DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue Preview

Earlier today, Kotaku whipped up a preview of DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue based on the little information they managed to glean during a conversation with Hothead Games producer Hamish Millar.
The first DeathSpank was promoted as the brainchild of Hothead and Secret of Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert. Gilbert's involvement was supposed to be a guarantee that the game was funny. "Ron is as involved in this [new DeathSpank] as he was in the first one," Millar said. "The humor didn't just come from Ron. We have a huge amount of the personality of the team injected into the game.

The two DeathSpanks were made in parallel at Hothead, with the added time for the second ensuring that the new game could be bigger. That creation schedule does't mean that the new game could incorporate much of the fan feedback toward the first one, though. Thongs of Virtue won't reflect any major changes demanded by the DeathSpank public. Online multiplayer, for example, still won't be in the game, though the off-line two-player co-op will now allow the second player to alternate between two characters, controlling the returning Sparkles the Wizard or using quoting the press release again "the ninjatastic Kung Fu moves of DeathSpank's new partner in crime, Steve."