Darksiders 2 has long been listed as one of the Wii U’s launch titles, and it seems that Vigil Games have been working hard on it. Game Reactor hosted an interview with the game’s director, Marvin Donald, and he had plenty to say about the upcoming console. Apparently, the main stand-out feature of the Wii U version will be the use of the controller’s touch screen features.
“We have limitations based on Nintendo’s progress,” he said. “But, the only problem that’s been for us is not having an actual release date. But once we know when Nintendo has committed to a firm date, we will be able to commit to a date for Darksiders 2, but we’re planning on it being a launch title, and so far everything’s been smooth sailing.
“We got the game running on their hardware pretty quickly, and the controller’s been great to work with. Now it’s just down to deciding what we really want to do to make it a unique experience on the Wii U; taking advantage of the extra screen and the touch capability and all that. So, we’ll have a few new features for sure, but I think visually, for the most part, it’ll be pretty much the same.
“So far the hardware’s been on par with what we have with the current generations. Based on what I understand, the resolution and textures and polycounts and all that stuff, we’re not going to being doing anything to up-rez the game, but we’ll take advantage of the controller for sure.”
It seems that even developers are a little unsure about what the exact specs of the Wii U’s final version will be, but Nintendo have said that they’ll be sharing the details with us all at this year’s E3 Expo in June. For now though, it seems that some creative usage of the Wii U’s controller is something that we can look forwards to.
We’d like to thank Eurogamer for transliterating Marvin’s comments.
Darksiders doesn’t seem to be the sort of game that will benefit from a touch screen, so I’d be interested to see what they do with it. Will it just be a Zelda-style scrawl on a map? Will it take a leaf from Uncharted’s Vita touch madness?
Good question. I wouldn’t expect much more than a detailed map on the touch screen, maybe with the ability to make notes, but it sounds as though Vigil are giving it a lot of thought.
“So far the hardware’s been on par with what we have with the current generations. Based on what I understand, the resolution and textures and polycounts and all that stuff, we’re not going to being doing anything to up-rez the game, but we’ll take advantage of the controller for sure.”
That’s not exactly something to be proud of. So more or less we have current gen tech, soon to be last gen tech, coming out on a next gen machine? Really? Wow…
I think you misread that Cyph. The game itself won’t be getting any upgrades visually, because by the sounds of it Vigil aren’t sure what the system is capable of on that side of things yet. The good news is, it can handle the same results of a Ps3, considering where the Wii sits, that’s a huge improvement in itself. But earlier reports suggested it could output higher than that, much higher in fact. We’ll have to wait and see at E3.
Perhaps you’re right Kartanym. Although I do remember reading something a while back indication that it wouldn’t be that much more powerful than current gen. Also, I find it somewhat surprising and unbelievable that Vigil wouldn’t be utilising the WiiU as much as possible to showcase the console unless there was a reason not to… I mean, they have a dev kit, they are producing for it, so I’m sure they know what they can do with it, or the very least, try to improve it over the 360/PS3.
No sir, I don’t buy it.
Third parties being lazy on Nintendo. Colour me surprised.