Inspired by the award-winning CGI trailer that sort of vaguely touched on the actual gameplay of Techland's upcoming zombie survival game, UK author Mark Morris delivers his take on the tropical carnage with Dead Island: The Book.
While I'm certain the game itself will contain some sort of narrative, it takes a true novelist to create a tale as rich as the trailer for Dead Island, a fine bit of adverteasing that's transcended the actual title it was meant to represent. Mark Morris is just that sort of novelist, having written several original horror novels and a handful of BBC Doctor Who novels, several of which I have on a bookshelf in my living room. I think I read them. Since they're not in the bin, they must have been good.
This book, due out on September 8 in the UK, will follow the game's story loosely, featuring the characters players will play and the setting they play in. The rest? Well I suppose Morris will borrow a little of the tone from the trailer that caught his attention in the first place.
"Having marveled, like the rest of the world, at the stunning trailer earlier this year, I absolutely leaped at the opportunity to write the official Dead Island tie-in novel. This is a rich, exotic world of well-conceived characters, stunning locations and all-out zombie mayhem. What really attracted me to the project, however, was the fact that behind the nonstop action is a complex and multi-layered plot. I'm hugely excited and massively honoured to be a part of the Dead Island phenomenon."
It's like Dead Island has become the video game adaptation of its own trailer, isn't it?