While at the recent 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Daily Dead had the chance to catch up with the team at Deep Silver to get some hands-on time with the upcoming Escape Dead Island. The newest entry into the Dead Island franchise follows protagonist Cliff Calo as he tries to discover the origins of the virus outbreak in the Dead Island universe.
At the start of the single-player campaign, Cliff has been disowned by his father, a wealthy media mogul. Eager to prove himself and return home to take his place as the head of the company, Cliff sets out with his friends to film a documentary exposing the source of the deadly virus plaguing the area. Cliff and his team believe the mystery behind the outbreak can be traced to the fictional island of Narapela, an island in the same chain of islands from the original Dead Island. Once they arrive, everything goes to hell as Cliff’s reality becomes altered, causing the player to not only solve the mystery of the virus, but also try to distinguish between what’s really happening and what is in Cliff’s mind.
Fans of the series will immediately notice the departure of the realistic world of Dead Island in favor of a comic art style that utilizes a third person camera. A rep from Deep Silver explained, “We went with the comic approach. One, to set it apart from the previous titles (Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide), and two, with the comic approach it really lets us bend the reality...”
As we start the demo, Cliff is waking up from being unconscious in a cave. He realizes that he is deep in the jungle of Narapela and must find his way back to the beach where they arrived on the island. His hope is that he will find his friends and boat safely there. Starting from scratch without any weapons or gadgets forced some stealth game play, which is unique to this game in the Dead Island franchise. Sneaking my way through the jungle and across the island, I encountered a group of milling infected in a courtyard. While staying out of sight, I searched the area for something to defend myself with, in my case, a screwdriver.
Unlike previous Dead Island games, your weapons won’t deteriorate with use and, besides the normal upgradeable ranged and melee weapons, stealth weapons like the screwdriver can only be used when sneaking upon someone; they aren’t strong enough to defend against a head-on attack or anything like that. Using the environment to maneuver around the group and taking them out one by one or simply sneaking past them all together are really the only options you’re given at this point.
And without giving away too much, we do finally arrive at the beach and, keeping with the theme of all these strange things going on in the game, shipping containers begin to fall from the sky. After being knocked unconscious, again, Cliff wakes up to find his friends all there like nothing happened, saying that he had been asleep. The only thing is that a rope that Cliff had in his hand before he passed out was still in his hand when he woke up from his “dream”.
Everything up to this point seems to be early in the game setting up the rest of the story. A big part of Escape Dead Island will be to figure out what’s going, as it appears that zombies aren’t the weirdest things happening on the island either, something else that mixes things up for gamers.
The tropical landscape of Escape Dead Island is not a traditional open-world area. Instead, a seamless level-structured world allows the player to move between different levels or areas of Narapela, which appear to all be a part of the larger environment. The entire world is not open to you at the start of the game, and as you progress through the story, you unlock new areas, weapons and gadgets. Once you have been through a location, you then have the ability to backtrack to discover any shortcuts, collectibles or areas that may have been unreachable with the equipment available on the first go through.
Deep Silver is looking at Escape Dead Island as “the missing puzzle piece of the Dead Island universe, tying everything together. Fans of these games will appreciate a lot of stuff here. So if you’re a fan and if you’re not a fan yet, you will be after this game.”
Escape Dead Island will be released this fall for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
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