If there’s anybody reading who doesnt just want to punch random people……
I’d have the main character be a veteran, who’s as tough as it gets, aged around 50.
And he awakes from a coma at the start of the game, a week or so after the outbreak began…
In his city where almost everybody is now dead/zombiefied.
He eventually makes his way to a shelter, but it’s mainly full of women and children, who he insists all stay safe in the base, and so he’s basically on his own on the frontline for most of the game.
And from then it’s basically all just about surviving, killing every zombie on the island, and saving the handful of remaining survivors. that’s pretty much all the main stroy is..
…though for those who care to learn more about the outbreak, that is done through side content. All over the map you will find environmental stroy telling, with journals, letters, documents, photos, videos ect, that you can check out, and cross examine, to gradually peice together what happened while you were in the coma (this should all be as serious/emotional/horrible as possible!)(and would probably involve learning about a truly sadist government official, who f’ed everybody over just for fun… and then even intentionally let the virus into the military base, which is when the city went to total Hell…)), and what others have discovered about the zombies and how to stop them. (Meaning you also obtain real gameplay information. For example let’s say the people in the countryside did good research on chemical warfare against them (before the sadistic offical took their chemicals and left them for dead), you can studie their findings, and find the chemicals, and use it against the zombies!)