Disappointing as it may be that Darksiders II will, like its predecessor, have you playing solo, it wasn’t because of a lack of interest in multiplayer. On the contrary, developer Vigil Games has been interested in multiplayer since it began development on the first game, but the challenge of implementing it has proven to be too much thus far.
“When we put together the pitch for Darksiders 1, we wanted it to be multiplayer then,” Director Marvin Donald told IGN. “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.”
Donald explained that each character — War in the first game, and Death in the sequel — has its own animation set consisting of 800 to 1,000 animations. That might not be an issue if animations could be shared between characters, but that’s not possible because each has different proportions.
