NEWS
by Mark Barley
'Darksiders III' likely to be smaller in scale than its predecessor
Lead designer at Vigil - developer on Darksiders II - Haydn Dalton recently stated that Darksiders III, if it happens, will be smaller in scale.
In a recent interview with Videogamer, Dalton stated that if Darksiders II sells well enough THQ is more than likely to greenlight a sequel. And that sequel is likely to be much smaller in scale, but busier.
“Maybe what he might do is turn around and say, ‘We’ll do another Darksiders game, but we’ll try and reduce the scope so that we can make it even higher polished,’” Dalton said.
“Maybe he says, ‘Bring the scope down a little bit, we’ll still do another game but it’s a lot more focused’. That’s not such a bad thing to do either.”
Dalton did state that Darksiders II's game world is nearly four times as large as the first Darksiders title. Dalton then goes on to state that he'd be much appreciative of a scaled back Darksiders title. “Maybe he says, ‘Bring the scope down a little bit, we’ll still do another game but it’s a lot more focused’. That’s not such a bad thing to do either.”
“Reducing the size of the world might be seen as a big impact from a player point of view, you know what, we might do a lot more interaction within the world if the world was smaller,” he said.
“And there might be even more polish, there might be a lot more animated things in the environment and a lot more detail or destruction or whatever it might be in the world because of a reduce in size. Rather than doing sheer square-footage, it’s more like what can you do in less room by focusing on it, and depth [and] interaction within a smaller environment.
“Initially it seems like if you make it smaller that’s not as good. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Quantity is not about quality. Just because you make something bigger doesn’t mean it’s better.”
Darksiders II is out in August for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC with a Wii U release coming later this year.
“And there might be even more polish, there might be a lot more animated things in the environment and a lot more detail or destruction or whatever it might be in the world because of a reduce in size. Rather than doing sheer square-footage, it’s more like what can you do in less room by focusing on it, and depth [and] interaction within a smaller environment.
“Initially it seems like if you make it smaller that’s not as good. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Quantity is not about quality. Just because you make something bigger doesn’t mean it’s better.”