Darksiders’ art director does a bad job of selling his game

CVG has its preview up of hack n’ slasher Darksiders: Wrath of War which includes an interview with art director Han Randhawa. If one thing can be gleaned from the article, it’s that Randhawa isn’t very good at making his games sounds interesting.

“There are going to be lots of twists and turns; it’s a revenge story and War isn’t really a good guy or a bad guy, he’s more of an anti-hero,” he explained, already setting us up for the generic premise to come. “We wanted to come up with something that focuses on an ancient hero that was steeped in history, but didn’t want to go down the biblical route. War is just a classic character – the embodiment of pretty much every other character out there.”

It’s not like I am expecting Darksiders to be unique and fascinating — I’m looking forward to a mindless hack-a-thon. However, pretty much saying that the characterization is basically just a retread of “every other character” doesn’t really sell me on the game. Frankly, a more Biblical War would be ten times more interesting than the promise of yet another uncharismatic “anti-hero” that doesn’t even try to stand out. 

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things. I anticipate a thoroughly decent bit of violence, blood and some sort of faux RPG element that adds a shallow layer of attempted depth. So long as THQ provides me with those key ingredients, the rest of the game can do what it likes.