14 DAY TRIAL // Dead Island 2 developer Yager has eventually come up with a solution to support eight players via its cooperative mode thanks to the impressive cloud power offered by Microsoft for the Xbox One console, according to one of its representatives.
Dead Island 2 is one of the most anticipated games of next year, making a big splash at E3 2014 this summer with a stellar cinematic trailer that highlighted not just its decomposing zombies, but also the new world in which the game will now be set.
Dead Island 2 brings plenty of changes
While it may no longer be set on an island, the new game features many massive improvements, from better visuals to more zombies, richer combat, and a great tongue-in-cheek tone.
According to Dead Island 2 Producer Michael Kempson, the studio tried out lots of things in order to top the original Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide experiences. Among the aspects that needed work was its online cooperative mode, which supported just four players.
"Dead Island was four players," Kempson tells TotalXbox, "and when we were looking at that online aspect of it for pre-production we thought 'okay, we need to iterate on that.' But they [original Dead Island's developer Techland] did such a good job. How are you going to make that better?"
Cloud focus led to eight-player co-op mode
The answer appeared after Microsoft introduced its Xbox One console, boasting about its cloud power ensured via the Azure servers. This led Yager to start iterating on new mechanics, and he eventually came up with a solution to allow eight players to roam around the game's huge world.
"Then suddenly Microsoft turns up with a new console and says 'cloud-based servers, always online!' So we immediately looked at that - we'd already decided it was going to be open-world, but with four players? Would I see another guy?"
"We thought we could conceivably take it up to eight at least, and we progressively increased the player numbers until we got there, where it was kind of like, 'okay, now we're actually running into people a lot.' For us, that seemed to make the most sense in how we progressed with the online - make a seamless, bigger open world, and more players."
The result is that Dead Island 2 supports eight players in its cooperative mode across all platforms, in the form of the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The game is set to appear in spring of 2015, so look forward to hearing more about it until then.
