Dead Island 2 will feature six playable survivors right from the jump. You may already be familiar with one, and that’s Jacob, the Lenny Kravitz-esque character that appears in Dead Island 2 trailer re-released. During my cover story tour, I played Dead Island 2 for about seven hours, but I didn’t practice with Jacob. However, I played a few hours with both Dani and Ryan, two very different survivors who added their own flair to this zombie apocalypse tale.
I ended up on this cover story trip convinced that Dani was a survivor for me, but Ryan was great too. And there are still four other survivors that I don’t get to play. However, I want to tell you about Dani and so does Dambuster Studios (Read about Ryan here).
What happened in Los Angeles
As you may already know, Los Angeles has been hell, and both the game characters and the team at Dambuster Studios affectionately refer to this once beautiful and prosperous city as Hell-A. Mind you, Hell-A is still beautiful and thriving but only for the few who choose to stay behind, like Dani.
Dead Island 2 begins in the final days of a large-scale evacuation effort to avoid getting infected out of LA. It’s set about a decade after the events of the first Dead Island, and while logic dictates that Dead Island 2’s zombie outbreak virus resembles the one from Banoi, that’s not necessarily confirmed. Dead Island 2 narrative designer Khan told me the evacuation was “surprisingly effective”. The military sealed off the city, leading to the decision to quarantine what was left of LA so the infection could take place. According to the studio, this is where the game’s eponymous island aspect comes into play; No one in, no one out.
You meet each survivor on one of the last planes leaving LA. Unfortunately for them, however, it turned out that someone on board was infected. The protocol resulted in the military shooting down this plane – after all, it was impossible for any infected people to leave the city – and it fell to Hell-A. At this point, I was in control of my chosen survivor, Dani, and the game introduced me to combat and its main villains: the zombies! Dani won’t take long, though, and that’s where Dead Island 2’s story begins: you get infected, but you don’t turn around, and you need to give this information and your blood to someone can help.
Now that we know how Dani’s story begins in Dead Island 2, let’s talk about why the character thrives in Hell-A.
Meet Daniel
According to Khan, Dani grew up in County Cork, Ireland, a beautiful place likened to a student town. As a result there is a lot of music and night activities. She grew up with a “very traditional mother’s Stepford wife” and “no less beige” sisters. Her father was the type who, when faced with a conflict or emotion, would choose to ignore it and go fishing instead. Dani has always been the stranded fish in her family, with a bit of a burden on her shoulders. She doesn’t feel like a good fit and doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with her family.
Dani discovered the punk scene around town, and it shaped her childhood and adolescence. As soon as he could, Dani left County Cork. She jumped over the pond and ended up in Boston, where Khan says there is a large Irish community. This is great for Dani because if there’s an Irish pub, you’re “always guaranteed a job if you speak an Irish accent,” according to Khan. Dani fell in love with the Boston punk scene, but then came the first winter in Boston.
“[She says] F— that and accompanied an MIT student back home on a cross-country road trip to the warmest place she’d heard of – California – and knew, that was where the weather was fine, and She just wants to go to heaven. She felt like, ‘I’ve escaped this very local, very conservative, very-right-do-it-right family and history and never wanted to be that way again. So that’s how she ended up in LA.”
Dani finds out about rollerblading in LA, and it becomes her new love. She’s still the punk girl from Ireland in many ways, but rollerblading becomes her outlet for self-expression. Khan said Dani has a taste for more than just aggression in rollerblading matches, commenting on how Dani uses the mosh pit to release these emotions.
All the while, Dani was doing jobs she didn’t really care about, like retail and food service, and the owners let her go more times than she wanted to admit because of her. He likes to speak his mind “a bit too freely” to people. client. Khan said, “She doesn’t live to work; she works to live.” She is living the life of a 20-year-old in California and loves it. When the zombie apocalypse hits, she’s not too bothered about returning home to her family. Her allegiance now belongs to her team, and she’s about to enter an out-of-state rollerblading match.
“That’s the first thing,” Khan said, commenting on Dani’s priorities. “She has her chosen family, the people she chooses, and she’s going to support them, no matter the hell or the high water. And then it all gets a little weird.”
Dani .’s Innate Skill
You can make your survivor in Dead Island 2 the type of character you want to play in terms of skills, payloads, etc. Each survivor starts with two innate skills that speak to their nature and loosely guide you on the potential path for that character.
dani
- Thunder: Heavy attacks release a powerful explosion on impact.
- Blood thirsty: Dani recovers health after a quick barrage of attacks.
Khan says that because Dead Island 2 is a “play first, fight first” game, the characters are outlined as playable survivors before the complete characters. As a result, the narrative team had to “reverse-engineer” the personalities of the survivors. For example, Dani specializes in heavy attacks. Why? That’s a question Khan and the storytelling team were able to answer through details that shed light on who Dani is.
Khan told me: “The last thing I wanted was to draw a caricature of an Irish woman. “I want someone who is a modern California girl and… someone who ends up jumping into conflict and falling in love f—ing s— up for no reason, She’s as happy and cheerful as she can be. She was a laughing maniac. She wasn’t rewarded for her good work and now she’s really good at it. It’s not rollerblading, which can be. being seen as a fad, a sport or a game, and it’s not about enjoying music or surviving in a crowd. This is what she really excels at. So we asked, ‘why is she like that?’ And then we reverse-engineered it.”
Do you think Dani is a survivor for you now that you know her backstory? Let us know in the comments below!
