A portion of a SPOnG interview with dev Haydn Dalton and Han Randhawa...

SPOnG: With the puzzle-solving and dungeon-crawling present in Darksiders, there are obvious comparisons to Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda. Particularly by fans of the adventure genre. Does it make you feel good that you’re compared to something like that?

Haydn Dalton: Yeah, of course! I mean, it is Legendary, right? If anyone can do games, it’s [Shigeru] Miyamoto. Some of the early Zeldas in particular are just fantastically designed games. I think that style of level design was the pinnacle of the franchise - what defined Zelda.

That kind of level design isn’t easy to do - few other games have done it well. Castlevania and Metroid are slight offshoots of that level design philosophy, but they’re great games too. You can see it in the latest Metroid, actually, but besides that there’s not a lot of other games doing that sort of thing.

Growing up and playing these games as kids, and a range of other kinds of games, have had an impact on the team at Vigil, so we definitely take a little bit of what inspires us and you can see the influences there from us. But with Darksiders II, we definitely feel like the series is starting to feel like it’s own thing now.

We feel that... you might recognise elements from different areas and games, but you’re never going to get another product with an experience like Darksiders. You can get a loot system somewhere else. You can get a combat system somewhere else. But I don’t know any other product where you can get all these things in one place. I think that’s what makes Darksiders so unique. It’s a hybrid title but it has its own strong universe.

And we’ve really come to realise and convey that in Darksiders II. I think the thing with Darksiders I was that it was communicated to the public as more of an action-specific genre. Not a lot of people realised that it was more of an adventure game with puzzle-solving elements.

SPOnG: It can be a developer’s worst nightmare to be compared sometimes, as there’s a danger that it pigeon-holes you. But, the comparisons I’ve heard in relation to Zelda in the media have been only positive.

Han Randhawa: Well, that counts as incredibly high compliments to us. The comparisons... it’s hard to get away from some of that stuff because there is a desire - not just in games media but in other mediums too - to box and compartmentalise things so readers and consumers can understand what new products are, in a nutshell. That can either hurt you or be very good for you.

Haydn Dalton: We had our own fan feedback - we’ve had the Zelda backlash! Even though we don’t say these things -- if a journalist turned around right now and said that Darksiders was better than a Zelda game, people would give us a tidal wave of negative commentary. But we didn’t say anything! [Laughs]

One guy I spoke to today said that he’s a big Zelda fan, but now he finds it hard to go back to Zelda from Darksiders because he says it just doesn’t hold his attention as much. That’s kind of strange for me, because we’re obviously huge Zelda fans as well. So to hear that makes us feel a bit uncomfortable! They’re probably going to put that in the review, and then we’ll get a whole new backlash!

The thing is, it’s all inclusive isn’t it? If you like Zelda, you can like Darksiders. You don’t necessarily have to just like one or the other.