Going into development on The Darkness II, Digital Extremes has been all about taking what worked the first time around, and evolving it into something even better.

Asked if the decision to emphasise action gameplay was motivated by a decision to do something a bit different with the sequel, 2K producer Seth Olshfski tells Destructoid that, “It was a little bit more ‘fuck it, we’re gonna go all out.”

“If you look at the first game, you gain more and more and more powers, and then when you get to the end of the game there’s this cinematic sequence where your demon arms start slashing people to bits and picking people up and throwing them around – absolutely wreaking havoc.

“That was sort of the inspiration for the second game, we were like ‘hey, I wanna be able to do that with my own controls. I wanna be able to make the demon arms do those things.’”

“And Jackie is so powerful. He’s earned that action. It makes a lot of sense for it to be that active because he’s learned how to use his powers.”

The Darkness II is due to launch in February 2012, after being delayed twice.