14 DAY TRIAL // Anthony Cardahi, the creative producer working on the Riptide expansion for Dead Island, has offered details on the new defense hub feature of the game, which will challenge players with occupying an area and then holding back waves of zombies who seek to take it back.
The developer tells the Official PlayStation Magazine that, “They introduce something that is a classic zombie trope that you see in a lot of movies where survivors fortify a location and try to hold on as long as they can. It’s something that makes complete sense in the world of Dead Island.”
The defense-based missions will be similar in tone to the wave challenges in other shooters, but players will have more possibilities because they are also able to use items like barricades, land mines, barbed wire, which can hold back the zombie hordes.
Riptide is also designed to make weather a player in the world of Dead Island, with the storms that previously only isolated the area now directly affecting it, with strong winds and flooding in some area.
Players will also get the option of using boats to move around, but that means risking an attack from new types of zombies.
Cardahi adds that weather “allows us to play around with the atmosphere of the game a lot more thanks to the different lighting systems, from sunny blue skies to dark, torrential rains storms that will obscure your visibility.”
The most interesting new enemy in Riptide is called the Grenadier, a big zombie that sports cancerous body parts that can be detached and thrown at the player, creating problems for those who lack a long range weapon.
The Techland development team also has plans to make it easier for players to execute headshots, which have been the preferred way of dealing with zombies without wasting ammunition.