As the E3 2019 schedule draws near, it's worth remembering that we're about to reach the fifth (yes, fifth) anniversary of Dead Island 2's reveal. That's right, the Dead Island sequel was first announced all the way back in 2014, at the start of this console generation's life cycle, and now, as we're near its end, the game is still missing.
Not only do we have no clue when Dead Island 2 is coming out, publisher Deep Silver has remained frustratingly silent on anything to do with the game for the last half decade. We even did our own mini-investigation into Dead Island 2's whereabouts a few months ago, and couldn't even figure out who was developing the damn thing anymore. But, at last, a new mini-update on the game has arrived, courtesy of a recent financial presentation from THQ Nordic, who hold a stake in Deep Silver's business operations.
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In yesterday's presentation, CEO Lars Wingefors, upon looking ahead to THQ Nordic's upcoming slate of titles, very briefly mentioned that Dead Island 2 was still "being worked on", and fans should "stay tuned" for more info when it arrives. And that was it. The game hasn't been cancelled, and we'll learn more when Deep Silver is ready to share. Cue heavy sighs across the internet.
That said, look closely at presentation slide number 15 during the live stream, and you can see the upcoming sequel has received a new logo, in which the iconic grapheme of the hangman's tree from the original game has been updated with the number "2" beneath it. Whether this is an rough piece of concepting, or an official update to the game's previous artwork is unclear, but it is perhaps a promising indication that Dead Island 2 has been at least evolving since we last saw any gameplay in 2014.
With the dawn of the PS5 and Xbox Project Scarlett right around the corner in 2020, the open world zombie shooter doesn't have long to either release on current hardware, or transition to the next-generation to stay profitable. Fingers crossed that Deep Silver gives us more information than just "Dead Island 2 exists mmkay" in the coming months.
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