embraceuk1
Original Member Since 2001
Teaser Trailer
http://kotaku.com/gaming/eyes-on/dead-island-292156.php?autoplay=true
I ran into Techland while wandering the business hall here at the Games Convention today. Techland are the developer's behind Call of Juarez, the Chrome Engine and the guys making both Warhound and Dead Island.
After sweet talking one of the devs on hand I was walked into a backroom where Pawel Kopinski walked me through some gameplay for the recently unveiled Dead Island.
In Dead Island you play as a man who has been separated from his wife when the plane the two are on crashes on a tropical island. The island, it turns out, is home to a resort and a growing population of zombies. While the game certainly has some very strong first-person shooter elements, Kopinski insists it's more of a role-playing or action game then straight-up shooter.
The game will have side quests, which you get from various factions of uninfected survivors you find on the island, as well as branching story lines, he said. Dead Island will consist of 15 levels that you'll need to negotiate to save your wife.
The game play still looks a bit wobbly in places, but it's certainly shaping up. Most noticeable was the over-the-top damage modeling. The game uses three layers for all people: bone, muscle and skin. When you attack a parson you can cut or shoot through each of those levels and the damage you cause is illustrated very graphically, and uniquely depending on what type of weapon you use and where you hit.
For instance, Kopinski took on a group of ambling zombies with a machete, decapitating a grey-skinned woman in a bikini and then chopping off a man's leg and chopping into the side of another woman. The man Kopinski attacked fell to the ground, his leg, not so cleanly severed, laid to the side of his body, muscle and bone exposed. The woman who suffered the chop to the side still moved toward him, her body sort of leaning to the side, and an exposed gash of flesh marking his last attack.
The graphics looked quite good in places, though I still noticed areas where his attacks looked more like stickers than true deformation.
Kopinski says the team hopes to eventually make all the objects you run across on the island usable as a weapon, but currently that isn't the case. The game, which will feature guns, will more often than not have you relying on melee attacks.
The game is still publisher free, but I suspect that will change in the near future. I'd like to see the game given a bit more meat and some work on the plot, but the ideas has some major potential I think.
