Darkest Dungeon II Early Access Previews and Interview

Last week, Red Hook Studios launched their “roguelike road trip” RPG Darkest Dungeon II into early access on the Epic Games Store. And if you’d like to know how this updated formula is treating the game, you can now check out a couple of previews and even a detailed interview with the game’s developers.

First, here’s a Game Informer video featuring a bunch of gameplay and an overview of the big new features:

Then, there’s this PC Gamer preview focusing on the game’s adventurer relationships feature:

Along these travels, managing mental health is more important than ever. Take my Grave Robber Audrey, for example: she resents Man-at-arms Barristan, is envious of Plague Doctor Paracelsus, and is four dots out of six on the way to picking up some hateful relationship with Highwayman Dismas. Your average family road trip, in other words.

In combat, these “afflicted” relationships take a major toll. Sometimes when Paracelsus succeeds at damaging a foe Audrey takes a point of stress. Why? She resents Barristan for not protecting her, so when he uses his guard ability on other characters her stress almost always goes up. 10 points of stress and a character suffers a breakdown, dropping to low hit points in an instant and often picking up some new quirk as they do.

It’s a whole new spiral of failure and misery for Darkest Dungeon. When things are going badly it’s not just a single character that suffers, it’s the entire dynamic of your group. Audrey eventually racked up so many hateful relationships that most turns were bad for her, leading to a spiral of new negative quirks—including a curious displacement in both space and time.

And finally, here’s an interview featured on the Epic Games Store. A quick sample question:

Going back to the original Darkest Dungeon, what made you decide to create a game that focused on not just combat, but the psychological impact of combat?

Chris Bourassa, Creative Director: The concept originated from an observation that role-playing games are typically power fantasies that take killing for granted, and celebrate advancement with more and more elaborate and oversized gear. I felt that giving a normal person a giant weapon and matching armor wouldn’t do anything if that person was a coward. Tyler and I challenged each other to imagine a game about the sword arm, not the sword. Something that would embrace and gamify the life of an adventurer, which, upon even a cursory glance, would be abysmal! Killing things in the dark in pursuit of profit would be an incredibly stressful lifestyle, and Darkest Dungeon was born from a series of late-night whiskey-infused rants along these lines.

Tyler Sigman, Design Director: Every game needs a “hook”, and this felt like it. When Chris first proposed it, I immediately thought about all the tabletop RPG sessions I’ve played where the psychological elements entered the game thanks to great role-playing. It really didn’t feel like that ground had been adequately explored in computer role-playing games. We needed to feel like we were at least trying to do something new or interesting with the game if we were going to risk a couple of years of not getting paid while making it! More important than the business lens, though, is that the idea was fertile ground for inspiring possible mechanics and features. It felt like a strong enough concept to start the company.