Interviews// Tom Galt - Lead Designer The Darkness II

So, off I went to talk to Tom Galt of Digital Extremes, the Lead designer for The Darkness II. But enough of this introductory waffle, let's cut to the chase.


SPOnG: The original Darkness was great, what new elements have you added to The Darkness II to distinguish it from its predecessor?

Tom Galt: We wished to continue the story from the previous title by keeping Paul Jenkins on board to write the story for the new game. He wrote a lot of the comic books, so it was important to get his knowledge and skill onto the project for the new game.

We have also taken the gun play to a new level. The gun play in the original game was good, you could dual wield and you could combine that with the character's powers in a lot of cool ways. What we have done is brought the demon arms to the fore, where in the previous game the arms were a selectable power. They are front and centre in the Darkness II, which allows the player to use them in combination with the guns. This generated the term 'quad wielding'.


SPOnG: Story wise; is this a direct sequel to the original game?

Tom Galt: The Darkness II takes place two years after the events of the original. Jackie Estacado is the don of the Estacado family and we are picking up from where we left off.


SPOnG: What engine have you used to develop the game?

Tom Galt: We are using the same self developed Evolution engine. It was used to create Dark Sector and we have built on it ever since. We have put in a lot of features into it that are unique to The Darkness II, especially the dynamic lighting.

We also have used a brand new animation system that allows us to blend to and from rag-doll states. For example; if you slash a guy, that will be a set animation, which will then switch over to rag-doll where he hits a car or a building, he reacts realistically to that. If the player hasn't killed him yet, then he will get up off of the ground and get back into the fight. That's all given to us in our new Evolution engine. We are really proud with what we have been able to do with it for The Darkness II.


SPOnG: There is very little in the way of a HUD, is that are conscious design decision?

We have experimented with a lot of things, and we are going for the minimalist HUD. They did that to great effect in The Darkness, so we want to keep pushing that. We have the ammo for the gun because you have to have that, we have the blood effects on screen to tell the player when they are injured, and we have in world effects that tell the player what they can interact with.

Obviously we want players to use the demon arm to grab things in the environment to use them as weapons, so it's really important that a player can enter combat and tell at a glance what they can interactive with and what they can't. So we have a visual language that we have created that shows what players can grab.


SPOnG: How has the community of fans for the previous Darkness game assisted with the development of the new game?

Tom Galt: We have looked at a lot of forums and read what the fans liked about the first game, and tried to continue that. Overwhelmingly what players liked was the great story. They really got attached to Jackie and Jenny and people really fell in love with that character arc.

So, that's what we're trying to focus on with our story as well. We're really focussing on Jackie as a character and exploring his character and how he has evolved as a person from the first game to our game and then of course the progression throughout The Darkness II.

Another thing we are focusing on a lot is our up-close and personal combat via the use of the demon arms. Talking to fans of the first game we learnt that everyone played the game differently. Some people barely used the Darkness powers at all and just used guns, some players used Darkness powers all of the time.

With the new game, we are encouraging the [use of] the demon arms a lot; there's a lot of game play scenarios in the game really feature them heavily, but we don't force them. We encourage the player to use everything at their disposal and to combine these tools as well.


SPOnG: Is there any lead platform for the game?

Tom Galt: One of the great things about our Evolution engine is that I can be playing a level of the game on my PC and then 2 minutes later, be playing that same level on my PS3 or Xbox 360. This has allowed us to develop the game simultaneously across all three platforms.


SPOnG: The PS3 version of the original game used the added capacity of the blu-ray disc to include full length feature films that players could watch in the game. Is something similar being done for this new game?

Tom Galt: We understand people really enjoyed that feature from the first game and we are still looking into that right now.

SPOnG: Thanks for your time.