Character creation tools allow shaping an in-game avatar that represents your personality. After years of waiting, Dead Island fans naturally expected the sequel to include extensive customization of faces, builds, attributes and skills.
Unfortunately, developer Dambuster has confirmed Dead Island 2 will not feature deep character creators at launch. Instead, you must pick from six pre-made personalities – the Slayers – to slay zombies across Los Angeles counties.
Naturally, this news has resulted in tremendous disappointment within the DI2 community. After all, the ability to craft a unique character adds much more immersion to embody their struggle for survival. It also enables roleplaying backstories that match crazy apocalyptic scenarios.
So why did Dambuster deliberately limit customization, which seems crucial for an open-world RPG? Well as a passionate fan, I have some thoughts after analyzing the facts so far.
Focusing Development Resources
Creating robust character customization tools requires tremendous art and programming effort. Every adjustable facial feature, skin tone, haircut and body type needs properly modeled 3D assets. Each slider adjustment also demands coding flexible character materials and rigs.
Most likely, Dambuster wanted to focus time and budget on refining Dead Island 2‘s core gameplay instead. As a smaller studio taking over an infamously troubled project, tough resource allocation calls were necessary.
And to be fair, DI2 seems to emphasis creative zombie-thrashing weaponry with satisfying visceral impacts. By narrowing customization, the developers can hopefully realize this incredibly fun melee vision rather than chasing superficial features half-heartedly.
Still, completely abandoning character creation seems like an over-correction. Dambuster could have provided basic adjustments even if complex deep customization was unfeasible. Let‘s see what alternate personalization options exist instead.
Changing Outfits to Stand Out
Without adjustable faces or builds, outfits let you display some flair and personality. As mentioned earlier, purchasing Dead Island 2‘s Gold and Deluxe editions will unlock extra skin packs.
These packs feature clothes like rave neon suits or biker jackets to distinguish yourself. Nothing seems armor or gear related though, purely cosmetic costumes.
While appreciated, outfit changes only enable surface-level displays of style, not identity embodiment. It feels slightly exploitative to push deluxe editions just to look cooler rather than expressing individuality.
Customizing Your Arsenal Extensively
Alright, no build or appearance changes is a bummer. However, weapon and gear selection can also demonstrate playstyles in games like Dead Island 2.
The developers have clearly poured effort into the loot progression system. Any bladed, blunt or firearm weapon found across Los Angeles counties can be upgraded for greater lethality.
Gear customization options enable tailoring equipment perfectly to your ideal playstyle:
- Mods (15+ types) – Augments adding elemental damage like fire, poison, shock, etc. Specialized mods like Stunner exist too.
- Runes (5 types per element) – Sockets to slot elemental gems and enhance mods further. Runes scale damage, status buildup, area of effect and more.
- Perks (10+ types) – Passive buffs earned automatically from weapon mastery. Provides boosts to critical damage, swing speed, handling and so on.
With so many adjustable parameters, you have an incredible spectrum to tweak melee or ranged weapons. Want to specialize as a pyromaniac carrying twin flaming axes? Or prefer paralyzing groups with stun batons? Such creative builds seem very possible!
Weapons also have rarity tiers (white, green, blue, purple, gold) that influence perk potential and mod capacity. Higher rarity armaments can fit more upgrades to really customize for your wildest playstyle ideas.
For example: A blue-rarity shotgun can support a Stun Mod, two Shock Runes and additional reload/handling perks transforming it into a room-clearing crowd control tool!
So while aesthetic changes are limited, DI2 provides plenty of interesting gameplay customization avenues. Your gear and upgrades ultimately become extensions of your combat identity.
Specializing Slayer Skill Trees
While weapons focusEXTERNAL gameplay EXPERTise, skill trees in Dead Island 2 enable better representing your PERSONALITY literally.
As characters level up from quests and combat, you unlock points to spend across three distinct branches:
Mean Machine (Melee DPS)
The Mean Machine path focuses on unleashing devastating melee combos or powered-up individual strikes. Skills like Skullbreaker and Flurry encapsulate an aggressive, brutal playstyle perfect for veteran DI fans.
Late unlocks also gain exciting utility like Reaper, which spreads Health Steal lifesteal aura to nearby allies. Otherwise, most skills here maximize raw damage output which remains crucial to chopping those zombies down.
Pugilist (Unarmed Combat)
Prefer pummelling zombies with karate kicks and jabs over weapons? The Pugilist tree enables exactly that with various punching and kicking skills. Interestingly, unarmed moves can also dish out elemental effects like the Shockwave Kick.
The combination of mobility and explosions makes Pugilist extremely suitable as an agile skirmishing playstyle. Many skills combo neatly with each other as well – for example, applying a DoT burn status first before blasting them away with Dragon‘s Breath.
Activating the capstone Fists of Fury fuels massive 300% increased unarmed damage too! No zombie territory will be safe from your furious fists of elemental explosions.
Vengeance (Ranged Combat)
Prefer shooting zombies from long range? Then spec into the Vengeance branch to unlock scoped aiming, spray control and even bullet slowing! Specialized gun handling shines here with weapon-specific skills too.
Interestingly, many Vengeance skills encourage headshot precision to maximize damage. Late unlocks like Hollow Point Ammo also reward accuracy tremendously, providing big damage spikes on cranium hits.
Overall, Vengeance seems perfect for calculated expert snipers who value positioning safely behind fortified cover during sieges. You can certainly go loud, but smart tactical play is rewarded more.
As visible above, each skill tree represents a very different philosophy atop DI2‘s combat foundations. Even with pre-defined characters, you still have flexibility between melee-focused berserking, unarmed skirmishing or tactical gunplay.
This freedom to specialize your Slayer builds will become even more important in the endgame. When facing the toughest zombie bosses on higher difficulties, intelligent investments into these skill trees becomes necessary.
Replayability Through Character Growth
Now at first glance, the lack of aesthetic changes to faces or outfits seems limiting for replay value in Dead Island 2. After all, creating multiple characters with differing appearances and backstories fuels motivation in other zombie games like Dying Light 2.
However, Diablo and Path of Exile have demonstrated RPG longevity despite fixed protagonists. The key is having enough meaningful gameplay customization and growth avenues instead, which retain experimentation incentives between playthroughs.
Dead Island 2 actually offers excellent foundations here across gear and skills to drive motivation:
- Unique Weapon Builds – With over 150 modifiers between mods, runes and perks – each playthrough lets you design completely different weapons. Perhaps a katana warrior first time, then shotgun magician later?
- Flexible Slayer Identities – The branched skill trees combined with attribute points allocate encourages radically changing your combat focus whenever replaying the story.
- New Game+ – Continuing with upgraded gear and maxed out skill boards to push into higher difficulties against deadlier zombies also sounds great fun!
Adding to all this, Dead Island 2 promises up to 35 hours of content spanning Los Angeles counties with plenty to explore. So the scope for unlocking exciting new slayer toys seems massive even if character creator customization is missing.
Not having deep creator tools definitely stings, I won‘t deny. But Dambuster has focused attention on providing exciting progression systems underneath that strongly support replayability post-launch. Which frankly, many modern live service don‘t execute well with repetitive content so kudos there!
Closing Thoughts
Look, I fully understand the anger around fixed characters and personalities in Dead Island 2. After waiting years for this sequel, fans expected strong appearance and even origin story customization as standard modern features.
And I agree Dambuster could have provided basic creation options without dramatically ballooning scope or costs. Even slight adjustable facial features would have smoothed things over.
However, after analyzing the facts around gear, skills and progression – I‘m convinced Dead Island 2 hasn‘t completely abandoned character uniqueness and replayability. There are plenty of weapons, accessories and abilities enabling tailored playstyle flavors beyond pre-defined personality choices.
Could DI2 benefit from more identity personalization and customization? Absolutely! Yet the core visceral melee hunting fantasy still shines through. I‘m optimistic Dambuster expands avatar building further through future content drops or sequels down the road too.
For now, weapon madness and skill experimentation sound incredibly fun during this crazy zombie apocalypse…even if I‘m stuck playing pre-made Slayers. Time to smash undead heads with DI2!
