"Thickening up the background universe" of Dead Island

We caught up with Deep Silver's creative producer Anthony Cardahi to discuss the story-driven Escape Dead Island that's being developed by Fatshark.

"We knew that we wanted to thicken up a bit the background universe of what Dead Island is," says Cardahi. "And we know some people did latch on to some of the elements that were present in Dead Island and Riptide, but those games weren't really tailored for a strong narrative story. And we thought the best way to convey this is probably to do a spin-off where we go in to tailor the whole experience around trying to have this narrative development and also we wanted to have a more atmospheric approach to how things go for a regular human within the situation of a Dead Island outbreak as opposed to the immune super hero-like characters from the main Dead Island series."

We then delved a little deeper to find out what the story revolves around and how it fits in the series.

"Escape Dead Island takes place between Dead Island 1 and Riptide and Dead Island 2," says Cardahi. "And the narrative of it goes through what was at the root of the whole outbreak from the start. As you're discovering, going through the story moments, discovering the collectibles which then you can check out in a gallery that has voice over text that can range from Cliff taking a picture of a zombie making a smartass line to some document revealing some key element. There's going to be things that are going to explain some of the elements of what Dead Island 1 and Riptide were about, and then there's going to be some things that might not necessarily make too much sense yet for players the first time they encounter it, but if they get to go through Dead Island 2 then it's going to click."

Escape Dead Island is set for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 21.