Darksiders II director: We'd have loved to add multiplayer

Darksiders II director, Vigil Games' Marvin Donald, says the company has always wanted to implement multiplayer within the series, but that the focus on optimizing the single-player game means the sequel will once again be a single-player affair. Multiplayer, he says, is a luxury the fledgling studio couldn't afford to build into the proprietary technology of what's always been intended as its flagship IP. “I hope the next one's co-op,” says Donald: “there are a lot of factors that are going to drive that. It's too soon to say.”

For a series built around four figures as recognizable as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it's important that Darksiders do each individual character justice. That means building around 1000 animations for a character intended as the player-driven protagonist. Donald is adamant that sharing out animations or abilities between characters wasn't an option: “We're going to want them to play differently, so we wanted to spend some time developing each of the characters individually.”

Above: Do we need to point out that he's still solo? You get the picture

Donald says the team would still love to implement multiplayer for the series, but it's still a matter of “the resources that are available, the size of the budget and whether or not Darksiders II does well.” Donald's admission that Vigil wasn't able to fit multiplayer into the very protagonist-driven series may disappoint some, but plenty share the opinion that too many games have an arbitrary multiplayer mode anyway – so maybe Vigil shouldn't feel too bad about focusing on the single-player experience within a game driven by that mode. Darksiders II releases January of next year. What do you think – would multiplayer substantially improve Darksiders III?

Jul 26, 2011

Source: 1up