According to combat designer Ben Cureton, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta were major inspirations for the combat.
“We definitely played every combat game. It doesn’t matter if it’s considered the best game of all time or the worst game of all time. We play ‘em all. Obviously, we had the Zelda inspiration with the puzzles and stuff. But for combat, we are huge DMC and Bayonetta fans," he related.
He added, “We didn’t want to re-create DMC and Bayonetta, but we wanted to re-create the feeling of open-ended combat; allow players to come up with their own combos and be creative.”
“We didn’t just want people to play Darksiders 1.5, we wanted people to play Darksiders 2.5. We wanted to raise the bar on what they expected from our franchise, and not come in and feel like they were playing the exact same game. So we decided to make Death completely different from War, but at the same time he still feels like a character from the Darksiders universe,” Cureton promised.
Darksiders II was released this week in North America, and will be arriving in Europe next week.