Surely, you remember the original Dead Island's impactful CGI trailer that saw a family torn to shreds in reverse, slow motion. As it turned out, the game wasn't anything like the CGI trailer. Big surprise, right? Well, it seems Deep Silver learned their lesson. Because the trailer for the newly announced Dead Island 2 - embedded above - has a much more light tone. It's still rather grotesque, but light and catchy nonetheless. Which matches the actual gameplay a whole lot more.

The CGI trailer doesn't give much away - apart from the fact that it's to be set in California - but an E-mail sent to us from Deep Silver gives us a lot more detail. First of all, you might be wondering how the hell Techland are going to cope with making a sequel to Dead Island while making Hellraid AND Dying Light. Well, as it turns out, the developer for Dead Island 2 isn't Techland, but Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager Development. Set to release sometime during the spring of 2015, Dead Island 2 will be building on the strengths of the original game and its semi-sequel while moving the franchise forward.

"Combining the classic Dead Island elements of immersive close combat, action and role-playing, Dead Island 2 features crazy, never-before-seen handcrafted weapons and over-the-top characters in taking players from the iconic Golden Gate to the celebrated beachfront boardwalk of southern California's Venice Beach. "

Interestingly, the Unreal 4 engine has been chosen to portray the zombie genocide and take full advantage of all the [insert big words about generations and whatnot here]. It'll also support up to eight players in multiplayer this time around, and you can apparently both cooperate and compete "or simply coexist in a truly social, new-gen multiplayer experience" according to Deep Silver. There's that generation word again.

Well, that sounds pretty sweet. And for all its weaknesses, the original Dead Island did get a good few things right. It is a bit strange though, that Yager have been chosen as the developer, what with their recent endeavour involving a rather depressing video game interpretation of Heart of Darkness (or Apocalypse Now! if you're a movie buff). You'd almost expect to see the trailer for Dead Island 2 to be even more saddening than the one for the original game.

We'll let you know as soon as more information on this one crops up.