Kick-ass trailer for zombie game: Dead Island

The trailer for upcoming zombie game Dead Island is a fantastic piece of horror storytelling. I have no idea what the gameplay will be like based on this, but the video had me glued to my screen.

Dead Island: Official Announcement Trailer (Thanks, Pinkstor, via Submitterator!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Roger Wilco

Gah! That’s horrible. That little girl is going to be okay, right?
- Padraig
  
  Hi Roger W :)
  
  Check out my blog. Here in the Zombie Child Protection Unit we’ve had quite a lot of experience with these events.
  
  http://zombiechildprotection.wordpress.com/
Zac

A repost Boing Boing? Not classy.

Incidentally, if you “haven’t seen anything like this before” then you must have missed Nuit Blanche:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVuUwvUUPro

That said, the zombie trailer is good too, even if the zombie genre feels a little played out.
- shatterjack
  
  Absolutely Zac I was thinking the same thing. Both of these videos leaves me feeling totally emotionally gutted but in different ways.
Jean-Luc Turbo

Yeah, horrifying and watching the reverse version made me cry.

I’ll call it VERY well done.

I have yet to see a consistent trend in video game trailers or cut scenes match what should be equally cinematic game play though. Except for maybe Doom 3.
Padraig

If the game is anything like the video, I’ll have to break my many years of non-game playing…and see if I can run it on GNU/Linux :))

The trailer is fantastic and very moving.

I was captivated by what was happening and simultaneously horrified (I know it’s CGI and a game, but still).

Brilliant story telling by the creators.
Anonymous

It’d be really nice if all you commenters mentioning the alleged non-merits of a young child’s implied death in an interactive work of fiction is not viable art would stop applying doublestandards to things.

I am, however satisfied, if you bark at every sad movie that comes out viciously the same way.
Deidzoeb

Dig the contrast between Cory’s description and Mark’s, who wrote: “This trailer for Dead Island is a well-made video, but it made me too sad to want to play the game. “
Rick York

Will the Zombie and Vampire crap ever stop? They are bankrupt tropes which demonstrate the utter lack of creativity and imagination of their perpetrators.
- Roger Wilco
  
  OMG! zombie vampires…it just writes itself. Thank you!
  - Anonymous
    
    Come on! You seen them already in the remake of *Dawn of the Dead*. The zombies act just like day-walker vampires. They hiss, run fast, have super strength, bite people on the neck, and only the people they bite become zombie vampires. How did you miss that?
Deidzoeb

Whether or not the game is any good, whether they bothered to make a game before this, that trailer is probably the best 3 minutes of machinima I can remember seeing.
- Spencer Cross
  
  It’s not machinima. Machinima is made in-game, using the game’s rendering image. This is a cinematic, produced like any other computer animation.
pKp

This trailer was awesome and I can’t wait to play the game (assuming it is released on PC, that is…which it probably won’t the games market being what it is).

It’s time we got more mature videogames, and I don’t mean mature as in “Woow, boobs and decapitation !”. Mature as in “My little girl just got turned into a zombie and I had to kill her, what do I do now ?”.

I still have hope for the medium, I think video games are a great way to really put ourselves in someone else’s shoes for a few hours. We really need games dealing with that kind of themes in respectful, non-clichÃ© ways, and the trailer seems to indicate that the team behind the game has at least some of the artistic integrity and writing qualities needed to pull that off.

On topic : Extra Credits (a weekly video series made by game designers about game design, regularly fantastic) has a video about symbolism and horror, well worth watching : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2264-Symbolism-101
Lars

* rubs eyes with fists * Waah! Waah! Seriously, it’s a great trailer, three minutes of powerful emotion – but feeling depressed because of seeing it?

In this universe, kids are not exempt from the zombie horror. In the (excellent) remake of Dawn of the Dead a baby is shot in its little head, fresh from the womb. It comes with the genre. If that is not for you, fine.

I am very happy with more emotion in games and a more mature zombie genre in particular – The Walking Dead, anyone? – and gameplay violence that is raw, unflinching. Why should games be a sanitized version of reality, just because it is fake?

If Dead Island manages to transpose that “all is lost, what now?”-feeling from the trailer into the game I’ll be very impressed. It will be a perfect starting point from a gameplay point of view.

This gametrailer punches you in the gut when you were least expecting it. +1
- robulus
  
  I think this short draws from ’28 Days Later’ to some extent. That movie really asked genuine, complex, emotional questions of the basic genre premise, to great effect.
Ministry

Nope. Sorry. I don’t understand how killing a (CGI) child can be considered entertainment.

Stunning achievement in technical terms, but the subject matter’s too much for me.
Johnny Fronthole

Finally a way to kill zombies… just put ‘em in fucking everything until people just wish them away. Goodbye, dear friends; you were fun while you lasted.
peterbruells

Would this be also “fantastic” if it showed people raping the girl?
- tad604
  
  No. really you feel the need to ask that? I think that says more about you than whatever it is you’re trying to say about the trailer.
  - peterbruells
    
    Ah, you mean the glorification of violence is so deeply entrenched that questioning it is bad?
    
    I will not comment on the game, though I rather suspect it’s nothing more than the the usual gore porn, but the trailer itself is sickening. Boring, yes, but also sickening. And it has zero purpose but to shock and titillate.
tad604

To the people whining about zombies being played out or over done. Shush… it. won’t. die.

And that’s fine by me.
brix

first off, the creators definitely get bonus points for being the first time i’ve ever seen the uncanny valley put to artistic use, rather than clumsily ignored.

and hey, everybody who hated this because depicting the death of a fictional child is an emotional cheap shot, utterly without redemptive qualities…

I found you a video by Sigur Ros that you really won’t like.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SigurRosVEVO#p/a/u/0/hqJ8hFgYwVg
it’s clearly devoid of any art, beauty, or poignancy, and i apologize for bringing it up.

I’m also sorry for mentioning Hemingway’s 6 word short story –
(For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.)

i only wish AMC’s The Walking Dead was consistently this good.
hell, i wish the original Romero trilogy was consistently this good.
Kerouac

Wow – I thought it was great, and I’m a bit surprised to see people complaining that it was too powerful or too emotional. Most gamespaces are crowded, and none more so that the zombie gamespace. Whether the gameplay can hold up compared to the competition is irrelevant if no one tries it, and a new entry in the field had better stand out from day one – that starts with the trailer.

The trailer definitely stands up – I’ll be anxious to give the game a try.
Anonymous

I’m not a big horror nut, and I’ll never play the game, regardless of the trailer, but I do think the trailer brings home something that most people overlook in zombie movies (although as was mentioned earlier, it’s getting explored more and more): These ugly monsters were once somebody’s husbands & wives, sons & daughters. Understand that the dad was trying to save his daughter after she had been bitten, when she was (probably unbeknownst to him) unsaveable. He should have left her out there. Instead, he brought her to safety, at which point, she attacked him. Understand also, he is now ‘infected’, by his own daughter, and the wife, should she survive the oncoming hordes will likely have to destroy him to survive.

Someone once commented, the true horror in the zombie genre doesn’t come so much from the zombies themselves, but from the unmasking of base human behavior in the face of them.

The zombies become monsters, but the people become animals, and that’s horror. I think anyway.
pyster

There is a very good chance these people will be getting my money.

That trailer was absolutely gorgeous and moving.

As far as killing a child in splatterpunk horror… This is a concept that is meant to reach into your soft spots and rip them out like a draino enema, if it rubs you the wrong way it has done its job. It is meant to make you feel bad. Emotionally sadistic? THAT IS THE POINT. Cheap? That is what cry babies call simple things that are very effective. Shock and titillate? Yes, because its bad to feel anything playing a video game.

I hope this game is able to capture the emotion of the trailer. Call Of Cthulu: Dark Corners Of The Earth was able to manifest real fear and dread in the player and I’d love to be assaulted by the swell of awful feelings the trailer brings to the table.

If you dont understand how/why killing a child in telling a story lends itself to the artistic vision then you just dont understand art, and maybe life. One of the purposes of telling a story, painting a picture, composing music, etc is to invoke an emotional response in the audience.

peterbruells: Yes, it would be. Because it would be a display of absolute horror. It would change the mood of the trailer into something much darker, much sicker. But after something that powerful in a trailer you have to follow it up with game play that considers the dread of the player. And boring? Seriously? Those that were not moved by that trailer should seek psychiatric help, save a bladerunner terminates them for lack of appropriate emotional response.

Zombie arent over and done with; they never will be. So if you’re crying about it consider investing in tissues.
- wylkyn
  
  Thank you. I was starting to wonder if people understand what the word “horror” means. I have a daughter about this age, so this hits me very hard. It’s supposed to. Glorification of violence? If this was done to glorify violence, it would have been done quite differently. The wistful music, the drawing back from the horrible conclusion to the traumatic beginnings – this is all designed to underscore the dread of unexpected tragedy. That’s not a glorification. That’s relying on your empathy to move you to pity and sorrow, and yes…horror. The world is full of unexpected tragedy. To me, the horror genre is all about putting myself in those imaginary situations, facing those fears and exploring the emotions involved.
- Anonymous
  
  Peter is correct. This trailer is all about pushing your emotional buttons. Why let yourself get manipulated? I’m all for games as art but this isn’t it. This is a cynical way to get what will in all likelihood be yet another zombie survival game to stand out from the crowd of zombie survival games.
  
  There may be an art form to getting cheap thrills but that doesn’t make the cheap thrill into art. Emotional sadism is the point? If that’s what you want, I feel sorry for you.
Anonymous

I was reminded of the video for Coldplay’s The Scientist song. Going backwards can be a pretty effective storytelling technique.
Anonymous

Impressive trailer, when it finished I felt sorry for that family. These characters literally jumped beyond the uncanny valley.
Having said that, WTF with games recently? It’s all about horrors or cars or shooting. No thanks, call me when they make a sci-fi (space exploring, not alien blasting ) game with this graphics.
- Donald Petersen
  
  call me when they make a sci-fi (space exploring, not alien blasting) game with this graphics.
  
  I just finished Mass Effect 2. There’s a hell of a lot of alien blasting involved, but there’s also lots of space exploring, too. Plus some romance. With aliens, if that’s your thing.
  
  The space exploring and mineral mining do get a tad tedious, however.
snakedart

The primary objection to this content seems to be that, in it, we are made to care about characters who meet a horrible end.

If that’s not the definition of good horror, I don’t know what is.
- Jean-Luc Turbo
  
  Agreed! I was affected emotionally from the story told through the trailer (it kept from being able to sleep for an hour) and I was responding with empathy to what was a depiction of the utmost horror to befall a young family.
  
  It was not gratuitous, in fact this is perhaps the reason so many are reacting like angry puritanical old maids: it was an honest depiction rather than a glossed over one that showed the destruction of the emotional bond of the family–the years of intimacy and love destroyed by unfeeling beings. It built upon the typical carnage-fest with emotional honesty. Something not normally seen in this zombie genre where we are very comfortable with the sole depiction of physical destruction.
- Donald Petersen
  
  If that’s not the definition of good horror, I don’t know what is.
  
  That’s certainly a very good example of good horror. I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally I have no real objection to this game or its trailer. Not only is it technically well-executed (man, look at the pixels! the polygons! the textures!), but some serious directing and editing chops went into that trailer. On a certain level, making viewers feel bad by feeding a kid to the zombies, having her dad try to help her, then having her attack him until he’s forced to defenestrate her is sorta like shooting fish in a barrel, just as John Carpenter used to say (I paraphrase here) that he could take 100 feet of black leader film, splice in one white frame and a loud noise, and make the whole audience jump. But this trailer really milks the pathos for all it’s worth, ending just as the dying child is reaching for her daddy to save her, which displays a masterful understanding of drama and emotion.
  
  I still wonder what the game will actually be like. If it’s closer to your garden-variety zombie apocalypse game (you know, with all kinds of potentially lethal items strewn around like axes, fire extinguishers, hedge-clippers, croquet mallets, and maybe even a shotgun or two… ain’t that convenient? Oh, and don’t forget all the first aid kits!), then yeah, it might be the same ol’ boring (or fun) gorefest we’re used to.
  
  If, however, the intent is to really immerse the player in a first-person, all-out, The-Zombies-Are-Real-And-They’re-Coming-To-Eat-You-And-Your-Family nightmare, then I think it’ll be something really new and special.
  
  But again, I don’t think I’ll want to play. I knew in 1978 that I prefer my videogames to be winnable. The endless waves of Space Invaders really started to become a drag. As much as I like playing Halo, I’m not into Firefight. And the epilogue of Halo: Reach, while certainly true to the story, did not invite a hell of a lot of replayability for me.
  
  I play games (and usually watch movies) for the escapism above all else. Horror, fear, aggression, vengeance, stealth, wiliness, prudence, and balls-out foolhardy charges into the breach all play a part in that escapism to some degree.
  
  Despair and grief, however, may not be emotions that I want to exercise through gaming. The rest of the world is welcome to give it a whirl, but I myself look forward to this game’s release about as eagerly as I look forward to the dentist’s chair… no matter how good they may be for me.
Deidzoeb

“I’d call it emotionally sadistic and a cheap punch in the gut, but it’s way too well done for that.”

“I don’t understand how killing a … child can be considered entertainment. Stunning achievement in technical terms, but the subject matter’s too much for me.”

“Boring, yes, but also sickening. And it has zero purpose but to shock and titillate.”

I’m sorry, are those blurbs from old reviews of The Pearl by John Steinbeck? That’s about how I felt when I had to read it in 7th grade.
- procrastinet
  
  Not to mention its cousins, A Day No Pigs Would Die, The Red Pony and Where The Red Fern Grows. We were subjected to a lot of tragedy-porn in elementary school lit, weren’t we?
  - davejenk1ns
    
    Good point procrastinet. Thinking back, I think those tradegy-porn books like “Where the Red Fern Grows” might have actually been government-sponsored psych screens. Whomever didn’t cry was tagged as:
    a) possible future serial killer
    b) possible future black-ops assasin
    c) both of the above
    
    But then again, I am convinced that most of public schooling is a government-sponsored screening program…
JDavid

I love zombie games. I just finished Red Dead Revolver’s (otherwise known as Grand Theft Horses: Dodge City)Zombie nightmare expansion pack – it’s gold.

This kinda thing? I don’t see the need for witnessing it (in regard to the kid). I’ve walked out of movies I was really enjoying when I see kids getting abused or killed. It’s bad enough that kids *are* in fact thrown out of windows and murdered (and worse) in real life – I don’t need it in my entertainment.

I think at some point we have to draw a line and say what is good taste (and good horror) and what is simply shock to shock – where does it end. What is that doing to a collective psychology?

I think there’s definitely an issue here. Of course, the people who like this sort of thing and see if differently will say “who are you to tell me what I can watch?”, and they’re right.

In end, we determine the value and legitimacy of this sort of thing – if ya like it, buy it. If ya don’t, make it known by not buying it.

I’ll say as a professional artist for 2 decades, it is great CG work. It looks amazing. Had it not centered around killing a zombie that was a child screaming and running for her life not 30 seconds beforehand, I’d be all over it.
Cinema Suicide

God. I fucking hated this trailer. I run a horror blog and I see a lot of zombie-related stuff because they’re still the monster of the moment and the movie/game buying public at large still isn’t tired of being urged to aim for the head but everything about this trailer rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I’m just getting soft as I get older but the whole idea of shocking people into talking about the game by killing a little CGI girl bummed me out huge.

Srsly.
- Donald Petersen
  
  the whole idea of shocking people into talking about the game by killing a little CGI girl bummed me out huge.
  
  I tellya, they actually managed to suck all the fun out of the entire genre. As videogame-based CG graphics, the game looks great. As a video short (trailer, hell, this might as well be a short film), it’s amazingly affecting. Beautifully written, brilliantly executed.
  
  But as a videogame ad? This was just harrowing. I’d call it emotionally sadistic and a cheap punch in the gut, but it’s way too well done for that.
  
  It will be a long, long time before I get over this. I certainly subscribe to the idea that videogames don’t have to be pure escapist fun. As an art form (yeah, seriously!), they’ve matured to the point where genuine emotional investments and payoffs have become quite common. And maybe we’re overdue for a game sensibility that doesn’t treat zombies (or aliens or what-have-you) as limitless wave after wave of potential points or potential deaths being thrown at the player, whose “life” is so cheap that they’re not even three-for-a-quarter anymore. Lately we’ve been getting used to developing emotional attachments to NPCs, be they utterly abstract Companion Cubes, or startlingly lifelike human characters. And sometimes we feel a twinge of actual grief when some of them come to harm, especially when it’s due to our own actions or failures to act.
  
  Be that as it may, this trailer was something else. I know nothing about this game beyond what’s presented in the trailer. Don’t know if it’s a FPS or squad-based RPG or multiplayer.
  
  But I simply cannot imagine that any fun can be had within a game that deals so nakedly with the rawest emotions and fears and losses of a zombie apocalypse treated as seriously as an Ibsen play.
  
  Maybe (if the game comes out) people will enjoy it. But man, that’s hard for me to imagine. At the same time, I think I get what they’re doing. I went to a Tool concert once. It was loud, compelling, exhilarating, memorable… but I couldn’t say it was “fun.” Not in the way an Aerosmith or AC/DC concert is fun. It kinda put me through a wringer. And that’s a valuable and marketable experience. Just as horror movies in and of themselves have always sold themselves as cathartic experiences (All of the Terror! None of the Actual Danger!), so can a videogame be a similar experience. This one just seems to include an extra helping of regret and grief and panicked helplessness on top of the regular horror.
  
  None for me, thanks. I couldn’t take it.
malex

Speaking as a father, I am now officially too depressed to consider buying this game.

Ask me again in 15-20 years when she’s in college.
Anonymous

A truly beautiful, poignant and horrifying short film.
bcsizemo

I’m impressed with the physics, but I still wonder why we can’t get faces that look half way real. It’s something about the eyes and cheeks. They seem too rigid, they need to be softer more flexible. When the little girl is dead on the lawn in the beginning it’s like she’s wide awake.
Daemon

Well directed trailer, and impressive graphics, sure.
But it’s still just another zombie game.
straponego

Why are we talking about games? It’s too late to practice! You people really believe the spreading riots in the Middle East are political? That’s what they WANT you to think! The zombie outbreak has begun!

I’ll take this opportunity to thank the selfless heroes valiantly trying to contain the outbreak while allowing themselves to be portrayed as fascist thugs to prevent the panic which will inevitably result when the truth comes out. Thank you, dictators. Thank you, militaries. Thank you, police.
Donald Petersen

Well, it’s certainly trending today on BB. ;^)
Ratdog

This trailer has become very popular (and rightly so. I have never seen anything like it). As many are saying, this says nothing about the game, or gameplay. Hopefully the game will live up to it.

Oh yeah, I think this trailer has already been posted on Boing Boing today by Mark. And now I’m off to fortify my household zombie defenses.
osmo

“Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children!”
hplcman

So that’s 2 times posted on BB today… We get it, it’s a good trailer! Can’t wait to see what the game is like though…
Spookyland

Personal limits and morals aside, killing/attacking children is one of the more firmly held taboos in horror – it only recently became a commonly used device.

Still, it is traditionally very effective. When James Whale included his creature accidentally drowning a little girl in Frankenstein (1931), it would be about 55 years before wider audiences would see this scene, which was quickly removed by censors.

I have enumerated some of the better uses of this device here at Spookyland for anyone who wants to see the rundown.

I saw this very moving trailer last night, and the purchase of this game is almost a certainty.

Enjoy.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Who can kill a child?
  
  …is the name of a not-too-shabby Spanish horror flick from 1976:
  
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075462/
  
  …but in this flick, it is in fact the children who are the killers….ah yes, here’s a review for the DVD of that film:
  
  http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2298nino.html
  
  Scary!
Rich Keller

I’ve watched it twice so far. The part that gets me is the end. They’re happy, and have no idea what’s in store for them, but I do.
mortis

great trailer…but i was sold on the game when i first saw screen shots back in 2007. ( http://games.tiscali.cz/preview/az-do-masa-v-hororove-akci-dead-island-31253 ) why there hasn’t been an open-world zombie sandbox survival game made I’ll never know, but I’m certainly glad to see this one. let’s face it: the game will NEVER be able to live up to that trailer, but i know it will be entertaining nonetheless. (on PC of course…) ;)

^m^