Interviews// God of War: Ghost of Sparta

Posted 25 Nov 2010 16:17 by
SPOnG: So how does this game fit in with the rest of the God of War saga? How did you go about thinking of story premises and loose ends to tie up?

RW: We always assume a lot of things about Kratos, but this is the first time we truly talk about where his life started and why he became the person he was - even before the killing of his family and all that stuff. This is where we get to see what made him that kind of person, that went on to become this Spartan general who ends up killing his family. It's pretty cool. I think we nailed the story, it’s absolutely awesome.

There’s new weapons and new characters… that's one of the huge parts about the story actually - who do we bring into play? We brought somebody who was actually referred in the first God of War, which is Kratos' brother. I’d say he’s one of the most important characters in the franchise, and you’ll see why throughout the story. The brother signifies an awful lot for not only the franchise but also for Kratos and for everything, you know, that that God of War is.

There's an awesome storyline between the two brothers as well. I really want to see the feedback from reviews now at this point and see whether people like it actually, because it's always a challenge, right? You put something like that out and you wonder how are people going to take it.

But we've got old characters like Athena; we're bringing back the Gravedigger, since we haven't seen him since the first God of War and he's a huge, huge important part of this story again. We're bringing new characters like Midas, which is more like a small snippet of the game but it's kind of cool to bring back someone from mythology. He’s the person who could turn everything to gold, and you get to meet him at the end of his life when he's gone mad - he's turned his daughter into gold and he's dragging the statue around.


SPOnG: [Looking at Midas] He definitely does not look healthy there does he?

RW: [Laughs] No, not at all. In general, we’re mixing the regular game play of God War, which is the things that you are used to - the serious interactions, body carries - with a different perspective. A different atmosphere. So that’s where we switch the camera, where you're dragging the guy.

You feel like Kratos there, you feel like the Predator, just dragging your prey out and he’s struggling to get up. So, again, very different way of seeing the character, of seeing Kratos, while truly understanding the kind of guy - the kind of mad man in some ways - Kratos is.


SPOnG: Now we’re looking at Kratos in Sparta now - this all looks very different, like an RPG-style town environment. Can you explain this a little bit?

RW: Yeah, this is new - it’s called 'Story Walk', which is basically your chance to control Kratos in an RPG sense. The camera’s positioned behind him and you can move Kratos around and see the environment. It's not a huge part of the game, but we wanted to try it out just to see what sort of a feeling we can give you. It's something pretty cool. There's more of it once you get into the city but I don’t want to ruin it for you, you should definitely play the game for that.

These are all the little things we've added.


SPOnG: Is the game using the Ready at Dawn engine? What's the status of that? Are you guys licensing that out?

RW: Yes, actually we are licensing that out but it's not our primary goal. We've never made a huge licensing effort, it was more about ‘feeling it out’ and seeing how people were reacting to it. Right now we are fully licensing providers for a bunch of platforms.

But at the same time, because it's not our core business, we're not going out there and selling it all over the place. It's more like, we want to find a partnership to develop the engine specifically for maybe a few partners rather than just give it out and do whatever you want with it. So it's a different business model than what you're used to with licensing.


SPOnG: Is it like a cross-platform thing?

RW: Yeah, right now it's an engine for PS3, PSP, PC, 360, and other things... that we can do basically. But yeah, it's fully cross-platform.


SPOnG: Do you think that, with all the new things that you've added - like the Story Walk - do you think that could influence other God of War games?

RW: I am definitely hoping so. The little liberties that we took - and which each game has taken - is the reason every game has made it kind of leap forward. I think that all of these things, hopefully we'll see them again in another God of War.


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

RW: Sorry if the presentation lasted too long!
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