Publisher Deep Silver revealed Dead Island 2 in 2014 and Los Angeles was its main setting (with the game’s logo teasing that San Francisco might be in it too). Fans were excited about the sequel for a number of reasons — that original reveal trailer was great — but the question on many minds was this: Why is Dead Island 2 set somewhere that isn’t an island?
I traveled to Nottingham, England to visit Dambuster Studios, and this was one of the first questions I asked. Unsurprisingly, given that this is the team that has been developing this game since 2018, Lead Narrative Designer Khan had an in-depth answer.
Simply put, Los Angeles has become an island, metaphorically speaking.
Dead Island 2 begins in the final days of the evacuation of LA after the zombie outbreak has swept the city. According to her, some aspects of this evacuation were incredibly effective, so that the entire city was blocked off unexpectedly well. The authorities’ final decision is that Los Angeles must remain in quarantine so that the infection can progress and, hopefully, die. As a result of this lockdown, no one can enter, and no one can leave. As if completely surrounded by water with no access to boats or other means of escape, people (and zombies) within Los Angeles cannot escape the city. Although geographically not an island, the authorities have cut off Los Angeles from the rest of the world.
This is the scientific explanation why Los Angeles is the setting for a series of games about being stranded on an island with zombies. There’s also the practical reason to sit somewhere between the rows: Los Angeles is an iconic location, easy to market, and has more variety than a resort island like Banui on the Dead Island. I wouldn’t be surprised if Los Angeles is the setting simply because designing a zombie game in the city is a lot of fun. It certainly seems so if my conversations with Dambuster are any indication.
“Going from Banoy on a resort island to Los Angeles… the answer is… it’s super diverse,” design director Adam Duckett tells me. “There’s a lot of opportunity and potential, both in terms of environments, but also in terms of the characters, the crew, and the zombies themselves that we can put into the game. There’s this vibrancy, the sunny locations, the beaches, the exotic mansions of Bel-Air, and beyond. It’s a great environment For us to experience this fighting experience.”
Creative director James Worrell echoed Duckett’s sentiment, noting that LA is a great opportunity for big characters in terms of actual location and people.
“Los Angeles has a pretty eccentric or expressive culture and identity, and that identity is recognized all over the world,” he says. “Whether you’ve been to L.A. or not, we’ve all seen it through a Hollywood lens, and we thought a Hollywood lens like that would be a great way to entertain yourself while you’re running around punching zombies.”
During my conversations with the team at Dambuster, the developers referred to the game’s setting as “postcard” LA. Los Angeles’ open hub design will take players to the iconic locations you’re likely to see on a California airport postcard: Bel-Air, Hollywood, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, and more. Given the action-horror concept of the game, each of these postcard locations has been cartoonish to some extent, which makes sense – the locations have to match the over-the-top zombie wave and larger-than-life characters. Choose to stay in Hell-A.
“You have two or three layers,” Worrell continues. “We’ve got this fantasy version of Los Angeles that everybody’s seen — the Hollywood lens. We’ve got a stamp on it, the tragic remnants of the failed evacuation attempt … and then on top of that, we’ve got your classic zombie-apocalypse kind of thing. But we made sure Very to raise the atmosphere and the color of the place. [Art director Adam Olsson] and his team have done a great job of brightening up this place. We’re not looking at a version of Fallujah or anything like that or a war zone. It’s still a fantastic space, easy to navigate and relatable.”
Olson says that on the visual side of things, he and his team worked to build the almost mythical being that LA has become as a city, which further brings out the pulpy atmosphere of Dead Island 2. Worrell said that Dambuster’s inspirations for Dead Island 2’s atmosphere in Los Angeles go back to horror of the 80s, 90s and 00s, especially in the more schlocky realm, such as Robocop, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Alien and Predator franchises.
“I have really, really nostalgic memories of going to see a movie in the afternoon, and you’d be immersed in that world, and the credits would roll, and you’d go out into that sun, and there was a real sense that you’d just left a real place behind,” comments Worrell when I ask him what he wants the players to feel when the Dead credits roll Island 2 are rolling. “And there is a bit of a sense of loss, but a bit of a sense of ‘well, I can’t wait for the next one.'”
As for Olsson, he wants the players to feel dazzled by all the colors and how everything in Dead Island 2 connects.
“I want them to say, ‘Why aren’t other things doing this?'” he says. “Zombies are fantastic. Really, what we want to do here is just bring the fun back with zombies because … we’ve had so many games over 10 or 20 years where it’s been popular, but so many of them are just that dark look that held A stand to show the deepest depth of man. And I just want people to come out and think, ‘That was fun.’ Zombies are fun again.'”
Worrell, Olson, Duckett and the team at Dambuster believe Los Angeles is just the place to do it.