Vigil Games have suggested that the Wii U version of Darksiders II will be “at least as good” as that on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Such comments emerge ahead of E3 2012, at which Nintendo will unveil the final hardware version of the much speculated console.
“The visuals will be the same,” stated associate producer Jay Fitzloff to Eurogamer. “It’s still a work in progress. But I know, at least as good is the way to say it.”
He continued, “[Getting Darksiders 2 working on Wii U] is not as challenging as you might think. Getting it working was not any issue on the Wii U. It’s just the control scheme. It’s new territory. It’s a new frontier. The Wii, after a while, there’s a lot you could have done with the Wii controls, but everybody kind of got into a groove, and it became, here’s how you handle this or here’s how you handle this. Now it’s the wild frontier. There’s no set system. You’ve got to think outside the box because there’s no precedent.
“It’s not getting the game working on the system. It’s getting a cool control system that feels correct. And that’s where we’re at now.”
Fitzloff even explained the simplicity of implementing support for the Wii U’s tablet controller, which has the capability to stream gameplay from the console itself.
“When we first got it up and running, you can have the game download to and run on the pad, and everybody was like, that could take a while, little worried,” he discussed. “It took a programmer two lines of code and five minutes. Working with it is not difficult.”
Whilst Darksiders II will utilise the controller in obvious ways, Fitzloff believes that even such “no brainers” will have a significant impact on the gameplay experience.
“Any game would have their inventory on the controller screen,” he began. “But even that little simple thing is a big difference because you never have to stop the game on the main screen. That will change people’s perceptions because you’ve never had a game where you didn’t have to.
“They take you out [of the experience], whereas this just goes. And you’re talking about the low hanging fruit. You’re talking about the easy stuff. The rest of it is where the challenge comes in. What do we do beyond that that makes it feel natural and integral?”
Darksiders II is currently slated as being a Wii U launch title later this year.
Darksiders II on Wii U “at least as good” visually as competitors
