Now that Dambuster Studios' long-awaitedDead Island 2has been previewed for games journalists, fans have finally got a sense of just how long the sequel will take to complete once it’s in their hands.Dead Island 2, the gory first-person zombie-slaying follow-up to 2011’sDead Island, has been in development for quite some time and has reportedly hit several bumps along the way.
Developed by Polish studio Techland,the originalDead Islandwas first announced at E3 2006 and wowed fans with its intense cinematic trailer debut five years later in 2011, seven months prior to release. It was met with mixed reviews, with many critics and fans lamenting thatDead Island’s combat and storytelling didn’t quite reach the heights established by its slick, well-produced trailer. Despite the lukewarm reception,Dead Islandsold over 5 million units two years after its initial release, enough to justify a sequel.
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In an interview with Wccftech,Dead Island 2’s art director Adam Olsson said that while he’s not exactly sure how long the game is just yet, he estimates that if players complete the main story and at least some of the side quests and random activities found aroundtheir hellish version of Los Angeles called Hell-A, players can expect to put in around 20 hours of gameplay. He suggested that a more thorough playthrough of the game’s various modes and ancillary activities, like co-op and collectible hunting, could push completion times higher, but offered no firm estimate.
HowLongToBeat.com clocked the runtime of the originalDead Islandat around 18 and a half hours to complete the main story. That number ticks up to around 27 hours when side quests are included. With Olsson estimating thatDead Island 2will take around20 hours to complete the story and some but not all side quests, it’s fair to assume the games will take around the same amount of time to complete.
While there has been quite a long gap between numbered installments, Techland did release a direct follow-up to the story events of the first game in 2013’sDead Island: Riptide. The time betweenRiptideandDead Island 2has been a long and rocky one, with the game changing studios three times during production. When Techland chose to work on the 2015 survival horror titleDying Lightinstead, Berlin-based Yager Development was handed the keys toDead Island 2in 2012.Yager was removed from the project in 2015due to creative differences with publisher Deep Silver and handed over to Sumo Digital, the developers behind theLittleBigPlanetseries and its spinoffs. Finally, in 2019, a full seven years after development onDead Island 2began, the game was handed to Dambuster Studios who were finally able to drag it over the finish line.
Dead Island 2launches on April 28 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
