Dead Island Trailer Studio Talks Zombies and Emotions

One of the biggest surprises of this year in gaming so far has been the impact of the trailer for Dead Island, a zombie-based open-world video game that is under development at Techland and will be published by Deep Silver.

The studio behind the trailer is Axis, an animation-oriented outfit based in the United Kingdom, which worked closely with the developer and the publisher in order to create an announcement trailer that has a clear emotional impact and manages to show gamers what the Dead Island game can deliver.

Richard Scott, who is the executive producer from Axis that has worked on the trailer, has said that, “When we were initially approached by Deep Silver about Dead Island we were really excited about the idea of getting to grips with zombies. As we started to collaborate with the Deep Silver team on the story ideas and creative treatments we felt that there was something else special about this opportunity.”

Axis says that the trailer has been seen on YouTube more than 2.5 million times and those who are interested in it can download it from Softpedia to see how it manages to marry emotion and zombies.

The trailer is pretty graphic at times, showing how a child can be turned into a zombie and how its primal instincts then lead it to attack its own parents and protectors.

Some have said that the Axis trailer, as long as it reflects the nature of the actual Dead Island gameplay, might mean that the title will get an Adults Only rating from the ESRB.

Others have questioned whether a video game can deliver the same emotional impact as the trailer and whether it has set the stakes too high for the development team at Techland.

Dead Island will be launched on the PC, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony and it will arrive at some point during 2011.