Next Darksiders could reduce scope to improve detail

Vigil Games decided that bigger is better in Darksiders 2, making the world as much as four times larger than the original by some accounts. As Vigil wraps up work on the game, it's already thinking about the next step in the franchise--and might just scale things down for the next title if the reaction and sales call for it.

"If Jason's [Rubin, THQ President] sat there and we go and sell 4 or 5 million units, I'm pretty sure he won't say, 'Let's go and do something different now'," lead designer Haydn Dalton told Videogamer. "Maybe what he might do is turn around and say, 'We'll do another Darksiders game, but we'll try and reduce the scope so that we can make it even higher polished'. Because our scope is huge. Maybe he says, 'Bring the scope down a little bit, we'll still do another game but it's a lot more focused'. That's not such a bad thing to do either."

Dalton says that a smaller world could allow for more "detail or destruction," and balks at the idea that a smaller world would be less interesting for players. "Quantity is not about quality," he said. "Just because you make something bigger doesn't mean it's better. That's something people are saying to us: 'You keep quoting about size'. I tend to not really go on about the physical size of the world so much because it's more about what you're doing within that area that's important to me."

Darksiders 2 is set to launch August 14, and will include a Season Pass for its DLC plans.