Darksiders II Needs Commercial Success for the Franchise to Continue

The problematic outlook at publisher THQ means that the future of the Darksiders franchise is entirely dependent on how well the second title does in the marketplace, both in its original packaged form and when it comes to downloadable content releases.

Haydn Dalton, who is the leading developer working on Darksiders II, told Strategy Informer that, “We’ve got ideas for what we can do within the Darksiders universe, and it’s a huge universe. We’ve got ideas for different types of games as well. We’ve got a lot of mechanical things that are the boil and are ready to go depending on how this sells.”

He added, “With the focus on DLC we want to sustain the amount of time people can spend playing Darksiders. Hopefully within that time we’ll find how it’s been received, how people are liking it, so a lot of our future as a games studio will be dependent on how this goes.”

THQ has been hit by financial troubles in the last few quarters and the company announced that it was focusing on its core franchises in order to deliver better revenue and profits.

Darksiders II tells the story of Death, another horseman of the Apocalypse, who needs to show that his brother War was not to blame for the events in the first game.

The gameplay for the sequel will be similar to that of the first title, with more nimble moves during combat and more areas to explore.

Darksiders II will be out on August 14 in the United States and one week after that in Europe, on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.

A PC version of the game will also be launched and THQ is also preparing to port the game to the Nintendo Wii U home console when it is finally launched.