We’re using those for inspiration for character development, in terms of who the characters are, and the moves Jackie has. That’s what we’ve been focusing on a lot. Our art team did a great job of bringing the comic books to life. I think that more so from The Darkness 1 we make it feel like you’re playing a graphic novel. I think the biggest thing is our art style. I think… what’s going to be new… I don’t know if there is anything I can talk about now that’s new from the comic books or graphic novels. What content from the source material will be new for The Darkness II? Since The Darkness II is based on a graphic novel. All of the art content is new that we’ve created to match with our new graphic noir art style. The tech is our own, we’re using our Revolution engine. We were able to use a lot of their assets for reference purposes, to get a feel for the characters and that. Were you able to use any of Starbreeze’s assets to jumpstart development? It’s a lot of fun, but it’s challenging – more challenging than making a cover based shooter, you know?ġStarbreeze is developer of the first game based on The Darkness. It’s not easy making light & dark gameplay with the darkness power. We were ecstatic when 2K approached us to do it and it’s been an amazing challenge. They made you feel like a badass when you played the game. The job they did was fantastic, both in terms of storytelling, but also the dark & light gameplay. There were some moments in the first game that were gut wrenching, it was one of those games where you cared about the player character, Jackie, and Jenny, his girlfriend who gets killed. They were one of the first studios to create a really great narrative within a first person shooter. It was such an emotional roller coaster ride. Starbreeze knocked the first game out of the park. Tom Galt, Lead Designer from Digital Extremes: In terms of this right now, it’s an honor to work on The Darkness II. How do you feel about picking up where Starbreeze 1 left off? I remember you guys made Dark Sector and now Digital Extremes is working on the sequel.
We caught up with Digital Extremes to talk to them about their horror shooter and what they draw inspiration from while developing it. That game was The Darkness II, developed by Digital Extremes.Ī supernatural shooter, The Darkness II stars Jackie Estacado, who wields an unholy (I’ll say) power called “the Darkness”. Back during the Game Developers Conference, I came across a game starring a Mafia hitman, that lets you summon demonic tentacles to attack your enemies and imps to pee on the dead.