After a decade of delays, Dead Island 2 is moving its release date forward

Dead Island 2 has been a long time coming, suffering from multiple delays and being passed around a gazillion different dev teams. But today, the game’s official Twitter announced the zombie slasher had gone gold and would be arriving a week early on April 21st, breaking the decade-long tradition of delay-related news.

The announcement tweet included a very tongue-in-cheek video, beginning with a flurry of sassy comments such as “Ok but are you ever going to release this game?!?” The background VO politely replies “Abso-fuckin-lutely” in the most Bri’ish accent I’ve heard in a while.

The last time Dead Island saw a delay, the team said "The irony of delaying Dead Island 2 is not lost on us.” So, it’s nice that the team can subvert some of those negative expectations, even sharing the fun with fans on social media. A couple of days ago on Twitter, one fan asked the official Dead Island account to release the game earlier “at least by 1 week.” The official page responded by saying “We did it for you, Cody.” We all owe Cody a favour - if you were actually looking forward to Dead Island.

Last month, Dead Island 2 received a gameplay showcase, highlighting more of what we already knew. This is an LA based open-world with hordes of undead, lots of hackin’ n’ slashin', and characters that are concerned with getting high during the apocalypse. You need to numb the pain somehow, I guess. The rest of the showcase was mostly a bad live-action film.

Ed played the undead extravaganza last August and was “surprised that it's not at all janky given its development history." He continued to say, "I'm fairly convinced that it'll be a fairly fun ride.” I’m fairly interested in smashing zombie brains, so this might be a fairly good podcast game.

Barring any last-minute delays, Dead Island 2 is scheduled to release on April 21st for consoles and PC exclusively through The Epic Games Store.