Sony Interactive Entertainment Santa Monica’s game was indeed inspired by FromSoftware’s PlayStation 4-exclusive title…
In the latest The Lost Pages of Norse Myth podcast, Anthony Dimento, the senior systems designer, and Luis Sanchez, lead level designer, talked about God of War. They said the following:
„What we’re doing is that it’s not an open world game, but there are hubs, in our instance one big hub where there’s additional content that doesn’t necessarily tie into the main story. It does in certain ways, but it’s more about expanding the world and creating a more immersive experience.
One of the levels, for example, revolves around a Golem, one of our big rock enemies, and through working on a sidequest we told a little origin story about that enemy which gave him a personality, and it was cool watching this play out and giving him a background while building the world. In that same quest, you’re looking for a dwarf with a green ring, and we knew we were going to have certain upgrades and talismans, things that you can equip that give you perks and bonuses and change your playstyle. Then we’ve taken what we’ve established through narrative and turn that ring into one of those upgradeable items, an item that does something for your gameplay but now actually has a whole narrative background; there’s something meaningful about it rather than just calling it ‘Trinket of Odin’ or whatever. Now it has that backstory established through side content; it means something to you.
The goal is to have the side content not feel any different from the main content and have that same production value Sony Santa Monica is known for. It’s not tacked on, it’s not an afterthought, there’s a whole team dedicated to this, and a lot of work went into weaving this together with the rest of the game and making it all feel like one experience. Exploration became a lot bigger than we originally planned at the onset. I think we were planning to have five to ten hours of additional content and then it became a lot more, there’s a ton of stuff to do.
I love building spaces that wrap around each other. One of my favorite games is Bloodborne; their design is amazing, top-tier. That has been an inspiration for me, a lot of the exploration spaces kind of call back to those games. We have those micro-loops where you’re unlocking paths, unlocking shortcuts, giving them purpose and looping around the space and learning the area.”
Last December, at the PlayStation Experience, two winners were chosen for a God of War contest – they could visit Sony Santa Monica and meet Cory Barlog, the game’s director. A friend of one of the winners asked a few questions on the game’s subreddit: „The lore is presented very well. It has some forced elements, but there are plenty of hidden items that are satisfying to find and give you more insight into the lore. Atreus travels with a notebook and details these from his perspective. God of War is reminiscent of Uncharted in a way, but with the lore and backstory logging elements from Mass Effect. Not tedious at all and incredibly fun to discover, and that’s saying something because I honestly usually don’t give a shit about other games.
I did find exploring the world interesting. I’m not usually one to stray from the main path when not necessary, but I enjoyed exploring the nooks and crannies to find lore and collectibles. There are walls with paintings of stories that Atreus reads to you, different items you can find that give you lore insight, and tons of other stuff, but nothing that gave anything major away quite yet.
You do get mild quests in the beginning, and gain experience for them, but nothing to the tune of, “save my son!” “Find my dog!” “Find my stolen jewelry!””
God of War will launch on April 20, exclusively on PlayStation 4.
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