Vigil on frustrations of not being able to talk about Wii U, more

I was just saying the other day how frustrating it is that we still don’t know much about Darksiders II (and other Wii U games) even though Nintendo has a new console coming out in just a few months. You guys probably feel the same way, and so does Vigil Games, the developer of Darksiders II.

In a lengthy exchange with VideoGamer, Darksiders II lead designer Haydn Dalton talked about how he wishes he could just come out and talk about Wii U. There’s other talk about the console as well – the GamePad’s screen, developers supporting it down the road, and more.

We’ve posted the full Q&A with Dalton below.

Q: THQ was one of the very first third-parties to jump on Wii U. You’ve got Darksiders II coming up for Wii U. Do you find it frustrating that – on the consumer-side at least – Nintendo is being very shy about the console’s power? Is it frustrating to see people still having that argument when you know exactly what it can and can’t do?

HD: Er…

Q: Do you wish Nintendo would just come out and say?

HD: Oh, of course. Yeah. It’s awkward because when people ask questions about [Wii U] we’ve got to skirt around the answer. We obviously want them to come out with it because then we can just talk openly about the game. I’d rather just be open with people than spinning the answer back at somebody. As soon as they just come out and everything’s revealed it would take a little bit of weight off us as developers so we can be a little bit more open about the product.

Q: You probably can’t answer this next question, then. Does Darksiders II perform better on Wii U than it does on 360 and PS3?

HD: You already knew that I can’t answer that question. [Laughs] I hate it, dude.

Q: That must be frustrating as well?

HD: It is, because that’s just like a line that Nintendo have said [inaudible]. THQ are just running it by the line now. We just don’t want to… I guess it’s because Nintendo have always been about the games. They’ve been about certain hardware – analogue stick and things like that – but they’ve never really pushed technically being the best.

They’ve always kind of rehashed stuff. The Wii Motion stuff, they just kind of took things in a slightly different direction but they’ve never been the biggest on the technology front. They would just want people to focus on the game. It’s like, if we give you a good game, is it really about how many polys this thing can push around or is it about what interesting new gameplay experiences we can give a player? Which is more important? Is it visuals or is it the experiences you can give the player?

Q: That’s the thing though, right? As a developer what do you opt for? If you’ve got the next-generation Xbox or PlayStation and you can make these gorgeous games, would you really want to develop for a console that perhaps can’t deliver that same level of presentation or scope?

HD: That’s true, but maybe Nintendo are giving you something that gives you a physical, tactile experience that you can’t get on those other two consoles. Something that’s compelling.

Q: I suppose I look back at what happened with Darksiders 1. That wasn’t on Wii. Going forward could that mean…

HD: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I just look at it as stuff like when we first heard about the analogue stick on the N64 and I was unsure about how that would happen. There had been analogue sticks before on consoles but they’d never really done that well. I was working for Software Creations at the time and we got an early version of Mario in, and the first time that I moved around Mario with that stick, I thought, this just changes everything. It was so utterly awesome.

HD: It does make it more difficult now, definitely. Because other people are doing more. They’re doing peripherals that can be added to existing or even more advanced technologies, whereas who knows what the Nintendo guys are doing. The thing that Nintendo are absolute masters at is that they harness their hardware like nobody else.

If you look at any of their titles where they’re using the touch screens on the NDSs and things like that, they use it in beautiful and creative ways that make you think as a designer and a game player. They’ve given me something that I couldn’t get anywhere else. Just simple things like finding something with dust on it and having to blow onto the screen to reveal what’s written. It’s just really simple things like that but they’ve used their technology in a unique way and forced the player to physically interact with it in a different way. There’s a magic about that. I only get that magic a lot when I’m playing Nintendo games.

Q: But that’s it. I look back at the Wii and the only titles I really played were the launch line-up because I was intrigued by how it would work, but after that it’s just the first-party Nintendo titles. There’s a concern that could happen again with Wii U, especially as the new consoles come out further down the line.

HD: Yeah, and the thing is, it’s all on how committed the developers are to embrace that hardware and use it in interesting ways. Obviously Nintendo are 110 per cent behind that hardware, so as long as the devs are also behind it, and the third-party guys are behind it in a very committed way then we’ll see some very interesting and exciting…

Q: Yeah. And THQ announced that Metro: Last Light was coming to Wii U, but now the official line is that it’s “not in development”. Now, obviously there’s Darksiders, but there are properties like WWE that I’d have possibly expected to see on Wii U but isn’t. Is that a sign of things to come, that people aren’t really sure?

HD: Games are in a unusual position right now with the advancement of iOS, Facebook stuff and social games in general, the PC… Look at where Minecraft’s gone and where Steam is going with Steamworks. Somebody who has to deliver a gaming experience to the player right now is kinda… who knows what’s going to be the thing that overrides them all?

Usually it’s stuff that you didn’t expect that comes out to be the winner. The big thing at the moment doesn’t usually sustain itself for too long. I mean, it’s big, it’s a behemoth for a certain amount of time, but sometimes there are things that come out of left-field that become the next big thing that no-one expected. So my take on that right now is, it’s just such a maelstrom of events that it’s hard to predict where it’s going to go and how it’s going to pan out.

Be sure to read the full interview here, which also touches on how Darksiders tends to receive Zelda comparisons.