Darksiders: Wrath of War - Q&A Feature

In Darksiders: Wrath of War, you play War, a horseman of the apocalypse who has been framed for ending the world prematurely. As punishment, your powers and horse have been taken away and you have been sent to a post-apocalyptic earth to clear your name. Cue epic battles against the armies of Heaven and Hell while you try to find and destroy the person responsible.

This debut from Vigil Games has already drawn comparisons to the gameplay of both Zelda and God of War.  TVG sat down with Vigil Games' Creative Director, Joe Madureira, to talk about what we can expect from Darksiders and how it compares to such titles.

TVG: Playing Darksiders, a lot of its influences immediately come to mind. Where do you feel you took inspiration from when creating the game?

It's hard to say because almost every game you play inspires you in some way - whether you love something about it or hate something about it. On the outside we draw a lot of comparisons to the combat-heavy games like God of War, Devil May Cry, and Ninja Gaiden. We play all those games. But structurally, underneath it all, Darksiders is more like Metroid or Zelda, where the world actually opens up to you as you progress through the game, whereas the other games I've mentioned close the door behind you.

As you progress the story you can't really go back because you're in this part of the story now and it will break everything if you could go back. In Darksiders it's actually the opposite of that. It starts off pretty small, but each time War defeats a boss he gets a new artefact and can unlock parts of the world that he couldn't before. So that will keep you exploring and going back to areas you thought you'd completed before and you'll find out, 'Oh, there was something else there that I missed'.

You're never locked out, so even though it has a cool epic story and it is really big, you can advance at your own pace. That's something that I don't think people realise until they really get into it and start to spend some time with it. I think a lot of those comparisons to games like God of War will go away, they're just on the surface. He's a big guy with a big weapon that splatters enemies, so I think that looking at it on the surface I can see why it would draw those comparisons.

TVG: Is going back through the game necessary to complete it, or is it in place of side missions with bonus rewards?

No, it's always optional; it's definitely beneficial to do so. There are a lot of rewards as far as upgrading War is concerned, such as increased health, and there are also a lot of achievements to unlock within the game. There are items called artefacts that the Soul Merchant collects. He has this whole elaborate board and you fill in the pieces - I believe there are 30 of those that are hidden throughout the game - and you obviously get a reward for finding all of those.

TVG: How customisable will War be?

We wanted to incorporate the RPG element of being able to upgrade and customise War according to your playing style into Darksiders. There are some abilities that you may favour and you may opt to upgrade those. The Soul Merchant offers a lot of customisation options. There are also enhancements that you can get for your sword that you can equip. I may have one that gives me more souls when I kill an enemy and you may have one that sets them on fire or whatever. You can switch them around throughout the game as well, so even on-the-fly you can customise them and change, based on whatever area you're playing in. You might have one upgrade that suits you better against a certain type of enemy.

TVG: What do you think Darksiders can offer players over the other games it will draw comparisons to?

I think the diversity is pretty refreshing. The story and setting is fairly unique and you associate with a lot of unsavoury characters. Zelda is basically a puzzle game and never really lets combat factor too much into it, which only appeals to a certain type of gamer. Then you have the combat driven games that are so heavily focused on combat, and that only appeals to twitch gamers. We have united these worlds by creating one that has all the exploration and adventure of a much larger game but with juiced-up combat and big, epic-looking fatalities. We're really trying to create something new by marrying a lot of those elements that we love from those other games.

The setting is pretty unique the characters are unique, and like I said the underlying structure of the game is pretty different to those games, so I think as long as people understand really what the game is about I don't think that it'll hurt at all. And honestly, if it's compared to great games like God of War, that's fine, I just don't want to be compared to bad games.

TVG: We've just got a peek at a gameplay mode where War flies a griffin. What else can we expect?

There are a couple of surprises in the game where you will even be able to mount some enemies. Obviously, Ruin is the big one.  Ruin is the name of War's steed. You get him later on in the game and there are several areas that benefit greatly from having Ruin. In fact, there's an area called the Ashland that's covered in the ashes of the dead where there are creatures that live under the dust that will kill you if you're on foot, but on Ruin you are fast enough to outrun them and fight them. He becomes key to getting around the world later on in the game. There's a lot of combat that stems from horseback too, so that's a huge part of the game that we haven't really shown off much yet.

TVG: The weapons are big. Besides his sword and fists, what else will War be packing?

There are several weapons that you can get. You get to assign a secondary weapon and there are a few different weapons you can place in that slot. One of them is Death's scythe, which is a pretty badass weapon that has a much longer reach and attacks much faster. You also get more souls when you're using it. There's also a gauntlet which does big devastating strikes. In addition to these, War's sword actually levels up as you use it and becomes more powerful, opening up new moves.

There are also the artefacts that you find in the dungeons, which as well as having uses in the environment can also be used as weapons. For instance, the Abyssal Chain can pull you to walls and allow you to swing across areas, and it can also be used to pull enemies towards you in combat. This type of gear item gets assigned to the trigger, while the secondary is on another. Eventually, you can chain your combos between your sword, your secondary weapon and your gear item. There are also guns that go in that slot, so eventually you have an arsenal that you can sort of swap out and combo seamlessly in-between and alter those.

TVG: Is creating combos going to be an important factor in the game like in the Devil May Cry series?

Some weapons have very specific things that they do. For instance, you may have used the Crossblade [an oversized shuriken]. You can use that Crossblade to throw someone in the air and then as the blade holds them there, you can just shoot them repeatedly with the gun. Or you can use the chain to pull someone to you then slash him and then maybe pull out the scythe when the other guys come around. It's based around giving you enough variety to do what you want to do.

TVG: How many hours of gameplay do you think there will be?

Because of how long the dungeons are and the amount of puzzles in them, it's hard to gauge. I think it will be at least 15 hours long, maybe 20 depending on how much exploring people do. There is a lot of stuff that didn't get to go into this game that we're hoping to bring into a sequel if the first one's a hit, and we're just hoping it does well.

TVG: How much got left on the cutting floor?

A lot. The concept of the game started out as a four player co-op game where you could pick whichever horseman you wanted. So it got trimmed down from there, so you can imagine the original list was completely insane. The game we have now is a lot more focused and a lot more sane for a studio putting out their first game. We just wanted to make sure we executed everything to the best that we possibly could and that's why we don't have multiplayer in this game. It would just drain too many resources to make it good. And we hate games with cheap multiplayer. If we're not going to be able to do it right, it's just better to have a strong single-player game and hopefully have that later on down the line.

TVG: Do you think anything that was left might come out in DLC?

It's possible.

TVG would like to thank Joe Madureira, Darksiders: Wrath of War's Creative Director, for taking the time out to speak with us. The game is due out later this year on Xbox 360 and PS3.