History VideoGame / DeadIsland

Gamesradar.com did a sponsored movie/miniseries entitled ''Dead Island: Origins'' to advertise for the game on their website. A tropes page for the "film" can be found [[WebVideo/DeadIslandOrigins HERE]].

* MisplacedWildlife: The orangutans mentioned under RaisingTheSteaks below. Orangutans are only found in Borneo and Sumatra, both of which are [[CaptainObvious quite a long way away from Papua New Guinea]].

* SuspiciouslyAproposMusic: Sam B's "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?" is a rap song about a zombie apocalypse. ''[[{{Foreshadowing}} You don't say...]]''

''Dead Island Retro Revenge'' was released on May 31, 2016 as a spin-off title and is a 2D Sidescrolling Runner in the vein of ''Videogame/{{Canabalt}}'' starring a guy named Max (presumably the looter in the Dead Island 2 trailer) fighting through hordes of zombies to get his cat back.

* PunchClockVillain: [[spoiler: Colonel White's BIDF soldiers.]]

** Charon, fitting for a evil terrorist hacker, when imitating White calls in a nuke with the order, [[Film/StarWarsRevengeOfTheSith "Execute Protocol 66."]]

* ShownTheirWork: The vehicles of which are mostly utes and four wheel drives have the drivers seat to the right and the road signs and markings are Australian. The ute is kind of a symbol in Australia and ideal for the resort and city streets as well as the more rugged terrain of the jungle. There's even the old Australian Broadcasting Commission image on some televisions (for when ABC1 would show when the station was closed, before it began running 24 hours.)

*** The achievement for killing 15 zombies with a hammer without taking damage is called [[MCHammer "Can't Touch This"]].

** [[BroomstickQuarterstaff Broken Broom Handles and Hat Stands.]]

* BreakableWeapons: Melee weapons degrade when attacking enemies, requiring you to periodically find a workbench to maintain them. Broken weapons, while still usable, suffer severe stat penalties, making them weaker than your bare fists.
** Weapons will also ''visibly'' degrade with each hit, though it has no effect on the weapon's performance.

** John Sinamoi is a natural leader, saving your life and looking after the survivors, but he shows his mettle at the end of the prologue when he risks his own life fighting off zombies threatening the safehouse despite being outnumbered six to one and knowing a single bite would turn him. He nonchalantly toses a knife into a zombie's head at the end of the fight and greets the heroes with a jaunty "Thanks, mates."

* CrapsackWorld: Moresby, the biggest city on Banoi, had a serious gang problem even before the outbreak. The rich were completely segregated and the slums were barely livable. Finally, the police were so ineffective that a special section of the army, The Banoi Island Defense Force, had to be formed to protect the island. In fact part of the reason you encounter so many survivors, for a zombie game, is that the gangs were so heavily armed.
** To drive the point further, Colonel Ryder White, a veteran of battles in Iraq, East Timor, and Afghanistan, outright admits that Banoi is the worst place he's ever been in.
* CrutchCharacter: Sam B's ability to regenerate, among other skills, certainly make him the easiest character to do solo runs with. He's also proficient with blunt weapons, which are more prevalent early in the game and take longer to break than knives. He averts it in the long run due to his HealingFactor, his VERY powerful Rage skill (only Suiciders, Rams and melee human enemies will still annoy you with it ; the rest will learn to fly), the many ways he can accumulate Rage, his critical rate up in the sky (he can reach ''a critical rate of 20 percent'' with a modified blunt weapon) and the insane amount of Force he can generate. Find a good blunt weapon such as a giant wrench, a sledgehammer or a pickaxe, apply a mod on it and you're set.

* [[spoiler: DownerEnding: The four heroes manage to escape the island with Yerema and Kevin, but at a high cost: Jin dies, all the other survivors the heroes meet either die or get left behind, and the "cure" they worked so hard to help create turns out to ''strengthen'' the zombie virus rather than destroy it. To top it all off, it's implied that Yerema is a TyphoidMary carrier for the virus, and that Kevin, aka Charon, may be planning to use her for his own purposes.]]

** FragileSpeedster Infected are fast (they run instead of shambling), able to climb head-high obstacles such as crates or walls and attack in vawes of 2 or 3 hits. An armed one can be devastating to your health, but they have less HP and Stamina than Walkers, allowing you to frequently one-shot them in their run.

* EscortMission:
** Shows up periodically in the side-quests. There's also a couple major ones fairly deep into the main quest. Initially they could be extremely frustrating, but this has been fixed in the patch, which greatly increases the escortees' survivability.
* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Well, not other survivors, but you ''never'' feel safe outside the safehouses.

* FakeDifficulty: The inventory system is arbitrary to the point of distraction ! There's no weight limit, so you can carry any amount of pretty much anything you find (although see GameBreakingBug below). Fair enough, except for health items like an Energy Drinks and Fruit - if you pick these up, you will eat them immediately, so take care to remember where they are in case you need to run back for them when you get clobbered by a Thug. And also, you can only carry up to 12 weapons (expandable up to 18 as you level up), so get used to dropping perfectly serviceable knives and guns as you find new or better ones. Sometimes, explosives will be leveled for no reason, which means you'll need TWO inventory slots for your regular Molotovs and those leveled ones who do exactly the same thing, since the game considers them two different weapons. And, oh, yeah - Medkits and Alcohol count as weapons too![[note]]To the extent that they can both even be equipped into a weapon slot, and used by 'attacking' with them.[[/note]] And, of course - Champagne doesn't count as Alcohol, so you can carry as much as you like! [[FlatWhat What.]]

** The quick inventory have no idea of what it's doing if you play with a pad on the PC version. No matter how you organize it, you weapons will always be a complete mess when you scroll them using the quick-draw button instead of shambling through it yourself. Why is my shotgun last when I put it in the second slot ? Why can't I switch to a weapon after using a med kit? Where are my Molotovs ?!

''Dead Island Retro Revenge'' was released on May 31, 2016 as a spin-off title and is a 2D Sidescrolling Runner in the vein of ''Videogame/{{Canabalt}}'' starring a guy named Max fighting through hordes of zombies to get his cat back.

A sequel, ''[[VideoGame/DeadIslandRiptide Dead Island: Riptide]]'', was released in April 2013. Techland has also trademarked the title ''Dead World''. A tie-in short film [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbrKIDv9wZ4 "No Retreat"]] was also released. On August 7th, 2013, Deep Silver announced ''Dead Island: Epidemic'', a {{MOBA}} with heavy emphasis on action and killing AI-controlled zombies. It was closed in October 2015 due to the lack of interest combined with very low playerbase.

Originally, Techland had proposed and designed a much more realistic "layer" system that modeled skin, muscle, bone being independently modeled and deformed in real time. According to Techland, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen their testers barely noticed]], so they went with a much less intensive prebaked damage model.

** In the Laboratory area, there's a scientist named West. Frankly, anyone who didn't anticipate problems with a "Dr. West" working with zombies hasn't seen ''Film/ReAnimator'', played any of the ''VideoGame/{{Splatterhouse}}'' games, or read the original Creator/HPLovecraft short story "Herbert West - Reanimator".

* MisplacedWildlife: The orangutans mentioned under RaisingTheSteaks below. Orangutangs are only found in Borneo and Sumatra, both of which are [[CaptainObvious quite a long way away from Papua New Guinea]].

* MisplacedWildlife: The orangutangs mentioned under RaisingTheSteaks below. Orangutangs are only found in Borneo and Sumatra, both of which are [[CaptainObvious quite a long way away from Papua New Guinea]].

* GottaCatchEmAll: Personal IDs, blueprints, notes and tapes that provide backstory... there are a LOT of collectibles in this game. So many in fact that you only need to find around half of them to unlock both of the achievements that are tied to them.

A sequel, ''[[VideoGame/DeadIslandRiptide Dead Island: Riptide]]'', was released in April 2013. Techland has also trademarked the title ''Dead World''. A tie-in short film [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbrKIDv9wZ4 "No Retreat"]] was also released. On August 7th, 2013, Deep Silver announced ''Dead Island: Epidemic'', a {{MOBA}} with heavy emphasis on action and killing AI-controlled zombies. It is currently in the closed beta state and one can sign up for it [[http://www.deadislandepidemic.com/ here]].

* NoHeroDiscount: Most of the survivor base areas have vendors who will sell you equipment. Despite the fact that the island has been overrun with zombies (thus making money useless), the fact that you constantly perform missions to help them, and the fact that they face certain death if you are killed, the vendors still insist on charging you money for their items

* CerebusRollercoaster: The first ''Dead Island'' has a decidedly uneven tone, with (for example) things such as the grim scenery of survivors crying in desperate anguish being mixed in with your character gleefully lopping off zombie heads with an electric katana and spouting one-liners. It's as if the developers weren't sure if they wanted to create ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'' or ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' and just ended up with a slightly awkward mix (the heart-wrenching trailers are further evidence of this). For the record, though, if the first trailer for ''Dead Island 2'' is any indication, they seem to be sticking with the wacky route going forward.