If someone's on Death's Door, for example, and you heal another character, you can expect the dying person to be a bit pissed. You're supposed to be able to game them, to an extent. Sigman adds that, while there is some "trademark Red Hook randomness", there is a logic to guiding these relationships. We're about to be eaten by eldritch beings, can this wait until we're back in the wagon? They still butt heads a lot mind you, but I've found it a lot better than it was. It's a complaint they jumped straight on top of - the day after launch, they updated it to tone down how often heroes interrupted with their arguments. "I can fall on the sword here a little bit and say this is what early access is really great for, balance," Sigman says. But with DD2's new affinity system, characters can become fast friends, or faster enemies, depending on how they react to each other's decisions. The characters used to be a means to an end, so stress mostly affected just the one hero. I'm told that the development of these relationships was a natural extension of the affliction system in DD1. "But in about a year you can start breaking out of the loop.
"You can't break out of the loop until 1.0 launches," he quickly adds. So really, this game is about breaking out of a loop."
"Because that's what a roguelike is, you're stuck in a loop forever. "You're all on the same journey for genuine redemption and a loop-breaking experience," Bourassa says. Players are used to narration being focused on the origins of that games' bosses, and how awful the Ancestor really was, "It's just a step by step descent into nihilism and awfulness." A game about crawling up out of that needed to focus on the heroes, and the things they've done that they're trying to move past. "You're all on the same journey for genuine redemption and a loop-breaking experience"īourassa tells me that they approached this game from the other side of the coin to DD1. "That's not necessarily bad, but we were really lucky with Darkest Dungeon in that we tried to do something a little bit audacious and it worked, so it was important to us that if we did another game that it needed to feel audacious in its own way too." "There was a little bit of risk of, if we direct sequel it in the most obvious way, it could just feel like a big DLC," Sigman adds. "All of these pivots, from design to presentation, were born of a desire to create something fresh and impactful that stands on its own, and doesn't try to sabotage its older brother." "We felt that, although people may express that they want more of the same, ultimately it won't give them the same feeling that the first game did," Bourassa tells me. They knew there was more to explore with them, and didn't want to make a sequel that followed the original's formula so closely that they wouldn't break any new ground as developers. The new focus on relationships came about because Bourassa and Sigman saw how much players were excited by DD1's characters. The sequel doesn't follow the strange tale of the Ancestor, but instead focuses on the heroes themselves, letting you learn about each of their lives, and watch (and occasionally intervene) as they form bonds with the other characters (be those good or bad). The developers tell me that, while the idea behind DD1 was to have players descending into a dreary pit of doom and gloom, DD2 sees them trying to lift a ragtag group of heroes out of that darkness to stop an apocalypse (though they'll still face their fair share of doom on the journey). I recently talked with creative director Chris Bourassa and design director Tyler Sigman about why they decided to take the game in this new direction, the difficulties of switching to a relationship-based affliction system, and why they're excited to be working in early access again. Heroes are no longer cannon-fodder to send out on doomed expeditions, but vital team members who have stories to share and relationships to forge. But this time around, we're leaving the Ancestor's squalid hamlet behind, and swapping it out for a stress-fueled stagecoach. It's dark, it's tough, and a narrator likes to remind you of those things frequently.
Darkest Dungeon 2, the sequel to Red Hook Studio's gothic roguelike, is a somewhat familiar affair.
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