It wasn't until two hours or so into my seven hours with Dead Island 2 when I finally understood that the linear nature of the game wasn't just part of the tutorial, and that Dambuster Studios' game wasn't going to eventually swing its proverbial doors open and reveal to me the sandbox I was looking for. Action-RPGs, especially zombie-centric ones, have so often utilized an open-world setting over the past 15 years that it was, for a good while, jarring to see that Dead Island 2 isn't...
