Dead Island 2’s new SoLA expansion introduces players – sorry, Slayers – to a whole new side of Hell-A: an all-American festival where the stage is set for some carnage The most terrible zombie in the game. The throngs of corrupt, staggering festival-goers will deliver plenty of zombie-killing blows, but where would the festival be without its headline acts?
Enter Whipper and Clotter, two all-new, powerful Apex Variants designed to give even the most experienced Slayers some serious combat and fear.
On one hand, you have Whipper, an immortal bohemian who has traded the glamor of the carnival for courage. In fact, she’ll knock you over with her guts or try to blind you with a handful of thrown organs.
On the other hand, you have Clotter, a brutal zombie that can decompose and reform at will. This big guy can effectively teleport in and out of the player’s space, making it difficult to maintain vision and control.
“The starting point was always the mechanics of the two new archetypes,” said Richard Smith, Vice President of Character Art at Dambuster Studio. “Both introduce completely new behaviors never seen before in Dead Island enemy formations.”
Whippers are fast-moving, mid-range enemies with powerful attacks and special abilities that can prevent Slayers from using their own Fury powers. Clotters hunt down Slayers, keeping them under constant pressure and unable to dominate a position.
Put the meat on the bone
To create new enemies for the expansion, the team started with a series of zombie concepts, then whittled them down to the final two. The basic concepts were incorporated into the concept art, always ensuring that the new zombies would fit within the Dead Island universe and feel plausible within its bloody body horror aesthetic.
“In the case of the Whipper, we received calls that they would be the ones using the intestines to self-mutilate,” Smith said. Frustrated by the zombie infection inside, they attempted to eliminate it, ripping out its intestines and entangling their own intestines, which were used to extend the range of their attack like a web Organic.”
To tie Whipper to the expansion’s festival style, the team looked at social media imagery associated with major American festivals and the boho chic fashion you’ll find on festival sites . “We’re focusing on visual storytelling and enemy direction,” Smith explains, “and we want to put the player in that position and make sure it’s emotionally relevant.”
As the artistic development progresses, new ideas emerge and feed back into the design. “For example, we wanted Whipper to be violent and wanton,” Smith adds. “To add to the pain, we gave the characters hands frozen in rigid corpses, so they were almost forced to struggle.”
The killer encounters a new nightmare
Meanwhile, Clotter let the studio push what could be done with Dead Island 2’s FLESH system – the super-gory technology that allows Slayers to break zombies into bloody pieces of flesh and bone. The team knew they wanted a zombie with the ability to teleport, but wanted to avoid any sci-fi content that didn’t fit with the game’s more basic style.
MEAT provided the answer. “We really wanted to find a way to use these features to make Clotter completely disintegrate before the player’s eyes and then reassemble from a puddle of flesh,” Smith explains.
Since this enemy needs to move quickly, the team stayed away from overly complex effects. “We got glimpses of the skeleton breaking into pieces and the slimy flesh turning into liquid around the bones, but it took a lot of work to balance it – to make sure it all fell into place. for gameplay.”
Clotterleans delves into the story at the heart of the new expansion. “And a carnival setting is an ideal location for it,” Smith adds, “considering the amount of gore and body parts lying around, waiting to be revived.”
There were always some ideas that didn’t fit with Dead Island 2’s zombie-centric focus or with its sense of humor. “It’s tough but we love the challenge,” Smith said. “We love creating things for games that you’ve never seen before.”
