Deep Silver, along with the rights to franchises like Homefront, Metro, Dead Island, and Saints Row, and now belong to THQ Nordic. Nordic has stated that Deep Silver and it’s parent company, a German media group called Koch Media, would operate separately from Nordic. And they have said no financial restrictions will be placed on their newly acquired developers, hopefully meaning no layoffs.

Deep Silver had been doing fairly well as a smaller game publisher even with some missteps like Agents of Mayhem. You could often see newer, less mainstream titles getting the Deep Silver backing. THQ Nordic seems adamant that Deep Silver and Koch Media will operate as they always have, but I wonder what Nordic will do as soon as another Agents of Mayhem mishap happens.

It’s really strange to see anyone desire the days of old THQ. It makes sense for a company the size of Nordic to want a few extra franchises, especially successful ones like Metro or Saints Row, in their pocket. However it’s hard to believe that old THQ will somehow be better in someone else’s hands. Here’s hoping Nordic knows when to pump the brakes before we’re talking about uDraw tablets all over again.

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Despite the lengthy trailer there really isn’t too much to it. It is single player and open world just like the Saints game, and is clearly connected to the Saints Row universe. However the similarities seems to end there. There’s no real hints how the game will handle or play.

I expect we’ll be seeing some more information at E3.

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After original series developer Techland moved on from the franchise and made Dying Light, publisher Deep Silver brought in a new developer, Yager, to make the sequel. After a trailer at E3 2014, the game missed E3 2015 and was delayed to 2016. It then lost Yager to “creative differences” between them and Deep Silver. But despite these losses, Dead Island 2 continues shamble on forward, with Sumo Digital behind its latest resurrection from the brink.

Sumo’s COO, Paul Porter, said “It’s an honor to be charged with the evolution of such an important franchise in Deep Silver’s catalogue. We’re looking forward to exceeding fan expectation with an ambitious design that we’re confident will take bone-crunching, visceral, zombie action to a whole new level.”

It’s unknown if the game is still set to release in 2016.

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An update on Dead Island 2. Read: http://t.co/44A2ZJhOOg

— Dead Island 2 (@deadislandgame) July 14, 2015

Not much else has been said about why, or what plans Deep Silver have for the game, but this isn’t the first they’ve had issues with a game this year. In March, Homefront: The Revolution was also delayed into 2016. Hopefully, more updates and information will be out soon.

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For those of you who are new to the Dead Island franchise, let me fill you in: Analog is what makes playing Dead Island worthwhile. The default option has you mashing the right trigger to swing your weapon, but with Analog, you hold down the left trigger to enter a stance and then use the right stick to control your melee swings. Once you get used to it, you can spend the whole game smashing in the heads you want and cutting off the limbs you want instead of relying on the random number deity to provide the fun.

As you can imagine, when it came time for our Dead Island theater demo, I had but one question on my cranium: where’s the Analog combat? According to Carsten Linder, Senior Producer at Deep Silver, the combat has been reworked and players will have the ability to control their swings. He didn’t have much to say beyond that, but this is an encouraging start! Hopefully we hear something about named loot soon.

Dead Island 2 is currently set for Spring 2015, adding yet another contender to the already towering list of games coming out next year.

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