http://ps3.ign.com/articles/118/1185181p1.html
You can also upgrade your character as you earn experience points throughout the game.At the start you choose one of four characters representing a different character class - one a specialist with blunt melee attacks, one adept with firearms, and so on - and you upgrade them accordingly via a surprisingly deep skill tree. Certainly with the extensive character upgrade system, combined with the open-world quests and the non-stop looting of corpses and cabinets, Dead Island feels as though it has more in common with Fallout 3 than it does with Left 4 Dead.