I know you’ve grown tired of the zombification of our planet. I have too, friends. However, being late to the party is not a crime, in fact sometimes it might even be a good thing.
Enter: Dead Island. Sometimes you go away for a long weekend and when you come back you find electronically transmitted pieces of mail from your friends; heartwarming it is. Sometimes those pieces of mail show you a teaser/trailer that you really weren’t expecting, for a game you’d not heard of.
Maybe it’s a trailer so well done it will evoke more feeling than the actual game ever can (I’m thinking Gears of War – Mad World). At least see for yourself by clicking that “Read More” button.
Email the author of this post at xtal@tap-repeatedly.com.
This trailer – backwards or forwards – is great cinema. Sometimes you’ll see trailers like this and be heartbroken when the game finally arrives. I prefer to hope that this trailer, like the “Mad World” trailer for Gears, precurses a wonderful game. Sure, Gears didn’t have the emotional depth its David Fincher-directed trailer did, but it was a hell of an experience.
I almost wish they hadn’t gone to such great lengths, for the bar of expectation has been raised perhaps too high for anyone to reach it.
A four player open-world co-op melee-emphasised zombie-survival game with a grimmer and more realistic tone than Left 4 Dead, though. That sounds like exactly what I wanted Left 4 Dead to be. It may not move me, emotionally – but at least it should be fun. Call of Juarez at least shows they know how to make violence extremely compelling ^^
I cannot possibly be satisfied because what my brain really wants is STALKER (and I’m talking about the early design again) in a colossal unscripted, simulated city, during and after the zombie infection crisis.
… But maybe I’ll be able to quash those hopes enough to enjoy myself.
It’s true, cinematics are an art form in themselves, and they don’t necessarily translate to a good game. It’s nice to see such a thoughtful, unusual, shocking one though – especially from a game I thought had died on the vine years ago.
Well that was rather bloody good wasn’t it? Subtle but effective choice of music too.
Regardless of how disconnected the emotional side of that trailer will (more than likely) be from the actual game itself, it was pretty powerful stuff helped a lot by the convincing facial expressions and of course the music. As much as I hate trailers that don’t represent the game, if they create buzz like I’m sure this one will, they’ve succeeded. Even if that buzz threatens to later bite them in the ass.
I don’t think the buzz can do anything bad for them – at worst, it will only make a few jaded and overly thoughtful crazies like us mutter sadly amongst ourselves.
What I wonder is what they’ve been doing with this game for the last year and a half. It was meant to be ‘basically done’ a long time ago, and now suddenly it’s a four player co-op game, where once it was a survival adventure of a man seeking his missing wife.
I do hope it wasn’t pure European investor pressure trying to mold an already-done game into a L4D competitor at the last minute ._.
Damn! That was one seriously sweet/intense/crazy trailer for Dead Island. Heh, we sure have come a long way from the original Resident Evil, haven’t we? 🙂
The long development time and complete overhaul of the type of game it is though worries me as well. Kudos on the trailer though for the team that put it together.
The unexpected choice of that slightly sappy music with over-the-top gore with cute, happy family with reverse footage works nicely. What could have been just another cliched narrative is instead beautiful abstraction. Oddly, I like the very last non zombie scenes the best, no doubt because of everything that just came before.
Interesting you would bring up Fincher, Steerpike. I was watching The Social Network a second time the other night and was toggling back and forth between muted movie and full sound. The soundtrack was the thing for me. Sure, Fincher’s instincts are spot on but the way he sabotaged viewer expectation by laying horror movie music over static scenes of heads and computer screens was just genius.
The director of this trailer kind of does the same thing, but in reverse.
You can chalk the ominous Social Network score up to film soundtrack veteran Trent Reznor; there were some great pieces. Him and Fincher seem to make a good pair. Unexpected is certainly a fitting word to put on what you were watching combined with that you were hearing.
I have not seen The Social Network, though I’m a fan of Fincher in a general sort of way. I felt that The Game was grossly underappreciated. A friend of mine always complains that Fincher shoots his movies in one color – Seven was his “sepia” movie, The Game was his “blue” movie, etc – but I still enjoy his camera.
For some reason the music of this trailer made it for me. Its simplicity and sadness really underscored what we were seeing. It made me think of the time Tori Amos did “Chopsticks” as her encore… simple, but powerful, and somehow scary.
Found this blog post in the Sunday Papers re: the Dead Island trailer. It’s a good read.
http://poisonedsponge.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/manipulation-and-evocation-exploring-the-dead-island-trailer/
Fantastic link xtal, pretty much sums up the whole thing for me.
Makes me wonder how the inevitable Hunger Games game will shake out. Probably won’t be too many 12 year olds running around.
Ouch. That article left me with a sour taste in my mind – summed up, he thinks the trailer shouldn’t have used a child because.. I’m not sure, he didn’t actually convey anything beyond “I think it woz a bad idea”.
Mid-article, he claims Fallout has a town of invulnerable children named Little Lamplight, neglecting to specify ‘Fallout 3‘, which does have a certain relevance given that Fallout 1 had children enabled by a small patch, and Fallout 2 actually had children, motivation to harm them when the pickpockets in The Den steal from you, and the grand moral outrage of the world should you do so. This being widely regarded as the most daring and controversial use of child-characters in any game, ever.
Then he claims Far Cry 2 is the only game ever made to make him care about a character.
I’m uncomfortable with non-gamers and newcomers reading Phill Cameron’s work, in light of this. He gave a very vague and subjective rambling opinion along with some inaccurate claims.
I admit it can only be my own opinion that Far Cry 2 was one of the most broken and unenjoyable pieces of shit I’ve ever had the misfortune to install, but that kind of impression imparted upon me by a game leaves scars. I’ve never understood why it is so well-regarded by so many…
Very interesting article on this over at Electron Dance.
Another video. A slightly different vibe. Still some piano.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI36BPAQ-jM&feature=player_embedded