Darksiders II Character Development and Skill Trees Detailed by Vigil Games

Death will set himself upon his foes in Darksiders II sometime later this year, but until we can immerse ourselves in his presence, we'll have to satisfy ourselves with the little nuggets of information that Vigil Games and THQ are willing to share. 

In the first Darksiders, its protagonist War gained skills and abilities as he progressed through the main campaign by collecting souls and using them to purchase them from the demonic merchant Vulgrim, whom he ran into during the course of his adventures. Unlike the first game, Darksiders II is said to offer much meatier character development. I got in touch with Vigil Games to explain this feature. 

"This is something we wanted to have in the first Darksiders, but just didn’t have time to implement," said Jay Fitzloff, Vigil Games Studio Marketing Manager, who gave us a helpful overview of the new character system and how it works. 

"To give a basic overview of how this system works, every kill earns Death experience points, and he advances in level when enough experience is earned," he said. "Each level increase boosts Death’s basic stats, but more importantly, it gives him a skill point to spend in one skill tree. Most skills have three tiers of power. In other words, three skill points can be spent on a single skill. The first skill point adds the ability to Death’s repertoire; the next two make that ability more powerful."

Darksiders II will even allow players to choose from two separate skill trees this time around. 

"There are two skill trees to choose from in Darksiders II – the Harbinger Tree and the Necromancer Tree. In simple terms, the Harbinger Tree is a warrior track; the Necromancer Tree is a mage track. Players can focus to one track or mix and match between the two. The skill trees do branch, and selecting a skill on the tree will make skills on connected branches available. It’s worth noting both trees have a gate to more powerful abilities that requires 9 skill points be invested in that tree before opening up these abilities to players."

We'll be posting our full interview with Vigil Games on Sunday morning. 

Darksiders II is set for a 2012 release on the PC, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3