Theories about the new God of War

[Scapthat]

Like him or hate him, Kratos has an established history to build off of, whereas anyone else would've been like starting at ground zero. I know I wouldn't have been as intrigued if they went that route, especially if they still used the God of War name.

An established history? They changed the character. Besides, if they cared about his history, they wouldn't give the game the same name as the original. I would be more intrigued by a new character with new motivations, quirks and flaws.

How do you know...because he has a beard now? All he did was (presumably) migrate some time after GoW3. He even has items in his camp from the earlier games, like Hermes' boots.

Or do you mean he's not a rage monster anymore and turned a leaf? We don't even know why he left yet, although I get the impression you wouldn't care anyways.

Barlog talked about how each culture's mythological belief system coexisted with one another and were all "separated by geography." That suggests Kratos likely took a trip from Greece to Norway, where new gods and mythology thrived.

What a dumbass.

Why? It's not like these games were ever anything but elaborate fantasies anyways. Besides, the timelines of ancient Greek and Norse traditions would support a migration theory, at least for a demigod.

We don't even know yet what exactly they're doing for a camera anyways.

Yes, we do.

I see you've played the whole game already...my bad! No point in complaining about the reigned-in perspective as it's probably set in stone.

I think God of War is more famous for the impressive setpieces at the time like fighting on the back of a huge giant even if that fighting itself was pretty flimsy(yet serviceable) hack & slash. Visual spectacle worked in the previous generations but I don't think it will impress people as much now(that and the fact the formula has worn increasingly thin) so I'm actualy glad they moved the series away from 'sore thumb' action to something that looks to have more weight and depth behind it.

How about giving the combat weight and using a camera that compliments third-person fighting and platforming? Then again, I didn't even see any platforms. The environment in the trailer looked like typical boring realism instead of God of War.

It looks like the game has more weight to the combat than the series ever has; possibly even more-so than a Souls game minus the stamina bar. Also if you go back and play the first few games now, it becomes painfully clear how one-dimensional the levels are. The only depth any of the games had was using different weapons/magic which will probably continue in greater variety here, along with having far more freedom and meaningful incentives to explore besides "filling the upgrade bar" or using cheat items.

The environments could also only be traversed one incredibly linear way, and I frankly couldn't handle another game forcing me to shuffle along some narrow ledge in between jump points, or climb some narrow section of rock while the same old enemies spawned around me. It was fun while it lasted, but like a great book or movie, repeat viewings are best separated by very large swaths of time, because nostalgia is all that is left.

 

[DaCosta]

We don't even know yet what exactly they're doing for a camera anyways.

Yes, we do.

I see you've played the whole game already...my bad! No point in complaining about the reigned-in perspective as it's probably set in stone.

He's right. It's disingenuous to act like we can't reach a logical conclusion based on the demo shown.

What we saw: The camera is over the shoulder and the FOV is very small

Ergo:
-> the player will have to adjust it often, particularly when in an arena
-> the player must have manual control of the camera
-> it will be bound to R3 like any decent manual camera since the advent of dual analog sticks
-> since the player can't press the face buttons and push the R3 stick at the same time this will hamper the combat
-> they may try to avoid this problem by remapping the attack buttons to the shoulder buttons, like in shooters or in Dark Souls, which only works in their case because the Souls series' combat is not focused on combos

Unless that demo was wholly unrepresentative of the rest 90% of the game, if you try to stop and think about the gameplay shown, we know plenty.

 

[Scapthat]

We don't even know yet what exactly they're doing for a camera anyways.

Yes, we do.

I see you've played the whole game already...my bad! No point in complaining about the reigned-in perspective as it's probably set in stone.

He's right. It's disingenuous to act like we can't reach a logical conclusion based on the demo shown.

What we saw: The camera is over the shoulder and the FOV is very small

Ergo:
-> the player will have to adjust it often, particularly when in an arena
-> the player must have manual control of the camera
-> it will be bound to R3 like any decent manual camera since the advent of dual analog sticks
-> since the player can't press the face buttons and push the R3 stick at the same time this will hamper the combat
-> they may try to avoid this problem by remapping the attack buttons to the shoulder buttons, like in shooters or in Dark Souls, which only works in their case because the Souls series' combat is not focused on combos

Unless that demo was wholly unrepresentative of the rest 90% of the game, if you try to stop and think about the gameplay shown, we know plenty.

In a preview/interview with Creative Director Cory Barlog, IGN revealed some new details about God of War, including the fact that the entire game is presented as a single, uninterrupted shot ? there are no load screens, cinematics, or fades to black.

...Barlog also confirmed that God of War will still have the huge set pieces the series is known for. They just wanted to surprise everyone at E3 with something unexpected.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...-systems-controllable-camera-no-load-screens/

If that is indeed the plan, have any of us played a major AAA game that was presented in one shot? Please let me know if you think of one. If they can pull that off, I'm pretty sure we won't have to worry about a camera getting us killed every 10 minutes because we had to constantly steer it towards enemies.

It also looks like the combat won't be anywhere near as combo-based as the old games, and tons of play testing has probably been done already to make this as much of a non-issue as possible. I also tweeted SMS and Cory to see what they had to say, although not sure I'd even get a response this close to E3.

 

[DaCosta]

In a preview/interview with Creative Director Cory Barlog, IGN revealed some new details about God of War, including the fact that the entire game is presented as a single, uninterrupted shot ? there are no load screens, cinematics, or fades to black.

...Barlog also confirmed that God of War will still have the huge set pieces the series is known for. They just wanted to surprise everyone at E3 with something unexpected.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...-systems-controllable-camera-no-load-screens/

If that is indeed the plan, have any of us played a major AAA game that was presented in one shot? Please let me know if you think of one. If they can pull that off, I'm pretty sure we won't have to worry about a camera getting us killed every 10 minutes because we had to constantly steer it towards enemies.

It also looks like the combat won't be anywhere near as combo-based as the old games, and tons of play testing has probably been done already to make this as much of a non-issue as possible. I also tweeted SMS and Cory to see what they had to say, although not sure I'd even get a response this close to E3.

Cool.

I don't see how that has any relation to what I said though.

If you want a recent example just look at Nioh. It tried to mix the Dark Souls style with Ninja Gaiden combo heavy combat. The latter requires light and heavy attack to be mapped to the facebuttons. As a result, more than once I had problems because I couldn't attack and move the camera at the same time, particularly when fighting groups. That game's camera is pushed back though, so it wasn't too common of a problem, this one is.

If your point is that the combat won't be nearly as action focused as previous entries, well, then we go back to our initial problem. As Casual Shinji said earlier in the thread "Both Kratos and the chainblade action gameplay embody the series almost completely.", the main character is so different it appears to be Kratos in name only, and if the gameplay will be so different from what the series is known for then what is the point of calling it God of War in the first place?

 

[Scapthat]

Because anger defined him. There was no redemption. He was too far gone and basically a cartoon character. It's like turning Daffy Duck into Vito Corleone. The games were never meant to be so meditative and peaceful. The demo was dull and painfully pretentious.

He practically is a (twisted) cartoon character to begin with. There is nothing realistic about a demigod, so they can make anything seem plausible within that context. We only saw a sliver of the game and they purposely chose it -

"Kratos believes that being a god is a disease, and that rage is a side effect of that disease, and he's terrified that he's passed it on to his son," Barlog said. Having already told the story of The Hulk, Sony Santa Monica wants to tell the story of Bruce Banner now for Kratos in God of War. "What if he got a chance to do things differently?" he added. "To try to do things better?"

Barlog also confirmed that God of War will still have the huge set pieces the series is known for. They just wanted to surprise everyone at E3 with something unexpected.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...-systems-controllable-camera-no-load-screens/

I'm a fan of the series, so even though I agree Kratos's shtick was tiresome, I'm fully intrigued to see how they handle this. If they changed the character, whatever they did with him/her wouldn't have carried as much weight, because we'd be back at square one getting people to care whether they chose to make an angry god-killer or the opposite. Fans of Kratos would always have wondered what happened to him, could he have changed under the right conditions, etc., and everyone else probably wasn't a big enough fan of the series to care who they use period. Kratos is as much a part of God of War as Nathan Drake is for Uncharted, or Lara Croft is for Tomb Raider.

I should have put "and" in all caps. I was trying to make the point to stroopwafel that the weight is wasted on a shit camera. It's fine for Dark Souls because the levels are tighter and the stamina-based combat is slower and not as over the top.

The combat in the demo was nothing like the previous games, most likely due to the perspective and tonal change. It looked more like The Last of Us's melee. Even though they certainly copied the perspective from TLoU, I'm drawing a blank on anything other than TPS games using it like this. Resident Evil 4 for example was exceptionally well-received after making that drastic perspective change, basically going from old school survival horror series to a TPS, so it's certainly possible for it to work in a more melee-focused game if all the systems are built around it.

I remember a lot of people complained about not being able to control any of the previous games' camera, and there was even less of a reason to have it then because of the zoomed out perspective. I'm pretty sure they will still have a blend of dynamic and controllable anyways. SMS arguably knows camera work better than anyone in the industry. This would probably be the last area of the game they'd screw up on if they have any of those same people on board.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-making-of-god-of-war-iii?page=2
https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd4000-b12/lectures/camera1.pdf

Don't give me that nostalgia crap. The word gets thrown around so casually to dismiss people's opinions. I'm the one who keeps saying games don't age. I played through God of War 1 for the first time last year. It's a good game with good level design. Even if what you say is true, you don't throw away the level design for something realistic and inferior. You improve the supposed one-dimensional levels you speak of. Too many games forsake their identities instead of improving on their concepts, all to chase after what's popular at the moment.

God of War is an excellent game as are the others, but the more I play them over the years the more I notice their flaws and limitations (like most-any game). For all the well-paced and masterfully executed level design that often cleverly combines different types of gameplay, there are still some isolated sections that are a chore to play after several repeat play through's. Each game improved on playability like you said they should, but all still generally used the same framework of pro's and con's.

The first six games (if you haven't played them all they are each well worth at least one go, and all available on PS3) were some of the best roller coaster rides of the last couple generations, but now for the first time we'll be able to branch off into different tracks and try something really new and different, at least for the series.

Because of what I said at the bottom of the last page. Mixing mythologies makes them less credible. Same reason why Batman shouldn't exist in Superman's world and why Alien vs. Predator is a mistake.

Technically they aren't mixing. Kratos literally ended one, and eventually skipped town and headed north to discover another, possibly decades/hundreds of years later. Different mythologies don't constitute separate worlds any more than different religions do. "Mythologies" are only retrospective tall tales to begin with, as they were technically known as mere traditions to the people, only separated by culture, geography, time, etc. People always like to assign larger than life values to things as time goes on because it's more entertaining.

Also, haven't the comics always mixed superheros? I never got into many of them, but it would seem to not be something limited to the recent DC/Marvel universe movies.

 

[Scapthat]

In a preview/interview with Creative Director Cory Barlog, IGN revealed some new details about God of War, including the fact that the entire game is presented as a single, uninterrupted shot ? there are no load screens, cinematics, or fades to black.

...Barlog also confirmed that God of War will still have the huge set pieces the series is known for. They just wanted to surprise everyone at E3 with something unexpected.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...-systems-controllable-camera-no-load-screens/

If that is indeed the plan, have any of us played a major AAA game that was presented in one shot? Please let me know if you think of one. If they can pull that off, I'm pretty sure we won't have to worry about a camera getting us killed every 10 minutes because we had to constantly steer it towards enemies.

It also looks like the combat won't be anywhere near as combo-based as the old games, and tons of play testing has probably been done already to make this as much of a non-issue as possible. I also tweeted SMS and Cory to see what they had to say, although not sure I'd even get a response this close to E3.

Cool.

I don't see how that has any relation to what I said though.

If you want a recent example just look at Nioh. It tried to mix the Dark Souls style with Ninja Gaiden combo heavy combat. The latter requires light and heavy attack to be mapped to the facebuttons. As a result, more than once I had problems because I couldn't attack and move the camera at the same time, particularly when fighting groups. That game's camera is pushed back though, so it wasn't too common of a problem, this one is.

If your point is that the combat won't be nearly as action focused as previous entries, well, then we go back to our initial problem. As Casual Shinji said earlier in the thread "Both Kratos and the chainblade action gameplay embody the series almost completely.", the main character is so different it appears to be Kratos in name only, and if the gameplay will be so different from what the series is known for then what is the point of calling it God of War in the first place?

All I can really say anymore is we'll have to wait and see. There will have to be at least a few good surprises for this project to live up to even half the hype that will build, but SMS is one of the few studios that have a decent chance of pulling it off. Apparently the new engine is stated to support up to 100 enemies on screen, so we can expect combat to be more than the ax and fists, and a camera that supports it. Would it be cool if they threw the blades in at some point? Hell yes it would, but seeing as they practically reinvented Kratos, we'll have to hope they're replaced by something equally appropriate and as fun to use if not.

 

[Zaltys]

Those theories seem sound.
Which is a shame, because at this point I'd only be interested in a sequel if we got to play as someone else. Such as Thor, with the ultimate goal of taking down Kratos.

 

[Scapthat]

Questions:

Since they're sticking with God of War, how could they

A. Stay true to the franchise roots
B. Stay relevent and interesting from a design standpoint

If they made a brand new IP ignoring God of War completely - which to me would be essential - how could they make it different enough to successfully distance itself from God of War? Because forging its own identity would ultimately be the point.

In the end it's quite possible the design change would have happened this way regardless, and we'd be left with the same complaints about camera, perspective, melee, etc. only with some other character. And with a new IP fans would always be left wondering whatever happened to Kratos at the end of GoW3.

 

[DaCosta]

Questions:

Since they're sticking with God of War, how could they

A. Stay true to the franchise roots
B. Stay relevent and interesting from a design standpoint

If they made a brand new IP ignoring God of War completely - which to me would be essential - how could they make it different enough to successfully distance itself from God of War? Because forging its own identity would ultimately be the point.

In the end it's quite possible the design change would have happened this way regardless, and we'd be left with the same complaints about camera, perspective, melee, etc. only with some other character. And with a new IP fans would always be left wondering whatever happened to Kratos at the end of GoW3.

A. By either continuing Kratos' story, and not making a new character and slapping his name in it, or by making a brand new character in a new pantheon, but either way maintaining the series gameplay focus as a spectacle fighter, instead of turning it into a "cinematic experience" with unskippable cutscenes masquerading as forced walking sections.

B. By removing the overreliance on QTEs. They have fallen out of vogue anyway. It's not like there aren't popular spectacle fighters today, that seems to be most of Platinum's output and they are generally well regarded. Alternatively there's the Dark Souls approach, it's more of an ARPG but it does let you fight giant imposing monsters in real time. It could go in that direction and have less fights in general, but work to make each fight more tense and dangerous.

A new IP would never end up with the problems this game has. They are the result of taking a hack n' slash combat and trying to turn it into The Last of US. If you made a new franchise from the ground up you just wouldn't give it this type of combat. If you were dead set on the over the shoulder camera, you would give it something that complemented it, instead of smooshing together two things that don't fit.

 

[Scapthat]

Questions:

Since they're sticking with God of War, how could they

A. Stay true to the franchise roots
B. Stay relevent and interesting from a design standpoint

If they made a brand new IP ignoring God of War completely - which to me would be essential - how could they make it different enough to successfully distance itself from God of War? Because forging its own identity would ultimately be the point.

In the end it's quite possible the design change would have happened this way regardless, and we'd be left with the same complaints about camera, perspective, melee, etc. only with some other character. And with a new IP fans would always be left wondering whatever happened to Kratos at the end of GoW3.

A. By either continuing Kratos' story, and not making a new character and slapping his name in it, or by making a brand new character in a new pantheon, but either way maintaining the series gameplay focus as a spectacle fighter, instead of turning it into a "cinematic experience" with unskippable cutscenes masquerading as forced walking sections.

B. By removing the overreliance on QTEs. They have fallen out of vogue anyway. It's not like there aren't popular spectacle fighters today, that seems to be most of Platinum's output and they are generally well regarded. Alternatively there's the Dark Souls approach, it's more of an ARPG but it does let you fight giant imposing monsters in real time. It could go in that direction and have less fights in general, but work to make each fight more tense and dangerous.

A new IP would never end up with the problems this game has. They are the result of taking a hack n' slash combat and trying to turn it into The Last of US. If you made a new franchise from the ground up you just wouldn't give it this type of combat. If you were dead set on the over the shoulder camera, you would give it something that complemented it, instead of smooshing together two things that don't fit.

A. My prediction is we're going to see something quite a bit different tonight than what was shown last year. They did that on purpose as was explained earlier. TLoU was quite a bit more than a walking simulator, and SMS would be a laughing stock if it was outdone by the action in that game.

B. Agreed 100% whether they stuck to the old format or what they're doing now. Although I don't think a Dark Souls approach would have worked very well. That combat is more methodical and tied to playing more cautiously due to the death penalty being far more meaningful. Plus as awesome as the bosses were in Souls/Bloodborne they don't hold a candle to God of War in terms of spectacle. I'm sure that will continue here because it's practically what the studio's known for.

In any case, we'll have a much better idea of where they're taking this in around 12 hours.

 

[Scapthat]

Yeah it was definitely underwhelming from a gameplay standpoint. At least they showed some climbing this time which thankfully zoomed out the camera a bit. I still think they'll have a combination of camera work that will adjust to fit to the scenario. It looked like it auto-adjusted to face the different groups of enemies and pulled back when he was swinging that ax around. Was expecting at least another weapon reveal but apparently there's still over half a year to go.


I thought this was a cool tie-in -

Looks like quite a bit of time has passed from the looks of that vase and the room it's in. Not sure what to make of the friendly serpent thing at the end. What I'm most curious about story-wise is how he got there. I think the main thing that has me intrigued about this besides being a fan from the beginning is that I like when developers dig into history a bit, even if it's within their own work. The before and after of things if done right can be fascinating.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Are we positive this is going to be superior, graphically to many other games?

Umm, yes? I think we can say with all certainty that it will be graphically superior to many other games. It may also be graphically inferior to many games aswell.

 

[DaCosta]

I still think they'll have a combination of camera work that will adjust to fit to the scenario. It looked like it auto-adjusted to face the different groups of enemies and pulled back when he was swinging that ax around.

It looked like you always have to position yourself far from the group so you can see all the enemies, and the enemies just stood on a line and mostly attacked one by one because the devs know if you get attacks from any other direction you won't be able to react.

For what it's worth, it looked better than last years' trailer.

 

[Scapthat]

I still think they'll have a combination of camera work that will adjust to fit to the scenario. It looked like it auto-adjusted to face the different groups of enemies and pulled back when he was swinging that ax around.

It looked like you always have to position yourself far from the group so you can see all the enemies, and the enemies just stood on a line and mostly attacked one by one because the devs know if you get attacks from any other direction you won't be able to react.

For what it's worth, it looked better than last years' trailer.

It also looks like he'll have different abilities with the ax for larger area-of-effect attacks. If the claims of supporting up to 100 enemies on screen at a time are true, then we should be able to expect some greater crowd control mechanics - whether through weapons, camera, or both - than what was shown here too.