Editorial: The Dead Island Trailer is a Concept Car

Editorial: The Dead Island Trailer is a Concept Car

By now you’ve probably seen the exceptional, emotionally gripping trailer for Dead Island, the new co-op zombie game from Techland and Deep Silver.  The FMV trailer has generated such incredible buzz that a sort of backlash has begun from within the industry worrying that the game will never live up to the raised bar.  While that may be the case, as is with any game after a trailer is released, the industry is being especially hard on Techland for the pre-rendered video.

Well, it may be time to stop.

We’ve been burned by pre-rendered trailers in the past (Killzone 2, any Final Fantasy in the last 5 years) and have been hesitant to look at them as nothing more than visual porn that often leads to disappointment.  We need to learn to invest less in what we see and take it for what it actually is: a visual expression of what the game’s themes will ultimately (and hopefully) be.

Image of Porsche 918 Spyder courtesy our sister site CarDesignFetish.com

I liken it to concept cars and the automobile industry, a field that I’m very familiar with (I work in it full time).  Each year at any auto show, be it Detroit or LA, Geneva or Tokyo, the car manufacturers create elaborate concept vehicles.  Some are so far-fetched that we know that they will never be built and their technology never used.  Some are more near term, like the Porsche 918 Spyder above, and are used to gauge reaction from the consumers as to what they’d like to actually purchase.  The Porsche 918 concept has now been confirmed as a production vehicle because of the positive feedback.  Similar things have happened to other concept cars in the past, like the Audi TT and the Pontiac Solstice.

The Dead Island trailer is that kind of near-term concept car.  If we literally take the trailer as gospel, we’d be playing a game backwards, in slow motion, and out of order.  It’d look beautiful, airbrushed, and have melancholy music throughout.  In short: it’d be the most perfect mash-up of LOST and The Walking Dead that we could want.  But we know that isn’t the case.

What the trailer showed us wasn’t actual gameplay, it was a mood-setter.  It was a way to show the theme of the game and prepare us for what the direction the experience is going to take. And while zombies may be over-saturated, Deep Silver used the trailer to see if we would still be interested in the genre, albeit adding in a compelling storyline and location.

And it worked.  Dead Island came out of nowhere this week and has been commented on by everyone in the industry — even drawing attention from non-core gamers.  It became a trending topic on Twitter, beating out the Biebers and American Idols of the week.  The trailer was viewed over 2 million times on Youtube alone.

So, before we get turned off by HOW the trailer was created, let’s let ourselves be in love with what the trailer possibly represents: a unique representation of a game that is as maturely developed as any other game or movie trailer in a long time, and one that will get us excited should Deep Silver and Techland deliver on its promise.