o_195phq7qd1kvg1mtd1r531gn6aira.pdf

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