Some tidbits:
For those too impatient to slog through that, you're fighting zombies at an island resort. Realistic body damage system, gas, liquid, and electricity physics, no multiplayer.That’s a real challenge game developers face every day. It’s much more tricky than just cramming in as many new features as possible. Innovation for its own sake is worthless. Dead Island features many innovative ideas but our real effort goes towards ensuring that everything works together smoothly to create the best gaming experience possible.
It’s the scope of the game that really makes Dead Island unique. For example the ability to fight with objects found in the environment is taken to a completely different level. It’s no longer about a long list of weapons. If players can pick up an object, they can use it in a fight. Their way of looking at in-game locations will reflect the perspective of a person caught in a situation of extreme danger. “I need a weapon and I need it now”.
Honestly, whatever weapon you choose, it still looks awesome when it hits the enemies. One of my personal favorites is a giant hammer that construction workers use to demolish walls. It’s a bit slow but when it hits, the ground trembles. While I’m wielding it, I feel a bit like a priest dishing out holy retribution to the undead. Indoors I prefer to throw sharp objects at zombies. Shards of glass, darts, letter openers, you name it. The look of the enemy still coming at you with all this stuff sticking out of his flesh is creepy.
...
All the transformations are calculated in real time, with per vertex accuracy. This is the revolutionary part of our damage system. It is possible to pre-script several ways of gradual decay and make it look convincing but we wanted more. All damage occurs exactly when and where the model is hit by a specific object. Sharp and blunt weapons cause different types of injuries, just like in the real world. Players will get plenty of opportunities to admire all those effects from the front row. Melee combat is important throughout the entire game and we’re adding a lot of features to make sure it never gets boring: new fighting moves, deadlier foes and other attractions that will be revealed in due time.
...
World physics are not our focus in this game. With the ability to manipulate the environment limited to the equivalent of human strength, it’s much more important to perfect the combat controls and tissue damage. All objects will have correct physical properties, we can also model any materials we need, physics of gases, liquids and fire also come into play on various occasions. All this serves as a realistic background rather than a feature we want to wave around because this isn’t what Dead Island is about.
...
Forcing the idea of an excellent single-player game into a completely different environment of multiplayer can be just as bad as the single-player „story mode“ of pure online shooters. Dead Island is a survival horror relying on its mature, immersive story and unique atmosphere. There is no room for multiplayer or even co-op in our current vision of this title. We love multiplayer games and it’s possible we’ll make one in the future. For the moment we’re concentrating on delivering a complete and enjoyable single-player experience.
Basically, it looks like it'll be a damn awesome game. It focuses more on close-combat with a lot of improvised weapons. They mention darts and shards of glass, and I saw a crowbar in one trailer. They also said they don't worry about "gimping" their game to satisfy the rating organizations, so we can expect plenty of gore.
Edit: Just my two cents on the matter, most sources say it'll be coming out sometime this year, but I doubt it. There's not much in the way of information from it, especially screenshots or videos, and we're 2/3 through 2008, anyway.