Gunfire Games has a unique name for Darksiders 3 internally - a phrase I heard multiple times during my visit to Austin: “Classy-Siders”. The latest iteration of the franchise is undoubtedly an extension of those that came before it - our new protagonist, Fury, looks like she’d fit perfectly in a family photo next to the original game’s hero, War, with a frantic assortment of aggressive looking skulls across her armor. It’s still a post-apocalyptic, hack’n’slash, action-adventure, too, with a combat speed somewhere in between the first and second game, but they’ve put a focus on trying to make things less ‘game-y’.

First things first, check out some brand new screenshots below:

IGN First Screens - Darksiders 3 11 IMAGES

“ Every inch of the world should feel more contextualized.

Similar to the way Zelda expanded on its own core concepts in Breath of the Wild, if a puzzle exists in Darksiders 3, it should make sense in an environment rather than being a trap some unseen character inexplicably laid out for the player for no logical reason. Don’t expect any gated combat, and enemies (some of which existed in previous games, some of which are brand new) should feel a lot more like they belong in the world natively, rather than just popping up inconveniently to fight you. Yes, there’ll still be collectibles creatively scattered throughout the world, but no out-of-place chests, and, ultimately, every inch of the world should feel more contextualized if all goes according to Gunfire’s plan.

That same ideology seems to echo throughout each level, in a world that is supposed to be fully connected and realized, without any hard loads. If you take an elevator down to a different environment, the one you came from really is the height of that elevator away from you. It’s supposed to be a physically, logically connected open-world, and in part because of that, it’ll also have a whole lot of ‘swiss cheese game design’ - basically, the idea that you should be able to see glimpses of environments you’ve already been to, or ones you’ve yet to go to as you traverse, like through the holes in swiss cheese. Based on the tiny chunk that I played, it made me want to explore everything so much more than I would have otherwise, because you can always see the next thing, just out of reach.

“ The whole game world almost acts as one giant dungeon.

Dungeons are supposed to be much more inter-connected, too, with the whole game world almost acting as one giant dungeon. It is still linear in terms of story progression, though less so in terms of the actual timeline. Darksiders 3 will take place around the same time as Darksiders 2, with Death very far away, War still locked up by the Charred Council, and Fury sent to Earth to take down the physical embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins who broke out of their prisons during the apocalypse. We only saw one of the Seven, Sloth, who appeared as a giant, grotesque bug with a posse of smaller ones carrying him around on a chair, fitting with the sin’s inherent laziness.

Each of the environments is set to be shaped by each unique boss, too, like their own versions of terraforming. As I delved further into Sloth’s section of the map, things got murkier, and bugs started showing up more and more often. In that, each environment is intended to be reflective of the Sin that inhabits it, or the character that does. One particular area, called Haven, is entirely shaped by the gorgeous, enormous tree that sits perched and glowing in the middle. It’s a relatively safe area, and the roots that tendril their way through the city slowly get thicker towards the center, which presents it’s own creative navigation tool.

“ Darksiders 3 is the first in the series to run on Unreal.

It’s also just pretty overall, though it still maintains that unique, classic Darksiders art style, and with an immediately noticeable increase in verticality versus previous games. Darksiders 3 is the first in the series to run on Unreal rather than an internally built engine, and subtleties like water, lava and lighting particularly had noticeably improved. I didn’t get to explore the world anywhere near as much as I’d have liked, but did get to see what looked like a series of skyscrapers floating on clouds in the sky, a damp-looking, swampy area, and a fiery hollow - each of which seemed to exist exactly where it should in terms of verticality, with the hollow being far below the rest.

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And Fury should be a fun character to explore all that with - we’ll talk about her a lot more in our Hero Feature later this month, but the short of it is that she’s fast, agile and feels a little like post-apocalyptic-Catwoman-meets-God-of-War, but with much cooler hair. If you haven’t played a Darksiders game, it should be easy for new players to pick up without any story confusion (though you can also grab both previous games as part of THQ Nordic’s ‘Fury’s Collection’ on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One).

Darksiders 3 is the IGN First for May, so we’ll be covering the game all month long.