Over the next couple of days I am going to transcribe an 8 page long interview/ feature on Darksiders from Play magazine, August 2008.  Article written by Brady Fiechter.

"We need more stylized games coming out again, man. Take it back!"  Renowned comic book artist Joe Madureira of X-men and Battle Chasers fame is about to start a revolution, but before the march begins, his work as creative director on Darksiders: Wrath of War is really just getting started.  "Dude I'm just going to stop saying this is broken and let you play.  It's just that we're so hard on ourselves," says Madureira, as I sneak well past the point I was supposed to be allowed to experience, witnessing the framework of a scene that...


No spoilers here, especially when what I've seen concerns one of the coolest ideas you'll find in a game this year. Games like this don't get made that often, and I'm with Madureira ["M" from now on in this article"]: it's time to take it back. "I like game characters that look like game characters.  The games that got me into games were Mario, Zelda, crazy Japanese Genesis games. It's all art: Metal Slug. Shinobi. Double Dragon. It's all great c'mon! What ever happened to fantasy in games?"


The definitive answer is not today's concern; what is of concern is that Darksiders is being made with a very specific philosophy in mind: the team loves games like Castlevania, Metroid, Ico, Zelda - games where richness of dream-like imagination have no care for the modern world and it's militaristic dominance.  Darksiders is as art-driven and as fantastical as they come, where demons and angels wage war, where the main character is one of the four horseman of the apocylypse, ominously know ans War. Where evil bat queens devour the bat you ride in on, where disgusting monsters that look like blobs of rotting flesh, with cages embedded in their bodies strive to crush you with a giant fist.


"We basically wanted to make a fantasy game," says studio head David Adams. [DA] "You can see what we are influenced by.  That's a big thing for us: with Darksiders, we wanted a game like what we used to love playing. We wanted it to be a complete fantasy world. That enhances the exploration aspects. If it's realism, there is just no exploration in a real city. With us, it has to be rooted in earth - it *is* the apocylyupse - but pretty much the second you get around the corner you don't want it to be earth anymore. We want it to feel like a fantasy world. I just can't get attached to these real worlds."


Game theory is such a nebulous study.  There are plenty of developers that are adamant abuot the idea that you cannot relate to a world and it's inhabitants unless there are many of modern signposts leading the way.  This is simply obtuse thinking, a short-sighted way of reaching for a very rigid demographic, and I will second DA's word: I just can't get attached to these real worlds.  At least not in the way I most desire form a game.


"You could come around the corner and see, like, a parking garage or hospital, you are not going to be, duh duh duh." ("M" makes the universal sound for "this is so amazing").


"Yeah, there's not that moment of, 'Oh my gosh look at that hospital, it's just so amazing,” agrees DA.


"Having a hollowed out library with a demonic prison in the center of it though is pretty sweet,” says "M" "And honestly from a story point of view too, when you are creating a new fantasy world you need all that nerdy fantasy history, it's like, 'In the ninth age of King Leonidas the Argonian..' whatever.  You kind of need to have that.  But when you set it on earth, all of a sudden you've just saved yourself hours of cut-scenes and dialog. It's like, earth, I get it, it's been taken over by demons, I get it.  You can move forward from that point."

Here is another chunk:

Earth in Darksiders is not filled with pretty flowers smiling at a pretty blue sky.  This is the apocalypse, the kind you heard about in the Bible.  Sort of. "It's the comic book version of the apocalypse.  If the horsemen were on the X-Men," say M. "That's how it would be. It's not really horror, it's very fantasy adventure."

"We're pretty low-key on the religious side," adds DA.

Controversy will nto be joining this Darksiders revolution for its fanatical button-pushing (that gut-spilling, cross-shaped wound on the snake boss notwithstanding), but do expect a healthy M rating when the limbs of a various assortment of demonic freaks are removed in a theatrical display of chunks and blood.  War carries a big sword -- and he loves to use it.  The sword (and a few other similar weapons to be revealed later) will always be your primary weapon, slicing and dicing by the command of a few central combos.  "We have the weapon variety without the complexity," explains DA.  "You always have your main weapon, no matter what, through the entire game; you can just use the secondary weapon as relevant.  A lot of games, you get a new weapon, and you kind of go, 'eh,' and you just go back to your regular weapon.  But they are all essential in their own way here; they also serve a puzzle mechanic.  Like a gauntlet allows you to get through certain types of barriers.  It gives you enormous strength.  You can pick up busses, subway cars.  It blocks heavy armors.  With a Death Scythe, there are certain creatures that cannot be killed without it; you harvest more souls with it.  And you can have two weapons at a time.  You can combo between them."

A selection of three permanent guns also come into play as secondary items, either demonic, angelic or human; occasionally you'll come across a transient pickup as well, but once expanded, it's back to your central inventory of weapons.  There's a tonne of stuff for the agressive explorer to find.

The majority of my time spent with Darksiders' combat introduces me to the general use of the sword, and I find that it feels right merely swinging through a crowd with a simple command or two.  The game, I am told, will invite you to master your battery of techniques, but what if I find satisfaction in simplicity?

"I actually enjoy combat so much in Zelda, with what, three moves, and I honestly like it more than Ninja Gaiden," DA explains.  "I put God of War a bit closer to us, but we're not making Ninja Gaiden, or Devil May Cry.  I certainly like those games..."

"I'll say this, Ninja Gaiden, in like five minute bursts, it feels so fluid, it feels better than Zelda.  But after like six hours I just putter out." says M.

"That is one important distinction," says DA. "It's not our intention that you have to be a hardcore action player.  We want some depth in our combat there, because if you want to get into it that way...it's just never going to be Ninja Gaiden, that wasn't our intention.  Sometimes our combat is even a little more puzzley.  It's more about figuring out how to kill the guy."

There is a lot of talk throughout this look into Darksiders about Zelda, with one idea after another looping back to reflections on Link's sotired adventures.

"When we started the game, pretty much our sole inspiration was Zelda, a little bit of Prince of Persia," says DA.

"I always thought Castlevania and Zelda," M jumps in.  "You always get that question: What's the hook? We do have the horse, we do have the open level structure and exploration, we have the cinematic combat. It's just its own experience. It's not like oooh, you play at night, and there's this crazy sensor..."

"It's funny," adds DA, "when we first started showing the game, War is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, naturally he's going to be a badass.  We started to get the God of War and Devil May Cry comparisons and we were like, 'really?' But then we were like, yeah I guess that's what we showed, that kind of makes sense.  But those were never our inspiration."

To be continued...

Here is today's installment:

Having a friendly alignment with God of War isn’t such a bad thing, but spend time with Darksiders and you begin to see the diverging visions.  “This Zelda talk has to be more talk than show, because, well, thing of the depth we’re talking,” explains DA.

“It’s tough. The linear, cinematic combat stuff just shows better,” adds M. “If you were to show a big open-style Zelda-type level, where you get lost eight times to figure it out... You have to be in your living room, having played the game for a while.”

And it is here that you start to see Darksiders take compelling form as War begins uncovering a lava dungeon, bringing to bear the bold description of a Zelda for adults.  This is an oppressive, treacherous place of bubbling fire and brimstone, of rising pillars and fleshy pod sacks that that stick in the cracks and grow on the walls.

...

Every dungeon will house one piece of gear, such as the ability to slow time, and can be linked together for attacks.  Because War has been stripped of his powers (“Think Alucard in Castlevania,” laughs M), you’ll be slowly amassing more strength and ability, finding new items, expanding paths that further emphasize the exploration.  “We didn’t want to set up any artificial barriers.  There’s always a logical barrier, like a big gap... sand, whatever,” explains DA.  “It’s important that you can go places first and see them.  It’s kind of like a teaser, it just gives you more sense that you’re in the world.

Instead of having a rock wall that mysteriously disappears after ‘level 3’, here it’s like, yeah there’s a creature in the sand, there’s a physical reason why you can’t go there.  Once you get an item you can go back.”

"We have a ton of mid-bosses. We just love bosses, we can't help it," answers M. Some boss encounters, like that with the Bat Queen, will intermittently unfold as War marches through a dungeon, establishing an anticipation and cinematic wonder for the scene. Other bosses will lie quietly in the shadows, like the vortex entity who guards a well of souls in the underworld.

...

Early on you'll be introduced to a companion named, Ruin, a supernatural horse that can be summoned at the touch of a button.  Mounting and dismounting Ruin at just the right moment can beef up an attack scheme, sending the horse on a killer stampede while you do some cleanup on the side.  Even in this early stage of development Ruin handles well - a pretty tall order when you think of how many games tend to get this wrong. "Exactly," says M.  "Even from the beginning we thought, 'Maybe we should do the horse in the sequel.' We've played so many games where it wasn't quite, it just didn't feel good.  We did it first just to prove that we could or couldn't, and it felt pretty good early on. So we were like 'Sweet, it's in.'  Then we just worked to polish it."