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THE ULTIMATE PLAYSTATION OFFICIAL MAGAZINE INTERVIEW BOOK<br />
08<br />
<br />
the game in the office – we’ve got lots of retail kits and<br />
WE GOT TO A PLACE<br />
couches and stuff where you can play, and that was the<br />
game everybody was playing for weeks and weeks and<br />
weeks after launch. It wasn’t released in Germany, so it<br />
was even extra special to get copies of it in so everyone<br />
can play, so there was that factor...<br />
OPM: If it didn’t come out in Germany did you order in a<br />
contraband delivery?<br />
MK: Not quite, but people were encouraging me to go<br />
back and visit my mum all of a sudden in England and<br />
say, ‘how many do you think you can get in your luggage?’<br />
It was just always on in the office for weeks and weeks<br />
and weeks. And one of the big reasons was because the<br />
melee combat was great. It looked really lovely and I<br />
think, as well, because you could play co-op really easily.<br />
So people were doing co-op in the office constantly<br />
during lunch breaks, and then they were going home in<br />
the evening and playing even more, and it was just really<br />
easy to play and it just was this game that took us by<br />
storm.<br />
As it turns out we finished up [Spec Ops], and as we<br />
were finishing we heard that Deep Silver were interested<br />
in partnering up with somebody for doing a sequel. We<br />
heard it on the grapevine. We thought, ‘Okay, well we’re<br />
just finishing, we’ve got a good few guys who are available<br />
to do a pitch’. So they started to work on a pitch pretty<br />
quick and we got in contact with Deep Silver, made that<br />
pitch and they really liked the idea of working with us.<br />
Thankfully! And yeah, we just basically jumped on it. We<br />
couldn’t believe it because it had just been so popular [in<br />
the office].<br />
OPM: How is the studio split for your two games? Are<br />
the core Spec Ops team now working on Dead Island or<br />
[PC-only] Dreadnought?<br />
MK: We haven’t really split it so we kept core guys from<br />
Spec Ops on one or the other. We’ve obviously ramped<br />
up for both projects, so we’ve got upwards of 90 or so<br />
people with Dead Island and I think we’ve got about<br />
another 40 on the other project, Dreadnought. But it’s<br />
a real mix of Spec Ops wards between both projects.<br />
We opened it up to everybody: ‘who’s really passionate<br />
about what? Please do what you really want to do’. A lot<br />
of people stayed with Dead Island, particularly all the<br />
guys who did the pitch, and we kept a really big team<br />
with Dead Island all the way through pre-production and<br />
production now.<br />
OPM: What do you think is the secret of taking over a<br />
franchise such as Dead Island?<br />
MK: That’s a really good question. I don’t know. We<br />
didn’t really think about any sort of transition like that<br />
when we were pitching. As I say, we heard Deep Silver<br />
just wanted to find a good partner for it for whatever<br />
reason and we didn’t really stop to think. We were just,<br />
I don’t know, just so enthusiastic about going for it that<br />
we never stopped to really consider – we just thought,<br />
‘wow we’re actually going to get the chance’, and it’s not<br />
often you get to do that. It’s not often you get a game you<br />
really, really, love and then someone says: ‘would you like<br />
to give it a go?’<br />
‘Well of course!’<br />
‘Really?’<br />
<br />
WHERE YOU COULD UPPERCUT<br />
A ZOMBIE WITH A SLEDGE-<br />
HAMMER AND SEND THE THING<br />
60FT IN THE AIR.<br />
‘Yeah.’<br />
So we really just jumped at the opportunity and then<br />
it all kind of like settled in. ‘Oh God, people really like<br />
this game as much as we do.’ Then it really turned into<br />
the, ‘Oh right, we’ve really got a position of responsibility<br />
here now because of how popular Dead Island is and how<br />
it’s spread and how much it’s sold and all the word of<br />
mouth…’ I mean it’s really quite incredible.<br />
I still play Dead Island 1 on a weekly basis on my<br />
machine. We all do for reference and to make sure we’re<br />
still on track with the game. And there are still people<br />
playing online all the time. Usually when I’m playing at<br />
my desk I don’t turn the online off because I always want<br />
to experience that, and there’s always people from the<br />
community still actively playing it, joining my game and<br />
having fun. Obviously they don’t know who I am, but I<br />
appreciate it all the same. I think the main thing we take<br />
on is just the responsibility, and obviously people still<br />
really love that game and that franchise.<br />
OPM: The CG trailer versus the original CG trailer<br />
suggests quite a big tonal shift here, from tragedy<br />
to comedy. What were your key objectives with Dead<br />
Island 2 and its tone in particular, especially given your<br />
Spec Ops background?<br />
MK: A lot of people have been talking to me about that.<br />
Like, how do you go from doing something like Spec Ops:<br />
The Line in terms of tone and narrative and come out<br />
with a trailer like this for Dead Island? That’s a really big<br />
shift. And even a big shift in terms of Dead Island, like<br />
you say.<br />
Everyone watched that first trailer and it was a<br />
beautiful, well crafted trailer in its own right, and they<br />
won great awards for that. It was wonderfully artistic.<br />
And when we sat down originally with Dead Island we<br />
had a different idea of tone back then. I mean, this was<br />
the time when The Walking Dead suddenly surged in<br />
popularity. So I think a lot of our early thoughts on the<br />
project were definitely kind of painted with that brush;<br />
it was painted with the brush of The Walking Dead, we<br />
weren’t trying to paint it with Spec Ops: The Line at all.<br />
But as we started exploring the main ideas about Dead<br />
Island and how it’s going to play out, how it’s going to<br />
work with players actually doing the things they do to<br />
zombies… that’s where this tone changed. It clicked for<br />
us. In the pursuit of trying to tackle the melee combat<br />
and the first-person melee combat – something we<br />
haven’t done before at Yager – we thought we needed<br />
to get that right. If we get anything right in terms of<br />
gameplay, it has to be that.<br />
We went straight into that and then we got to a place<br />
where suddenly you could uppercut a zombie with a<br />
sledgehammer and make him shoot up in the air 60 feet.<br />
That was great. We thought, ‘that’s it’. It’s those moments<br />
that are intrinsically funny and humorous, and that’s