After running from place to place and quite a bit of begging we finally managed to get into the business area of THQ and to see with our own eyes the first ever gameplay from Darksiders 2, the new game from Vigil and the continuation of (yes, you guessed it) Darksiders. And not only that, we also managed to get an interview with Jay Fitzlioff, the PR of the Developers. The full clip of the interview will arrive shortly.
Most followers of the game know that this time we will play “Death”, the brother of “War” from the first game, and one of the riders of the apocalypse. Death, unlike his brother is a lot more agile and dexterous and he can easily dodge his enemies attacks, but he can’t block them. And so, Death’s favorite weapon are two fast and small scythes, which can, if need be, combined into one double-bladed sword for more powerful hits. Another weapon that we saw during the demo was a really big warhammer which was pretty powerful but really slow. The fighting in this game was very much like it’s prequel, and many of Death’s moves reminded us of his brother War.
When the demo began, Jay told us that the entire game happens at the same time as its prequel, but this time we will get to visit the Underworld which is the realm of the dead. Since this time we won’t be visiting the destroyed Earth, the developers allowed themselves to loosen up a bit with the creation of the world and gave their artists a free hand to do as they see fit with the surrounding elements of the world and the visual effects. As a result we will get a more weird and imaginative game. Jay promised us that within the world there will be characters that we would be able to talk to, trade with them and even get some side quests from them.
The first environment we saw was some kind of a cathedral that was harnessed to two scary looking giant snakes who guard it and carry it around. Death jumped on one of them and summoned his horse Despair and rode it all the away to the cathedral. Unlike the first game we will gain access to the horse in an early stage of the game, and it will accompany us all across the game (except areas where we wont be able to summon it). Inside the cathedral lives The Lord of Bones, it is him that Death wants to talk to about clearing his brother’s War name. To do so Death will have to defeat the local champion in a face to face combat and bring his skull to The Lord of Bones.
On the way to the Arena to defeat the champion, Death is being attacked by a number of skeletons and a big pissed off looking beetle. In the battle we saw Death uses for the first time a new gadget called the ghost hook, that allows Death to grab small enemies who are around him and get them closer to him. In the beetle case, since its a big creature Death got pulled to it which allowed him to get some fast hits in before the beetle understood what happened. After Death defeated the beetle we noticed that a few golden coins were dropped from the beetle, we asked Jeff about that. Jeff told us that there is a trade system in the game and through it Death will be able to upgrade himself (armor and weapons) in many ways (which will change Death’s appearance) in exchange for these coins. Death would be able to upgrade him self as we see fit, and it is still not clear if there is an experience or souls system like the older game.
From there we advanced to the arena itself where the champion was waiting, the champion that was discovered to be a giant worm that is able to manipulate the bones that were scattered across the arena and create an outer shell that looked like a destructive giant golem. After a long fight, that included many stages we got to see Death change to the more familiar form of Death, the cloaked figure wielding a giant scythe, and ends the demo by removing the champions skull in one go. Before we left the room, we managed to get some more information about the game, and we discovered that the Underworld is built from areas that are not physically connected to each other. Each area is built from dungeons; smaller ones then the ones in the previous game to make it easier for us to explore these areas and to find the treasures that are hidden in them. In addition Jay gave us some extra info about Deaths raven who is called “Dust” which will act as a guide that will show the player important areas or objects.
Darksiders 2 reminded us of the previous game (not that its a bad thing) in almost every aspects, but it does seems like the developers took a lot of the complaints of the fans to heart. We hope to bring you more details about the game before its out somewhere in the year 2012 on the Xbox 360, PC, PS3 and the Wii U.
Originally published by Dark_Being
Some of our posts include links to online retail stores. We get a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Don't worry, it doesn't cost you anything extra.
