I recently went hands-on with Darksiders, the roaming third person action epic from THQ and Vigil Games. You can read my extensive preview here. During a break in play I sat down with THQ Creative Director Luis Gigliotti, who was kind enough to explain a little of what I’d seen, along with a few things I hadn’t.

Gigliotti describes Darksiders as “the story of the apocalypse with a twist”. The game casts you in the role of War, one of the four biblical horsemen assigned to draw the curtain on human civilisation. Due to a communication breakdown that can only be described as unfortunate, you usher in the end of the world ahead of schedule. This earns you the ire of the HR department, who just happen to be a collective of gargantuan stone heads. “Heaven and Hell are upset with you about it,” Gigliotti confirms, “and a hundred years after the fact, you get to come back down to Earth to clear your name and find out what happened.”

Darksiders is a visually striking title. Vigil Games Creative Director Joe Madureira drew on his experience as a comic book artist to deliver larger-than-life character designs that well and truly buck the trend toward photo realism. “I got into games fifteen years ago,” Gigliotti says “when you didn’t have the option for photo realism. He believes that such restrictions forced artists to “really push the envelope of creativity.” Now that photo realism is almost within reach, he is anticipating a renewed focus on expressive art design. “For me, it’s exciting as a creative person. Photo-realism was to me more of a technical challenge, so now what we’re doing in Darksiders is an artistic challenge.”

“I’m always blown away by the epic look and feel of the game. From a development stand point, it’s one thing to take an amazing artist like Joe Madureira and go ‘wow, it would be great to make a game’, but to actually get a team of artists and animators to take that 2D vision and manifest it 3D with the level of consistency and quality that Joe’s work always shows, that’s an amazing internal feat.”

Gigliotti is equally enthused about the weapon and customisations aspects of the game. Though he regards himself as a fan of the genre, he feels there is definitely room for improvement in this area, noting that in some games “you might get a variety of weapons, but they tend to be one-dimensional.”

“In Darksiders, there are many dimensions to each of the weapons, and ways of upgrading them, like the Crossblade. You use that thing for everything from handling multiple enemy types, to world interaction and puzzle solving.”

After slicing and dicing your way through the best part of two levels, you may be inclined to regard yourself as a horseman in name only. Where is Ruin, your daunting and malevolent mount? According to Gigliotti, you’ll be saddling up after about eight levels, and thereafter can “summon Ruin at any time.” Gigliotti is confident that Ruin will contribute significantly to the replay value of Darksiders. After unlocking the steed, “you can go back to every level you’ve already played,” he says, and reach “a spot that you can’t get to unless you’re on Ruin.”

The emphasis on replay value also informs other aspects of the game. “There’s certain weapons that we use for navigation. You know, like the chain. You’ll see early in the level and think, ‘how do I get to that cave?’ You see these little spots. Later on in the game, you get the weapon, and there’s a little tutorial showing you how to use these little hook points. You go, ‘I saw that back in level three’. You head back and you can get to that cave. You’ve got some really interesting stuff you find when you replay the game, some really out of this world characters that are just really creative, really fun to fight and really fun to play with.”

THQ has elected to launch the game at a time when a lot of major publishers are shying away from new IP. Is Gigliotti at all concerned about the reception Darksiders may receive in the marketplace? “Well, I don’t know if I’m expressing the sentiment of everybody at THQ, but me personally, I have this whole theory. A lot of people have asked us about the games coming out before and after you guys. Is it smart to come out at that time? I always say, if you want to be the best, you have to compete with the best. For me, I know Darksiders competes with anything out there. We’re the new IP, right? A lot of these other games are already established, and on the second or third iteration. So yeah, it stands up, so let’s not be apologetic about it and get it out there.”

Darksiders is due for release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on Thursday 7 January 2010.

"This is why I hate gardening..."