So that was one of the main practical considerations. And so we had to look for a way of invigorating this game, and giving it legs, and generating a similar kind of excitement, and I'm speaking purely visually for this. Pragmatically from a craftsmanship standpoint, people have consumed the art that I drew for 1.0 and the art that the team made beyond that in the DLCs along with me. Is this just an aesthetic change or is there a deeper purpose?ĬB: It's a couple of things. It kind of surprised me because Darkest Dungeon's 2D art is so singular. The biggest thing we see in the latest trailer is the apparent switch to 3D characters. If you already know you're going to succeed, that isn't heroic at all. It's people who don't know if they can do it trying to pull it off. Really I think the message that we're trying to push on the sequel is that if you can't sit around waiting for the level 100 paladin to ride in on a white horse, you look around and you're like, 'Well, this is who we've got, and so it's going to have to be good enough.' And I think that really is what heroism is.

Viewers are human and all that, but there's always been kind of a potential uplifting part there in terms of flawed. TS: Part of Darkest Dungeon's DNA is the fallibility of humans.

'We want to pack the game with new awful monsters.'

So this game is more about reaching towards something precious than it is sort of exploring how far down the staircase goes. It's trying to get somewhere, it's trying to accomplish something, and above all it's faint, and distant, and the journey to get to it is extremely tough, but it's there. And so it's going to be Darkest Dungeon, it's not going to be easy, it's not going to be forgiving, we're not going to hold your hand, all of those things remain true.īut it has an aspirational thread that the nihilistic older brother didn't have. I think if the first Darkest Dungeon is about going deeper and understanding how much worse things can get at each step, this game is about clawing up out of it. Is that where you're headed?ĬB: I think we have a rich tradition of table flipping. Often we see sequels deliberately kind of flip the table on players' expectations, on habits they've developed, and certainly Darkest Dungeon is not a game where players are often allowed to get comfortable.

Darkest dungeon narrator wayne june