I imagine that Death would have a solitary lifestyle when brandishing two massive scythes
Darksiders is a franchise that centers on the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. This sounds like a perfect opportunity to have four players; War, Famine, Death and Conquest. However, the original Darksiders was a solo experience and it appears that this will continue with Darksiders 2, but why?
According to game director, Marvin Donald, it is all down to technical issues. Virgil Games have high standards, each horseman would need to have up to 1000 unique animations and modern consoles would struggle to do this. Although the second game will feature Death alone, Donald does not discount a co-op Darksiders in the future:
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. There are a lot of factors that are going to drive that. It's too soon to say.
For more on Donald's view on the technicalities of modern Co-Op gaming, check out Read More.
[Multiplayer] has been something we've been wanting to do since DS1. You almost have to make four games. 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.
That means no copy-pasting of abilities between Horsemen. Of course there's balancing with the different abilities. We're going to want them to play differently, so we wanted to spend some time developing each of the characters individually.
That's not to say we're going to put out four versions of this game and then have a fifth version that's co-op. 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. There are a lot of factors that are going to drive that. It's too soon to say.