Publisher THQ Nordic and developer Airship Syndicate have released a new trailer for their upcoming Darksiders spin-off title starring brethren Horsemen of the Apocalypse War and Strife, Darksiders: Genesis. This latest glimpse of gameplay shows off the gorgeous and wonderfully stylized locations, environmental traversal both on horseback and on foot, the flashy and customizable movesets of War and Strife, as well as the quick-change system that allows players to switch between both Horsemen on the fly.
The trailer showcases many eye-catching abilities throughout, with some at once feeling familiar and others being new and devastatingly powerful additions to the repertoire of apocalyptic powers of the Horsemen. Items called Creature Cores will be the currency used to unlock skills and stat bonuses for both Horsemen on a large skill tree, with each seemingly having multiple tiers.
In one section, the trailer showcases what are referred to as Minor Creature Cores in a long list of available upgrades, with two that were specifically highlighted. The first, called Gholan, is an Attack Type Creature Core that adds stat increases to Max Health, Attack Power, and Wrath Power. This Creature Core has three tiers, with each adding a slightly better percentage increase to each stat. The second Minor Creature Core showcased is called Stinger and is also shown at level three. This Creature Core adds the ability Stoneskin to a character and adds reactive effects when an enemy hits the player, including dropping caltrops and reflecting damage back onto the enemy.
The Horsemen seem to share a single skill tree, with each being represented by one side of it at the top and bottom and meeting in the middle (the trunk of the skill tree as opposed to the roots and branches, if you will). Creature Cores can be collected from fallen enemies and bosses, as well as purchased from everyone’s favorite demon merchant, Vulgrim. The cost of these purchases is currently unknown, but THQ Nordic has said in a previous interview with SegmentNext that they will not be implementing microtransactions into the game at launch or in the future, instead opting to release paid post-launch expansion content. It sounds like we can breathe easy in that regard, Horsemen.
Both War and Strife will be able to fill a special attack meter that will allow the two to transform into their large, bestial forms akin to the previous Darksiders games. War will likely transform into his familiar Chaos Form from the original Darksiders game, while Strife’s form is so far unnamed (although it has been shown off briefly in a previous trailer).
Darksiders: Genesis will release on PC and Google’s recently launched Stadia platform on December 5, 2019. Everyone else will get to play the game when it launches on all current-generation consoles on February 14, 2020.
