Darksiders II Has Less Backtracking, Gets Extended Video and Screenshots

Quite a lot of new details have appeared about Darksiders II, the new hack and slash adventure game from Vigil Games and THQ, with its creative director talking about the backtracking that will be present in the new game, albeit in a less obtrusive manner, while new screenshots and an extended trailer were released.

Darksiders was released early last year for consoles and towards the end of 2010 for the PC, managing to attract a lot of players through its hack and slash mechanics, which borrowed from titles like God of War, while combining them with adventure game traits from The Legend of Zelda, for example.

With Darksiders II, Vigil Games, its developer, wants to really make the series stand out through its own original features, while focusing on another rider of the Apocalypse, Death, who's going through his own adventures at the same time as War in the original Darksiders.

Now, the studio's creative director, Marvin Donald, talked a bit about the game with Destructoid, and addressed the backtracking issues that annoyed a few gamers in the first title.

In Darksiders II, "most of [the backtracking] will be optional and it will also be driven by quest content. So you'll have some context to why you're going back and you won't necessarily have to do it."

The new title won't use the same levels over and over again, as players are going to enjoy different environments thanks to a new modular system used by the studio.

"We have a modular system that we're using to build our environments so it's made it a lot faster for us to build new interesting areas, have more complex layouts, actually get them done faster, to modify them and to come up with new sequences for the character to go through so we don't have to rely on the same space as much. It's pretty easy for us to generate more content."

Darksiders 1 forced players to backtrack through quite a lot of environments, but allowed them to access hidden zones thanks to the new powers they earned throughout the story.

Until Darksiders II arrives next year, check out the new batch of screenshots below as well as the extended trailer for the game.