Another interview
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/295687,darksiders-ii-interview-8211-puzzling-the-line-between-frustration-and-fun.aspx
some interesting sections
Jay: I’m not super up on… pretty much, though. You would assume, obviously, you want to make it for different hardware support so everybody can play it. But if you’re running top of the line, it looks pretty amazing. I’m running it on an Alienware laptop, I don’t think it’s on DX11, but everything is just what you’d expect. I mean, graphically it’s a lot smoother and, to tell you the truth, even here I’m glad people are telling me it looks great on 360. But I usually play it on my PC, because that’s what you do: it’s easy to do, it’s easy to update and you get constant iterations. So to me, it looks great on Xbox, don’t get me wrong, but it looks great on PC.
Atomic: With the original game as well, because that art design is quite different, quite unique, that it would lend itself to being shown off on PC because that’s where it’s going to look beautifully rounded and stuff like that.
Jay: Exactly. You know, because the textures are smoother, and even stuff like the lava in that level, just flows nicer, so yeah, the effects are nicer on the PC, for sure.
Atomic: Beautiful. You mentioned the keyboard and mouse thing, and it seems like it’s playing really well on a controller; do you find it hard to translate a third-person adventure game-
Jay: -Yes.
Atomic: -to a keyboard and mouse? And how are you approaching that challenge?
Jay: So it is hard and I’m speaking just from… I’m not actually the person in charge of UI and the controls, but just from the heart, it is hard. And I think you have to… the hardest part is actually the mouse. The keyboard, if you use that for movement and if, for example, in a third-person action game… in a first-person [game], I think the standard would be arrow keys are for movement, mouse left, right or up, down and everything. But in a third-person action game that makes your character really overcompensate most of the time, so that is now… if people want that, they can have that. But I think the ultimate of what you have to do is, this is our standard of what we feel is right, but make it very open in what somebody… especially on the PC, everyone has their own vibe of what they like.
I mean, on console it basically comes down to do you like the Y-axis inverted or not? That’s your main point of contention. I think, on PC, everybody just has this… you have to make it everything… because you never know. I was reading an article the other day when they were saying there was somebody who never played… I can’t remember the type of game, but they’d never played a game on a PC. I think it was a guy’s girlfriend or something… ‘Here’s the game, check it out.’ And she starts playing. So he comes back and she’s just got this bizarre fucking control scheme on the keyboard, but it’s working for her. She’s down and she’s totally playing it. And he explained it, and I remember thinking, I don’t even remember what you’re telling me dude, because this makes no… because it will be almost like you’re playing Twister with your fingers. It worked for her.
Atomic: That’s the whole RPG extension. I mean, the first game had RPG elements and this one seems to be pushing that a whole lot more. When you’ve got such a heavy emphasis on combat, such a heavy emphasis on platforming, did you find that it was difficult to balance or maybe that was one too many things to throw into the mix?
Jay: First off, a lot of that stuff was stuff we wanted in the first game, but we just didn’t have the time then to do it. So it was stuff that we really wanted to add in now. And then, the other thing is, a lot of those elements… balancing is difficult, especially the loot, because you’re randomly dropping items and we do base it off your level to keep it. Out of all the stuff we have to balance, that’s the hardest.
Atomic: Do you have a set inventory size?
Jay: Yeah, I think each slot, like your scythe, your secondary weapons, boots, gauntlets, I believe there’s 20 or 21.
Atomic: And then you can’t pick up anything else?
Jay: Right, exactly. But there’s towns and hubs.
Atomic: So you can sell it?
Jay: Bingo. Sell it and buy new equipment and buy your moves and everything, and in the towns, the vendors stuff is generally just a shade better than what you’d find randomly.
Atomic: So, one above.
Jay: Bingo, to earn your money and everything. So that’s the hardest thing to balance: making sure that we’re not overpowering you too early, or if you do find an item, it might have a level requirement, and if you’re not at that level yet, that’s kind of a way to balance it out. Oh, but here’s what I was going to say. So a lot of those elements, what they really are doing is taking the same tenants that we had and making them deeper. Like, when you think about Darksiders I and Darksiders II, what it breaks down to is combat, traversal platforming, puzzle solving. That’s the game, and Darksiders II is the same general percentage, if you were to break down what percentage that is, Darksiders II is about the same percentage as Darksiders I, but all of those towers, or whatever you want to call them, are deeper. They’re bigger.
So, for combat, since it has the loot and it has the skill tree and it has levelling, that makes the combat deeper and richer because there’s that much more to explore within combat. In traversal, you’ll notice Death is more agile and he can climb up higher. So that allows us to make our traversal… we can design levels a lot more vertically. It’s a much bigger game, I could throw out a number like the game is four times as big; but does that translate to four times as many hours of gameplay? No, it means that the world is bigger. We can create these bigger worlds because Death can travel through them, and puzzle solving is deeper because we’ve got such a bigger world and we’ve learned to use the engine so we can create more… I think, in the first game, we had some puzzles that involve more than just one room. You have to leave the room and do something in another room. Now we have puzzles that involve a whole city, it’s like a whole building. And it’s the same steps, we’re like, you turn this knob and you see water turn on. Okay. You go into this next room and you see water drain down a hole. So we’re giving you all the steps, and then, in the end, you’ll have to get all these things working in conjunction to get to where you need.
Atomic: Now, do the enemies scale? Going back to this idea that there’s a lot of sidequest stuff going on, I mean, by rights, you could hit a point in the game, correct me if I’m wrong, where you could do a whole bunch of side quests, level your character up, and come back to the core quest where you might be ranked higher than your enemies. So, do they scale?
Jay: They generally don’t, and there are exceptions to the rule. Understand that bosses, like the guardian that you faced today, it wouldn’t matter what level you are; you have to go through steps to beat it. So we say, yeah, if somebody wants to grind, and get powered up before they go to a dungeon or learn moves ahead of where we expect them to, go for it. That’s cool, but do expect that when you go into the next part of the quest, it will generally be easier for you in combat than it would be for someone who just went straight to it. But it all works out, usually, because you might be tougher in combat, but you still have to solve the puzzles. You still have to get through the boss fights, and those are… it doesn’t matter what level you are.
Atomic: I actually thought it was really good because I know in the original game, I got lost in the dungeons quite a bit. And even though that frustrating never turned to, ‘Gah! Fuck this game!’ I sort of thought, ‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to go now,’ and there was a lot of backtracking.
Jay: Yeah. And we do try to have less backtracking in the game, but we’re still not afraid to walk that fine line. There’s a fine line between frustration and fun and, most people, if it’s the Venn diagram or whatever, it’s way over fun now. But we’re still getting pretty close to that frustration because I think that’s the fun; that’s where you feel accomplished because you say to yourself, man, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I was watching you guys play. This is the first time I’ve watched guys play the game who didn’t know how to play the game, and the first group that was in here for the first half an hour was killing me, because I just wanted to help everybody so bad. ‘Go here!’ But I’m like, ‘No, no. This is exactly what the goal is.’ I can watch you guys. Whenever you’re rolling the ball around and you have to shoot it up the divot, people are rolling it around, throwing it here and there, but eventually everybody gets it and everybody gets there. And that means we’re doing our job. If it takes you 15 seconds, 30 seconds, that’s fine. Just as long as everyone eventually gets it. If you can’t figure it out, then we’re off base. We’ve got to redesign. But we want people to be actively engaged in our game and get rewarded for their play; not for doing something that’s obvious or a cool cut-scene or something like that
Atomic: Now, there is one massive similarity between War and Death, and that’s the gorgeous long, straight hair.
Jay: That’s true, that’s true.
Atomic: What are these horsemen thinking? Do they have these cosmic hair straighteners? Do they have to have this long hair? Should we expect that from the next two horsemen?
Jay: As soon as you said that, I’m flashing back to those two concept art renders of Fury and Strife that we still have, and they both have short hair, so we just happened to pick the two long haired guys out of the group.
Atomic: That’s how they made the cut, right? That’s how Death became the protagonist in the second game?
Jay: Yeah, well we were at the meeting, and we were like, you look at what makes your game a success, right? And Darksiders I, the guy had long hair. And we said, that’s exactly… let’s have long hair.
Atomic: So if Darksiders II is a success, we should expect long hair in III?
Jay: Longer hair.
Atomic: Down the back. And by the time you get to IV-
Jay: -Yeah, it’s going to be a character like the Marvel-verse. So I think for Darksiders IV and V, we’re going to wait for tech to advance so that we can really get the hair nailed down and go something with that.
Atomic: Thank you very much for your time.
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