One of the biggest gameplay features third-party developers seem to be pushing with Wii U versions of their multiplatform software is the ability to manage equipment and other menu items easily with the controller’s touch screen. In an interview with PushSquare, Vigil Games’ Haydn Dalton confirms that the Wii U version of Darksiders II, which we already know will use the touch screen for inventory functions, takes the unique hardware features one step further.
“People have already seen that, heard about the fact that we’re going to use it from an inventory point of view. That’s all we’ve talked about. Allowing players to access stuff on the fly rather than jumping in and out of the menu, they can actually see the choices right there on the GamePad. I mean, that’s one small thing, but we’re going to be using it in a lot more interesting ways as well. That’s just one small part of it.”
Hop inside for some of my guesses about other functionalities, as well as a breakdown of the rest of the interview.
I have two rather obvious suspicions right off the bat in terms of other uses for the Wii U GamePad: a secondary map screen and an off-screen HUD display. Developers and gamers alike seem to love the idea of removing clutter from the main screen so that the game’s visuals can really shine, so it only makes sense for all non-interactive information to be placed onto the secondary screen. Aside from that, I think we might see some kind of gyro control for ranged attacks; nothing too fancy there.
As for my breakdown:
- One of the biggest things the team was able to carry over from their experience with the original Darksiders was how to approach the level design. The dungeons and overworld style has been done before in other game series like Zelda, but now the team has a good handle on how to execute it effectively, which means levels got done much more quickly this time around.
- The core level designers from the first game stuck around for the second.
- They’ve also learned a lot about how to refine good melee combat.
- Vigil’s gone even further than expected. They didn’t just take War, reskin the game, and call it a finished product. They rebuilt everything from the ground up for a new character: Death.
- “It feels more like Darksiders 2.5 to me.”
- The loot and skill tree systems were added on very early in development; they had wanted to implement them in the first game.
- Loot is tiered and tied to your character’s level, so as you get stronger, the loot gets better.
- Every piece of loot has a unique look.
- Skill tree system was fairly set from the beginning, with the only tweaks being where certain abilities were stacked and what was included.
- About the ability to feed your Possessed Weapons old items to grow them: ” We just thought, ‘what’s a good way of’… at first it came about as ‘what would be a good way to get rid of trash?’ You know, the stuff you’ve got and you don’t really need it any more. We’ve given fast travel to the player now, so you can jump to a vendor, jump to a location, go there and sell it. But it is a bit of a hassle for the player. So we said ‘what can we do?’ We don’t want a player just having to drop everything into the scene or always have to figure out which ones they want to drop. So we thought, let’s just create an item [that] we can just dump tons and tons of items into.”
- Possessed Weapons have a very low drop rate.
- You can level up 20 times on a first playthrough, and to Level 30 on a New Game +. The level cap is designed to restrict some items to the New Game +.
- Each of the four Horsemen was drawn in preparation for the original Darksiders. Death was very nearly the main character of the first game, so it was easy to decide on him for the second. They wanted him to be agile based on his personality and design.
- Environments are designed around the different play-style: wall-running, beam-jumping, swinging, etc.
- Some levels are horizontally-oriented, some are vertical.
- Death’s adventure happens during War’s 100-year stay in the Abyss.
- What the other Horsemen were doing during that time hadn’t been established when they made the original game.
- Each of the Horsemen will fill a character/player archetype. War is a barbarian, Death is an assassin, etc.
- Future games may use co-op, depending on what people want out of the genre. It’s incredibly difficult to do good multiplayer with this generation’s tech without compromise.
- The Wii U version will still retain all features from other console versions.
- His favorite new feature is the loot system, as it adds a kind of play economy that’s compelling. Do you ignore enemies, or fight them for loot?
- Some loot is only available via sidequest (legendary items)
