An interview with the developer provides some insight to the punch that Wii U will pack.
Darksiders II will look as good, if not better, on Wii U than its counterparts on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, according to an interview with Vigil.
The Darksiders II developer states that based on the developer kit that they've received, the Wii U hardware will be plenty powerful enough, but they clarified that nothing is final as of yet.
Darksiders II director Marvin Donald said that the Wii U version of the game would very likely be a direct port from the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions, unless the Wii U hardware ended up being extraordinarily powerful.
Of the plans, Donald said "It's probably going to be the same graphically, regardless of any minor or major horsepower improvements on the Wii U. But, in all honesty, if the Wii U turns out to be this ridiculously powerful machine, we will probably make changes to our budget and scope to take advantage of that. But that's currently not the plan. It's going to be a direct port. That's what we're planning on. But that's based off of what we believe the hardware's going to be like."
The director noted that prior to E3, the Wii U prototype controller was very different. "The last version of the controller we had was literally a giant Game Boy. It was very clunky. The shoulder buttons were really high, so they were out of reach, so you had to shift your hand to use a shoulder button. In the middle of combat that's just not an option. The controller we saw at E3 was not what we had."
As to how Vigil plans on using the Wii U controller, the developer has no firm plans, but is currently investigating the best way to implement the screen. Donald commented that aside from obvious ideas such as showing the inventory on the screen and using it for map management, they had not yet implemented any new features. The first step, Donald said, was just getting the game to be running smoothly on the Wii U hardware.
"The first thing we needed to do was get what we had already working and make sure it was solid. There are still some issues we have to work out. The game doesn't run perfectly on the Wii U as it is now," said Donald.
