A bevy of news has come out of a THQ Nordic report that recently went live online. Among this news lies an update on the development of Dead Island 2. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell whether the fresh information is doing the game’s struggling development cycle any favors. As of now, work on the sequel has shifted to yet another studio, Homefront: The Revolution’s team, Dambuster Studios.
Wario64 shared the news in a post on Twitter, complete with a screenshot of the THQ Nordic report. Check it out in the tweet linked below:
From THQ Nordic report:
Volition is deep in development of a brand-new Saints Row game
Dambuster Studios leading development on Dead Island 2
Fishlabs working on new IP, unannounced projects
TimeSplitters co-creator Steve Ellis joining to help plot franchise future pic.twitter.com/aSue92sGen— Wario64 (@Wario64) August 14, 2019
This change in studios is especially interesting, as THQ Nordic’s most recent update on Dead Island 2 in May 2019 suggested all was going well. During said update, though, the publisher made no mention of if Sumo Digital (LittleBigPlanet 3) was still hard at work on the title. Given the Dambuster Studios announcement, it’s no wonder why THQ Nordic has been mum for so long.
The development of Dead Island 2 carries with it a storied history. Announced during E3 2014, the sequel’s original launch window was set for the spring of 2016. However, Yager, the Spec Ops: The Line developer, was removed from the project within a year of the game’s unveiling. By early 2016, according to Deep Silver, Sumo Digital had taken the reigns on Dead Island 2’s production. Now, presumably after three years of development from Sumo Digital, the production team has once again undergone a massive change. What this means for the sequel’s future, and that of the nascent franchise overall, currently remains to be seen.
Much like the Dead Island follow-up, Dambuster Studios has quite the storied history of its own. In 2014, the team of developers from Crytek, UK was moved to the then newly formed Dambuster Studios, following Crytek’s selling of of the Homefront franchise to Deep Silver. Homefront: The Revolution hit store shelves in May 2016, failing to garner the mostly favorable reception of its predecessor. Dead Island 2 marks the first project since then that Dambuster Studios has worked on, as far as the public knows.
[Source: THQ Nordic via Wario64 on Twitter]
