In news that should make people who don’t like half-assed multiplayer happy, Vigil Games has announced that Darksiders II won’t be shipping out with half-assed multiplayer. That’s because Darksiders II won’t be shipping out with any multiplayer whatsoever, and for that very reason.
“[Multiplayer] has been something we’ve been wanting to do since DS1. You almost have to make four games,” project director Marvin Donald tells IGN. “You’ve got completely different animation sets. It’s 800 to 1000 animations for Death alone and they’re all unique. One thing great about working with Joe [Madureira from Vigil Games] is that he comes up with awesome characters but they have completely different proportions, so you can’t share any of the animations across them.”
They’re not ruling out the possibility of co-op at some point, but it’s not happening yet.
“I hope the next one’s co-op, but it just depends on the resources that are available, the size of the budget and whether or not Darksiders II does well,” he explains. “There are a lot of factors that are going to drive that. It’s too soon to say.”
“When we put together the pitch for Darksiders 1, we wanted it to be multiplayer then,” he adds. “It’s just too much work when you’re starting a brand new studio with a new [intellectual property] and you’re building your own technology. We’re also evolving the series into more of [a role-playing game], which was something else we wanted to do from the beginning, but we just didn’t have the resources or time or money to do it the first time around and do it justice.”
Well, that sounds sensible enough. Last week, Bethesda’s Pete Hines questioned the relevance of “forced multiplayer”, saying that, “If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game. We want the best game possible. If that’s a single player game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”
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