14 DAY TRIAL // Vigil Games, the developer of the upcoming Darksiders II title, has shared some thoughts about the platforms it is currently working on, highlighting that the PlayStation 3 is still difficult to program on, while the Wii U has been causing a few problems as well, because Nintendo changed the hardware components as it continued to work on the new console.
Vigil Games impressed many players with the original Darksiders, and is now working hard on its sequel, which is set to appear next year both for current generation consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, but also on the upcoming Nintendo Wii U platform.
Now, the game's director, Marvin Donald, has talked about working on such consoles, saying that the Wii U has caused a few problems, largely because Nintendo has yet to settle on a final version of the device, changing up hardware specs in recent months, while comparing the power of the new device with the PlayStation 3.
"[Wii U] will be at least as powerful [as PS3] if not more but honestly we don't really know because the hardware has been changing a lot," he said to CVG.
"We just got the generation two dev kits and there's no release date for the Wii U so we don't know how long the hardware development process is going to go on for, when they're going to stop and what they're ultimately going to be happy with. So it has provided some instability when working on it."
Still, Donald is confident that Darksiders II will attract Nintendo fans, largely because it offers an experience similar to the extremely popular Legend of Zelda series, made by the Japanese company.
"I hope the fact that we're heavily inspired by and love Zelda very much helps," he said. "When we marketed Darksiders we showed a lot of combat so people got the wrong impression about what kind of game it was. Now that it's a little bit more known maybe we'll have an audience there on the Wii U."
But the new Nintendo console isn't the only platform causing problems for Vigil, as Donald told Eurogamer about the more difficult PlayStation 3, which forced the developer to resort to quite a few tricks in order to make the game stable.
"I'm not an engineer, but I hear about it all the time. We have to do wacky stuff with the way we manage memory. Even as an artist, it's like, OK, my textures are too big, I'm in trouble because I checked in something that's making the 360 crash because it's a 2048 when it really should just be a 1024, or even smaller."
"But on the PlayStation 3, the assets go into different categories, and if one of those categories becomes too bloated it'll crash the system. It's a little bit more sensitive on the PS3 in that regard. There are some things you just can't do, or you have to do differently. Yeah, it's a pain."
Still, Vigil Games is pretty certain that Darksiders II will impress gamers no matter the platform on which it will appear next year.