When a game enters what is called “development hell”, very few people expect to see a good end product upon release. And that’s if they get to see the title, because that kind of reputation is usually disastrous for a launch.
However, as indicated Dan Evans Lawes, technical art director of Dead Island 2, to VGC, it might not be so bad for your game. “It certainly worried us at first,” he explains. “I remember when we started the project, I was like, ‘Is this a poisoned gift?’ Once we announced the game, people got interested, because they knew it had been in ‘development hell’ for as long as it had been, and I think people were expecting terrible, so they were pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t.”
Dead Island 2 goes on sale next month, so we’ll have to see if the fourth time around is the charm of its developers, but it looks like Dambuster is confident they’ve got the formula right this time around. If you want to know what we think after retesting the game, you can take a look at our final impression.