Marvin Donald Talks Darksiders II, Story, Inspirations, and More

Marvin Donald: We wanted to go wider rather than deeper. We thought it would be cool to show what was going on during that period – I mean you play as War, and you wonder where the other Horseman are and what they are doing – we thought it would be interesting to do that kind of story, and provide a different perspective.

Strategy Informer: The danger of course with parallel stories is that they are either meaningless – because the events of the first game have already happened, or you’re playing a round of tenuous links as you try and connect the two tales more closely – how did you balance that?

Marvin Donald: Yeah, it’s tricky. It’s tempting to have more connections and overlaps but the more we have the bigger the risk. It could be something cheesy, something that doesn’t work that well, or it could break continuity. But there were some things we could have taken advantage off – at the beginning of Darksiders, War is actually in prison for a hundred years, so we’ve got a good chunk of time we can play around with where not a whole lot was actually going on. It wasn’t until the Charred Council released War so that he could go out and prove his innocence that the gameplay for Darksiders starts. That set us up so that we could have a good chunk of time to create connections without making too much trouble for the writing.

Strategy Informer: Someone from the studio has already commented that you guys want to make a franchise out of Darksiders – is the intention to eventually go back to the ending of the first game? With the brothers re-united?

Marvin Donald: I think we have to, right? We don’t have concrete plans at the moment, we’ve got a lot of options for Darksiders III… my point is though, that, imagining myself from the gamers perspective… I’d be disappointed if Vigil did the same thing, a third point of view… it’s just too much of the same thing. We can only get away with it once… but obviously I can’t commit creatively to what we’re actually going to do for Darksiders III.

Strategy Informer: What about the other two Horsemen – Strife and Fury – who are rumoured to be in this game. Is that just to cover their angle so you then don’t have to go and do a third parallel which, like you said, you probably won’t be able to get away with?

Marvin Donald: I can’t really comment on how much content there is for the other horsemen in Darksiders II. We haven’t completely forgotten about them… they’ll have their day.

Strategy Informer: The first Darksiders had several comparisons made towards it, Zelda being one of them… going into development of Darksiders II, did you embrace these comparisons or did you want to try and stand out more?

Marvin Donald: When those things come up it kind of depends on the context, I mean… we’ve got a lot of inspirations; we all like to play games. We’re inspired creatively by the things we enjoy playing. That being said I think it takes time to develop that combination that’s uniquely ‘you’, and we’ve expanded and evolved the formula with Darksiders II. It’s not just the same experience with new content.

The loot system is a huge change, a full blown quest system, you’ll be talking to more NPC’s, and there’ll be a quest journal… I think at some point during the series, how much of what we have, the ways in which we execute things… it’s just going to develop over time and we’ll have a unique combination. We’re growing and learning as a studio.