After working on Dead Island, developer Techland decided to move on to other things. Apparently other things included developing another first-person survival horror game with RPG elements, kind of like Dead Island. While Dying Light turned out to be a success, plenty of fans were still waiting for a true sequel to Dead Island.
Dead Island 2 was announced at last year’s E3, and was originally set for a spring 2015 release, though it was later delayed. Now it seems that the game will be delayed even longer, possibly forever.
“With Dead Island 2, Deep Silver has always been dedicated to delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve,” Deep Silver said in a press release issued to Kotaku and others yesterday. “After careful consideration, today we announce the decision to part ways with development partner Yager. We will continue working towards bringing our vision of Dead Island 2 to life, and we will share further information at a later stage.”
There is currently no word on whether Deep Silver plans to move forward with the game immediately or set it on the back burner while it focuses on other projects.
After debuting at E3 2014 with a fun CG trailer, Dead Island 2 gameplay was shown later that year at Gamescom. That the game was seemingly so far along in development before Deep Silver decided to drop Yager leaves us curious what happened in the months after Gamescom, as well as what the true cause of the game’s delay was.
The future is currently unclear for Dead Island 2, but it’s also murky for Yager. The studio was previously best known for developing Spec Ops: The Line and is currently listed as developer on the space combat sim Dreadnought, but the studio hasn’t issued a statement on the dealings with Deep Silver or its future plans.
It will likely be quiet some time before we see Dead Island 2, if we ever do at all. At least in the meantime, gamers can always hope for a sequel to Dying Light.
