Dark Sector looks special. The sinister third-person action game packs a moody atmosphere and the intriguing, power-absorbent, triple-bladed glaive puts a unique twist on the fighting and puzzles.
Despite the game having been in development since 2004, Digital Extremes has remained secretive with its progress - until now.
We sat down for a chat with product manager, Josh Austin, who told us all about the structure of his innovative new quest, and how he looks to music, film and, bizarrely, Legend of Zelda as his inspiration for his violent and sinister creation.
Dark Sector has been in development for some time - since 2004 we believe. In that time it has transformed completely. Has its development been directly influenced by other games that have released since it was announced?
Josh Austin: Well, we loved the camera in Resident Evil 4, and it's a really well paced game too so that was a really huge influence. The other major influence for Dark Secktor was Zelda, for the puzzles and for another example of great pacing. Those are the main ones, although there are loads of smaller touches from other games in there.
Gears of War, maybe?
Josh Austin: We were working on this before Gears of War came out so it hasn't really been a direct influence, but it definitely upped the scale for graphical content and production values. So that set the bar and we're doing our best to keep ours up high.
You previously discussed much of your inspiration coming from movies as well as games. It would seem that the film Krull - with its similar glaive weapon - is an enormous influence for Dark Sector...
Josh Austin: Well, it's kind of funny because we were messing around prototyping towards the beginning in pre-production and they showed this concept to us. We were like "holy crap, that's awesome." Then we realized that it reminded us of Krull, so we went back and watched the movie and realized, despite our clouded memories, it looked quite terrible *laughs*.
