emotional or financial investment in this game to justify such belligerence?
Tell me how *you* reconcile the atmosphere of these cinematic trailers with the slapstick action of strapping a taser onto a machete with duct tape and turning it into a cheap knock-off of Thor’s hammer, with lightning arcing everywhere.
I’ll wait right here while you perform the mental gymnastics.
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I have yet to See what you just described here.
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@lethu
If you click the link below, you will have seen it:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/11/march/dead/dead11.jpg
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Well, I guess this makes a point for Torgen, but c’mon is this enough to destroy the whole game which we have yet to uncover?
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Tell us if you got the boat. If so, donate it to the readers.
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This is what passes for an “in-game” trailer these days? In-engine doesn’t cut it.
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Is this whole “being worried and disappointed about something unreleased yet” some kind of a new sudden internets trend? Or does hype only work for titles which are obviously going to be crap (Bulletstorm, Brink, SWTOR…?) This is a closed question, with only two choices, I as well can be a pain in your ass.
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lethu, if you think the reactions to the schizophrenic info being released about this game is unusual, all I can say is “Welcome to the internet (and logical thinking.) You must be new here.”
The developers have already caught a huge backlash for the “whipsawing” of expectations generated by the first trailer, and now they’ve gone back to that well after showing bog-standard in-game screenshots.
What I find unusual is the two of you here being raging fanboys over this game and attacking anyone skeptical of it. Smells like Scott Adams, frankly.
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Torgen, I am old enough in this place to know that if you are indeed correct in your reactions about this game, this would be the first time the internet would have successfully identified an overhyped game prior to its release, otherwise this is just another fail on the community’s part… in fact I was here way before the date when a disproportioned wave of immature kids have learned to hold a keyboard and were unleashed into here, if by any hazard you know when that happened. And I am not calling you an immature kid, just in case.
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For a game that’s going to be released in “a few weeks” (I haven’t bothered looking at the release date, that’s just what John said) the lack of any gameplay footage is kind of worrying.
Considering that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that there might be some kind of disconnect between the super serious tone of these trailers, and how the game actually plays.
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There’s definitely been an influx of knee-jerk reactions lately.
When the info for Skyrim was released, there were like 200 comments complaining about how it wasn’t Morrowind. How the new menu is just dumbed down (OMG INFLUENCED BY ITUNES). How the previous games had X amount of things while Skyrim has Y amount. And so on.
RPS is hands down one of the best gaming blogs on the web, but the majority of it’s community are cynical elitists just waiting to tell people how disappointed they are with everything, and how every game made prior to 1998 is the bees knees of design and entertainment. It’s sad because they drown out the interesting comments made by the few people who seem to actually like this medium.
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It’s just… we’ve been peed on so many times! I barely washed the stench out last week!
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It’s not exactly a knee-jerk reaction to point out that the two trailers and the screen shots (plus info released about combining tools to make weapons), seem to imply two completely different types of games. Is it a survival horror adventure with a deep, emotional story? Or whack-a-Zombie-mole?
Maybe it’s just a case of hiring an ad agency that was more interested in making a couple of great additions to their promo reel, instead of sticking to the script.
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How do zombie women covered in scratches and wounds and signs of physical struggle keep their bikinis on?
Not that I particularly want to see zomboob, but y’know.. Someone’s gotta ask the important questions here.
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I feel the more important question is: will there be any trikinis?
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The important question is surely “will we see a zombie in a mankini”?!
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Whoever came up with that graphic of a guy hung from a palm tree frond, doesn’t understand how palm trees work. Or else that’s a really lightweight corpse.
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It’s a sad Keanu standee.
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In a video game era packed with zombie, those ones really stand out. They don’t look like green rotten morons. They don’t look like hero addicted emos. They look like they’re dead. They’re creepy. I like it a lot.
Do want. This is one of the very few games I may buy right at release price if reviews are good.
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Is it “packed”, though? Other than Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead, what other first-person zombie games are there?
I’d love a serious first-person shooter based on something like Dawn of the Dead, and this is looking like one.
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And they ruin it at the end with the Facebook link. Still, a phenomenal trailer.
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*unfriends SquareWheel*
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More running zombies… *sigh*
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How are all those tourists young and sexy? Are there no normal people there? I thought it was going to involve families and stuff, like a real simulation of what would happen if a zombie outbreak occured on a vacation island :(
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You can tell they’re clearly aware of the backlash around their first trailer and are trying to unify with what they know their game actually is.
Especially after seeing the screenshots, I just can’t see how this doesn’t end up as a standard boom-headshot-1000-zombies FPS, completely disconnected from all the emotionally manipulative trailer faff.
Also yes, “in-engine” != “in-game”.
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1:09 shows zombies with purses. I can’t wait to see the fannypack zombie.
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The setting seems perfect. Looking out over the landscape will hopefully offer moments of respite; I found that to be the case with Far Cry 2.
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Looks lovely, but if they release another trailer with no actual gameplay, I’ll start to worry.
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I would like Just Cause 2 with zombies (and judging by the flickering tree shadows, this looks like the engine) with the character intensity of Max Payne in an open sandbox world with multiplayer and optional persistent servers with modding support. Sold.
If this is going to be another watered-down console port with autoaim, stiff console controls with little options…I’ll have to pass big time.
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I’ll keep my expectations low but I would like a more strategic co-op zombie hunt that actually includes some survival aspects along with complex and varied levels that are more than just point a to point b. L4D is still amazing for me but would be almost perfect in an open world like environment where you have to make it to the gun shop or the food market to re stock your home base with fellow friends while they are out scavenging for other needs.
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Zombie games aren’t my thing.
But this is still what “Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball” should have been.
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I thumped at my keyboard and it closed the window….
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Zombikini’s!
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The animation looks a bit stiff……….. ba-dom tish!
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