The Darksiders franchise carried a heavy burden from minute one. A third-person action game built upon the immense lore surrounding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Sounds difficult to manage, rife with hastily stitched plot holes just waiting to rip open. The original began by pulling on a dangling thread but Darksiders 2 got tired of waiting and just took the whole damn sweater. For all the differences they love to bicker over, the forces of Chaos (Hell), Man (go team!) and Order (Heaven) share several qualities: a hasty introduction backed by murky and biblically inaccurate backstory, a questionable definition of apocalypse, and convictions only bested in the Incoherent Olympics by the Horsemen themselves. The three factions spend the entirety of the currently two-part series (of which there may be more) preaching, backstabbing and ultimately accomplishing nothing. The ending to Darksiders 2 answers no questions and instead calls into question the validity of everything you just did. What does Order stand to gain, why did War accidentally cause the end of days, and most importantly, why the hell have Famine and Pestilence been swapped with Fury and Strife?
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
