Every corner of the Darksiders world is laced with art. There's art on art, more art than you can shake a stick at. That makes sense, given the fact that Vigil, the studio behind Darksiders and this August's Darksiders II, is headed up by well-known comic artist Joe Madureira.

I spoke with Madureira last week about the intricate and instinctual process of designing the art for Darksiders, why his new protagonist Death wears purple, the importance of Death's loincloth, and what instrument the horseman would play if he were in a metal band.

Madureira also shared some cool new artwork and screenshots from the game, which you can check out in our exclusive galleries below.

Kotaku: So, you're making a new game with an entirely new protagonist. And he's got a mouthless skull-face. How can you make Death into a relatable character? Is that even a priority?

Joe Madureira: A lot of it comes through in the voice performance by Michael Wincott— even if you were looking at the back of Death's head, you'd still get a lot of the emotion. A lot of it's done through body language as well. In the end, we had to cheat a little and affect Death's mask, even though it's made of bone. It does contort, and his brow furrows slightly. We couldn't get away with not doing that. But I think we pulled it off.

Neither Death nor War had any irises in their eyes. Do you worry that makes a character seem too inhuman?

The thing with War is that he's just a lot more of a stoic. He just didn't have a lot to say. If [Death] had a lot more moments of really high emotion and stuff - it would be really difficult. But he's just an aggressive badass killer anyway, so it was not as hard to pull off as we thought it would be. Not having a face helps more than it hurts this character; it gives him that mysterious, creepy vibe.

You've said Darksiders II will have much more of a supporting cast than the first game. Could you talk about that?

There're definitely a lot of characters where you actually can interact with, you can go back to them throughout the game. You learn a lot about the story from interacting with them as opposed to watching cutscenes - that helps give more depth to Death's character than watching a little movie, because you actually get to see the interaction.

Even though Death is kinda of just a dark badass guy, he definitely has a more personal story than in the first one. We haven't revealed too much about it other than the fact that the Horsemen were involved with the destruction of their people, their own kind, the Nephilim, but Death carries that guilt with him in this game, and he's faced with some big choices that affect humanity and his own redemption.

Does the narrative branch at all?

It's not a branching narrative - there are occasionally choices, there are dialogue choices, but they don't affect the game in a major way like moral choices or anything like that. It's more about where you want the conversation to go so you can get more info about specific topics.

Is Death based on a particular rock star? He looks like a heavy metal god.

[Laughs] Not at all. He just - I think it's the long hair, and skulls, hey! It's rock 'n roll.

If Death played in a heavy metal band, what instrument would he play?

I wouldn't be surprised if we see some dudes rockin' out with Death's mask on. That was not the intention though.

He seems like a bassist to me, with the way he slings his arms down.

I dunno, he seems like more of a drummer to me.

Ha, yeah, I see it. Okay: What is a Darksider?

We thought rather than pick a name that was very specific to one of the characters or the four horsemen or whatever, Darksiders just kind of encompassed all of the characters and the universe, and the tone of our world. There aren't really any innocent parties in the first Darksiders, even the angels sort of have their dark secrets.

Honestly, part of it was just that it was a name that we all liked, and Darksiders kind of just kept making our top ten list over and over. And we said, "Damn it, let's just call it Darksiders!" It just kind of stuck, it was catchy.

I kind of like names like that anyway; I did a book called Battle Chasers and at no point does anyone say, "It's the Battle Chasers!" it's like… who is a Battle Chaser? I don't know. You never see the word anywhere in the book. But it just kind of encompassed the right energy and vibe for the book. And again, like Darksiders, it's vague but it also sort of fits the story and the characters.

Do you think about how the character models animate when you draw them?

Yes. I think it's the first thing that I think about actually, with characters and game concepts. In comics, as long as you can draw the pose you need to, then it's fine. In games, a lot of times it's how they move and it's the design role that the creature plays. If we're doing a creature and we've just done five flying guys, it's like, 'You know, you really need a big weapon wielding ground-guy,' and that immediately tells me it's going to have two arms, probably legs, what kind of weapons is he holding…. those sorts of choices sort of narrow everything down.

In the end, the gameplay aspect is the most important because, you know, 'this guy doesn't wield a weapon, he shoots stuff at you from far away,' he doesn't necessarily need to walk, so… as long as he's far away from you, shooting, he could fly or whatever. And that is the kind of stuff that gets worked out beforehand. But [gameplay] is probably the biggest influence on how the character's going to look like than, you know, what I felt like drawing that day or whatever.

When you make an environmental structure, how much thought do you put into its function? On a lot of these notes I'm seeing are pretty functional.

Again, it really depends on if it's just eye candy or if it's involved in the direct gameplay path, or if it's part of a puzzle. If it's just buildings or trees that are just dressing up the scene, then it's like 'eh,' a quick drawing will do. But if it's something where "oh, you need to pull this lever,' and it turns the water on, and it goes down this aquaduct, and then you can cross this thing… obviously it needs to be way more specific so that the modelers can build it right. It's done in stages, so we'll build it and make sure it's functional in a very loose prototype before we go in and polish it up. The notes happen throughout, sometimes beforehand, sometimes after it's been built and it's not working properly. Or sometimes it does work but it looks crappy. We'll do what we call Paint-overs where we take a screenshot of the crappy looking version and paint on top of it in photoshop. Sometimes even with layers you can show, 'Here's how the bridge should close' and you do a couple different layers showing the various stages. I would say the majority of our art direction is done through paint-overs. It's a constant iterative process.

Do you guys do that more or less than other studios?

I believe that it's common - I actually don't get together with other studio art directors as much as you'd think and talk about our process. But at vigil, right from the beginning, it's just the way we work. I had no experience at all, and this is the easiest way to convey - you can't really explain something in words, it's easier to just scribble it on there. Kind of like drawing on a whiteboard except that you're actually drawing on the image.

I know it's a common practice at other studios, I just don't know if they do it as much as we do. Because we paint over on almost everything.

How many iterations do the characters go through before they're done?

We tend to nail characters more often without problems right off the bat, but if we have a variant like, let's say, here's a demon soldier, here's a demon brute. And if the brute is basically just the soldier but with bigger armor and weapons then it doesn't really make sense to re-draw the entire guy. So we'll just paint stuff right on top. Usually. Not always.

Or let's say we have a concept that we like, but in the game he just doesn't look super cool, and we want to add horns and whatever—we'll just do that in a paint-over. We won't re-do the entire process. But it's not as common [with characters] as it is for the environment, that's for sure. We just struggle more with environments in general.

Is it always additive? Do you ever feel like you've got too much art onscreen?

Occasionally, yeah. We'll sometimes overdo it with effects, or the colors will look really garish, in certain lighting. And we'll have to tone stuff down. In general [laughs] more is better. Especially in games, when stuff is moving around on the screen, and stuff can look kind of small from far away, we just try to give everything unique elements so they're recognizable. Sometimes it involves taking way, but usually it involves adding more cool stuff.

It's definitely a hard balance. You look at a scene and you're like, 'Eeh, something's missing, it's not dramatic enough.' And then you start adding stuff and then you're like, 'Woah, there's so many boulders in this area! I can't even tell where I'm supposed to go, what a mess!' And then we'll start taking stuff out. Or we'll do like, one giant boulder instead of eight small ones. It sounds dumb but that's the kind of stuff we constantly have to deal with.

For Death: Why purple?

War had a lot of red going on, so red was off limits. When we tried blue, blue is a soothing color… there's basically two colors that sort of fit death or arcane magic, or underworldly ghostly etherealness: so we had this ghastly green and this purple. Black and purple just look evil, I don't know why. [Laughs] But you'll notice, there're a lot of Disney villains that actually have purple as well. We used the ghastly green so much in a major area of the game called the underworld where Death is facing off against an undead kingdom - we couldn't have giant landscapes and characters in purple because it was way too garish so they got the green, Death got the purple, and it just stuck.

Did you worry about the Skeletor comparison?

We heard that early on, and we laughed about it. Honestly, I think it was one of the reasons that I took the teeth off the mask, because I didn't want it to be an actual skull face. Then it literally would be Skeletor. But we weren't worried about it, it's kind of funny, it's kind of a funny connection. You always get stuff like that - like "Oh, he looks like this, the game looks like this."

And it's like: Eh, we just wanted to make him cool. And I like He-Man, whatever. I like Skeletor. I'll take it. It's the 80's comeback, man. And look, you're never going to play a Skeletor game. It's not going to happen, so you might as well just buy Darksiders II. [Laughs]

Did you put a lot of thought into death's back? Since we're going to spend so much time looking at it?

It's one of those things - it's iteration, one thing they absolutely need is a loincloth. I put one on the back so that I don't have to see a guy's butt while I'm running in the game. You'll notice Death and War both have them. You need that coverage. Beyond that, you have to pick a pose that's cool from the back not the front - it's the exact opposite of what would come naturally. Once you have those rules in mind… I mean, we've been doing it for a while, so it's second nature now. But in the beginning there was a learning curve to it.

What do you miss about doing comics all day?

Well, I'm still doing it to some extent. Not full time, but every once and a while I do get that bug, and I'm lucky enough to get to keep my foot in both worlds. It's one of those things where the grass is always greener. When I'm home drawing, it's relaxing, I don't have to deal with a ton of people. I've got my music on and I get to draw just like when I was a kid. There's something really meditative about it - but eventually, after a while, it's just boring and lonely, and it's nice to go into the studio and feed off everyone's energy and excitement. Whether it's a good day or a bad day, sometimes we have arguments and bad meetings, and whatever. There is an energy to being in a studio that's pretty awesome. So I would definitely miss that as well. So, you know, they each have their own appeal.

How has it been developing the game for Wii U?

Yeah, we're not allowed to talk about the Wii U version at all.

PR: That's where I'll jump in. We'll talk more about the Wii U later.

Okay, okay. Since the plotlines of the first and second Darksiders are concurrent, are we going to find out what happens at the end of Darksiders, or are we really going to have to wait for a third game?

Aw man, I can't talk about the ending of Darksiders II!

No, of course. I'm just wondering if people who are hoping for some resolution for the first game's ending will find any kind of satisfaction here, or if they'll have to wait for a third game.

You'll definitely get a lot more insight into the story - there's two ways to progress a story: one is to tack on to the end of it, to add to the linear story. And the other is to go depth-wise into it. I won't say which one you get more of in the sequel, but you'll definitely get something out of it.

We were conscious of it, we knew that we're not starting off where the last one ended. It was cool to end on a cliffhanger in the first one, some people were frustrated; some people were super frustrated, some people were super excited. And everyone remembered it, and that was the main thing. Because some games just end and you never talk about it again.

In the sequel, we chose to just give you a whole new character, which also blew people's minds. It's the way we do things—if it's not jarring and it's not exciting you, (hopefully not frustrating you), just being impactful, then it's probably not worth doing. Hopefully people will be happy with the ending of Darksiders II. But I can't really comment more than that.

To wrap up, here's something I've been curious about lately in general: What does the word fantasy mean to you? What makes a world a fantasy world? What do fantasy games need more or less of?

To me… I play a lot of RPGs and I read a lot of fantasy novels so when you first say "Fantasy" to me, I think of elves and warriors and magic. But I think that as far as game genres, and when we're talking about art direction, to me, it's just anything that we're not photo-referencing.

When I say 'Hey, let's go more fantasy with it' when I'm talking about art, a lot of times, you can just have like, waterfalls spilling out of building windows in this desolate apocalyptic scene, and it's more fantasy. It's not just, you know, a hollowed-out building. You could see that in Detroit. Adding fantasy elements, it's just something that you couldn't possibly see.

I've been enjoying games that are definitely fantasy but aren't Tolkien-style fantasy. Gravity Rush, Bastion, The Secret World, etc.

Yeah, and I've always been fascinated by… I love elves and dwarves as much as everyone else, but I love worlds that blur the lines and introduce new elements. That's why even when I was doing Battle Chasers there were giant robots and guns and swords and wizards… it was kind of a mishmash. But yeah, you're right, it doesn't just have to be Lord of the Rings fantasy.

Thanks for your time.

Definitely, it was fun.

The new Darksiders II map isn't the only thing that's going to be grand when THQ/Vigil Games' next hack and slash title releases next month (the map is said to be double the size of its predecessor). It's also a shared quality with the fiendish enemies you face off against. It's a wonder that the protagonist, Death, can hold his own with his comparatively tiny scythe.

There are a ton of quick cuts in this newest trailer, but I spotted a lot of visuals and enemies from the E3 demo I experienced last month.

The harsh Soviet winter of 1941 saw temperatures drop as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which human skin freezes in minutes. Axis and Allied forces alike suffered tremendous casualties due to the extreme cold. Relic Entertainment harnesses this deadly force of nature with Company of Heroes 2's ColdTech system.

We've seen how fire and ice can affect the environments of Company of Heroes 2, dynamically shifting, reacting to troop movements, vehicles and direct interaction. What we haven't seen is how it affects the troops. Bundled in threadbare clothing and the odd furry hat, it'll take a smart commander to keep his forces from becoming frozen meat beneath a snow drift.

On cold maps players will have to situate their infantry near fire or garrison them in buildings while not fighting in order to avoid death's icy grip. As can be seen in the screenshot above, just standing near the fire won't cut it.

The wise general can also use the ice and snow to his or her advantage. For example, see those tanks slowly creeping across the ice?

Now you don't. And what about those snipers? What snipers?

This amount of interaction between the player and environment isn't something you see often in a strategy title. It's as if every battle will feature an additional faction, one that does not care who lives and who dies.

Company of Heroes 2 is heading to the PC in early 2013. I'd bundle up.

For a generation of gamers, the words "Metro" and "Moscow" will conjure images of an oppressive, bleak place, a last refuge for humanity against the forces of mutants, darkness and whatever the hell else had been conjured up when we blew up the planet.

Which, I think, is a bit of a shame. Because in the real world, it's one of the coolest things on the planet.

While most city's public transport systems can be described as utilitarian at best (or shockingly decrepit if you're being honest), for some reason the Soviet Union decided in the 20th century that, while its people lived in some of the ugliest urban centres in human history, they'd be riding the subway in something straight out of a fairy tale.

The Moscow Metro, usually just called the Metro (hence the game's name), first opened in 1935 with a single line. It's now the world's second-biggest public transport system after Tokyo's frightening complex subway network, with 185 stations covering nearly 200 miles of track.

Much of it is a work of art. Beginning with Stalin, Russian leaders used the Metro as a drawing board for their vision of the future of the Soviet Union, as a statement piece. The key stations are barely train stations at all; with vast marble surfaces, intricate artwork and even enormous chandeliers, they look more like the ballroom of a castle than somewhere you use to get to work.

In Metro 2033, and its upcoming sequel Metro: Last Light, Metro stations are home to small settlements of human survivors, those lucky few who survived first a nuclear apocalypse and then years of starvation, sickness and relentless attack by all kinds of weird bad guys. Why? Because, as you saw in this amazing live-action clip released earlier in the year, when the bombs started falling, Metro stations were used as shelters.

Metro wasn't exactly the world's greatest shooter, but it won itself a legion of fans because of its atmosphere, which was laid on so thick you sometimes felt suffocated. Aiding that feeling was the depiction of the Metro itself. In many ways the fate of the world is reflected in the state of the Metro; once a thing of both beauty and function, it's now in ruins, kept alive by the thinnest threads of crumbling technology.

God, it's all so depressing, isn't it? Let's wash out that taste of despair with some amazing photos of the Metro as it actually stands today: a monument to people who thought it would be a great idea to make train stations look awesome.

Oh, and one last thing. If you think the regular Metro is cool, check out the fabled "Metro 2", a very believable rumour/myth/whatever that a second, deeper underground rail network exists in Moscow, just for use in case of a nuclear attack.

The photos below were taken by SebastianBerlin, -=Nikita=-, Vokabre, Jeremie R, b80399, jaime.silva, AJ Brustein and soleterranean

The sinister sounding Darksiders II: Soul Harvest is more than just an iOS marketing tie-in that let's fans of all things dark and stalky unlock special goodies prior to the game's release next month. It's also how I imagine the anthropomorphic personification of the end of all things would get things done in the digital age. Why risk your unlife traveling to Waffle House to harvest 12 souls when there's an app for that?

Being Death is a busy job. Imagine having to personally attend the end point of every life in the universe, gathering each and every soul and carrying them by hand to their final destinations. It's unrewarding. It's exhausting. It's downright dangerous, really, as anyone that's read Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse can tell you.

Face it (or grinning skull it, per your preference): no one personally attends anything anymore. We video conference. We email. We order in. Why should the harvester of souls behave any differently? I know we like to hold tight to tradition, and for some reason picturing death as a scary skellington with a bloody big scythe is comforting to us, but holding our fictional explanations of difficult concepts to a higher standard than we hold ourselves is bullshit.

The modern, connected Death rides a pale Prius, but only to the store to buy groceries. He's got a plaid button up with tiny, thematically significant skulls all over it. He wears skinny jeans, because he likes to imagine he has skin somewhere. He wears glasses with transition lenses that go dark in the sunlight. He has a pair of expensive ear buds threaded through the holes on the side of his head, dangling playfully from either side of his jawbone.

And he has an iPhone. When he wants to harvest souls he opens up an app and taps on a spot with his stylus (no skin, remember?). Oh look, the Atlanta Modeling Academy has nine souls to harvest. Funny, he would have thought there'd be more. Oh well. *taps*

Darksiders II: Soul Harvest simulates this experience, allowing players to harvest three locations every ten minutes. The more souls harvested, the more rewards are unlocked. They've got mobile wallpapers, a Prima Games Dungeon Guide (there's a dungeon. There's another!), an issue of the Darksiders digital comic and some sort of in-game weapon. And harvesting souls that have checked in at Best Buy earns players extra points, just like the real death.

Darksiders II: Soul Harvest [iTunes]

Edit: It's not my fault Darksiders and Darkstalkers are so damn close. Come on, Capcom and THQ, get your shit together. *hides*

I'd sure love to play a kickass game based on Skeletor. That may not be an option right now, but fortunately there's Vigil's upcoming Darksiders II, whose protagonist Death looks a fair bit like He-Man's blue-hooded nemesis.

Earlier this week I spoke with Darksiders II creative driector Joe Madureira about the game's art, design, and vision. Mid-conversation, I asked him what he made of "The Skeletor Comparison."

"We heard that early on," Madureira said, "and we laughed about it. Honestly, I think it was one of the reasons that I took the teeth off [Death's] mask, because I didn't want it to be an actual skull face. Then it literally would be Skeletor. But we weren't worried about it, it's kind of funny, it's kind of a funny connection."

But really, there are worse people your protagonist could be compared to. "I'll take it," Madureira said. "I like He-Man, I like Skeletor! It's the 80's comeback, man. And look, you're never going to play a Skeletor game. It's not going to happen, so you might as well just buy Darksiders II."

I mean, there might be some Skeletor game in the future, but I still take his point.

I'll have more of our conversation about art and design of Darksiders II later this week.

They thought they were doing the right thing. They figured at least one adult in my household would have a normal-sized head. They thought wrong, and a child suffered.

Well, Archer slept through the whole thing, but one day, years from now, I'll pull up this post and then he'll suffer. Until then he'll remain blissfully ignorant that he was a cog in the relentless wheels of THQ's Company of Heroes 2 PR machine. He'll say "But father, I don't want to join the Red Army!" to which I will reply, "Not a lot of people did, son."

Then we'll laugh and laugh.

Along with the tiny fuzzy hat came a card that read: "операция красный снег готовиться к холодному фронту, товарищ". Fifteen minutes in Google Translate later and I deciphered the message: "Operation Red Snow — Prepare for a cold front, comrade."

Well at least someone in this house is prepared for a cold front.