Will the Dead Island game be like the trailer?

It was a question that was asked over and over again after MCV published an opinion piece voicing concern over the content of the Dead Island trailer – will the emotion so successfully depicted be a core component of the actual gameplay?

Emotion can still be a tricky subject for games devs to handle, though in recent times we’ve seen the likes of Sony’s incredible Heavy Rain successfully tackle the emotional entanglements raised by parenthood and death.

So the question of whether Dead Island will place such sentiments at the centre of its offer is a serious one.

If it does, then that would arguably justify the horrible loss seen in the trailer. If not, would it lend weight to the argument that the trailer is exploitative?

"I think we have been pretty faithful in spirit at least," Axis co-founder Stuart Aitken told Develop. "The idea for this trailer is that these aren’t necessarily specific characters you’ll see in the game itself, but they really get across the idea of what’s happening in the game, the tone of events, the kinds of characters, human and zombie, you will either meet or play in-game.

"The Island environment itself should be very close to what is in-game.

"To an extent a full CG trailer is always a different experience to actually playing the game. It isn’t trying to pretend to be game play, like a lot of CG trailers do, at all. It’s more trying to tell a story in the same world but in a different medium that describes an event that is illustrative of the type of interactive experience you might have when playing.

"All we have tried to do is tell that story as effectively as possible."