Darksiders co-creator and Vigil Games Creative Director Joe Madureira has announced his departure from THQ. Best known for his work in comic books over the years, Joe transitioned to the world of video games with great success thanks to the Darksiders series. Providing the same art style Joe was known for, the Darksiders series presented gamers with a nice mixture of old-school action/adventure gaming but now such a thing may be a thing of the past due to this new development.
Joe announced his departure in a rather short and sweet post on Facebook in which he said, “I could not be more proud of what we achieved, or the awesome people who helped build up this studio. I can safely say Vigil's future is in very good hands, so expect only awesomeness down the road."
While his departure may seem sudden and totally out of left field, as least Joe isn’t leaving with any bitter feelings due to how things are being handled at Vigil. No matter how pleasant Joe’s comment on the future of Vigil Games were we should still worry about the company ever so slightly since this is THQ we’re talking about after all.
In the wake of Darksiders 2 slightly underperforming at retail it’s unknown if or when THQ will continue the series since they didn’t receive the 2 million unit+ megahit they were seeking. Besides doing support work on the troubled Warhammer MMO, past reports pegged Vigil at possibly branching out of the fantasy laden action/adventure genre in favor of something more modern i.e. they may be working on a shooting game based on hints dropped in job listings.
Of course whatever plans Vigil may have had could’ve possibly been thrown out the window at the behest of THQ and their ever changing company focus. It’s shame that Vigil’s efforts thus far have yet to garner them with widespread praise or the next big gaming franchise, but I just hope that THQ doesn’t decide to put the studio on the chopping block to become their latest casualty of war.
The future of Joe Madureira in the video game biz is a mystery since he has yet to make a formal comment as to what he plans on doing next. As of now Joe said he will be focusing his time on illustrating comics but that in a couple of months he’ll divulge details on the “next big thing” he’ll be working on. Whether or not such a thing is comic or game related is the true mystery so we’ll have to wait awhile longer to figure out what’s next for Joe.
