But when I got to the studio in June, I started talking to everybody about, all right-the first idea wasn’t that he was his biological son. When I first started talking to Shannon, I think in maybe February of 2013, the idea was germinating. GamesBeat: When you were thinking about, I was curious about how soon the father-son concept came into it, or how soon the Norse theme came into it.īarlog: The father-son came first and then the Norse myths came second.
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How would you approach that differently so you don’t just wholly change everything, but figure out how to organically develop it? What if that wasn’t the goal? What if the goal was not to reboot, but to reimagine, to continue a timeline? Instead of going back and telling an origin, this is a continuation in the chronology of the story. But it helped me to see, OK, these are the things you would do if this was the goal. It’s just that the way they approached it, I looked at it and thought, “I’d approach this very differently.” They had a specific goal in mind. I ended up using that-this isn’t to say they were wrong. That was really good for me, because it gave me a good understanding of, when they were rebooting, what was their process. We need someone to come in and direct the cinematics and finish these things off.” I came on and did that. I came on to direct the second one, actually, but they brought me in really early and said, “We’re having trouble with cinematics. They’d been working on it long before I got there. I don’t think I would have been able to make this game had I not had that walkabout.īarlog: Tomb Raider, you mean? Yeah.
With Crystal Dynamics I did the Tomb Raider stuff. And then working with a bunch of other studios. It was eight college degrees in character development and directing all at once. Working with George Miller was an education. So I said, “All right, I need to go do a Caine from Kung Fu and wander the Earth, meet people and learn.” I learned way more during that process than I ever expected. I think initially I said, “Can I just work with some of these other people while staying at Sony?” Sony said, “No, we don’t do that.” Which makes sense. I’m not certain how well I knew this or not, but I felt like I didn’t know a lot that I needed to learn, and I wasn’t going to learn it if I was making the same game over and over again.
I wanted, creatively, to get a different experience. I’d been going for years without a break and shipping these games. Then I finished 2, and I was immediately going into writing and designing the third game after about a week’s break. I had about a week to a week-and-a-half break in between those two games. Then immediately I had to jump into writing and directing the second game. I don’t know if it’s super secret Sony stuff that was going on, but you left, came back, that whole process.īarlog: That process was-I had done God of War, where I came on for the last two years, and it was a pretty intense last two years. GamesBeat: I don’t think you ever fully described the circumstances there. “You were just thinking in that first year. Yumi Yang, the producer on the game, likes to say four years, because she doesn’t count that first year. But I was thinking about the game a little bit before that. I think it’s just two months shy of five years, when you consider the release date. Five years, I’ve heard that in some interviews.Ĭory Barlog: Five years is the total time from when I got back.
These include: a spear and shield combo, which opens up the ability to combine new offensive and defensive tactics and the Eye of Atlantis, a electrically charged handheld weapon that allows Kratos to shock enemies from afar and from different positions.GamesBeat: I was a little confused about how much time you had on it. In addition, along with Kratos' signature chain blade weaponry, Ghost of Sparta also features the ability for Kratos to utilize new weapons. The game features a more diverse cast of enemies, as well as bigger, badder bosses to tackle. Gameplay, especially during boss battles and puzzle play events, utilizes the familiar God of War style on-screen button prompts to secure victory and advancement, with successful battles and puzzle challenges framed by stunning in-game cutscenes. In the process, the game reveals secrets of Kratos' past only hinted at in previous games in the series. Playing as the iconic, rage-driven Spartan warrior, Kratos, players face level after level of challenges illustrating the Ghost of Sparta's (Kratos') rise from uber warrior laboring in the service of the gods, to a god himself, following the defeat of Aries in the first game in the series. As with all God of War games, Ghost of Sparta is a single player action-adventure game played from the third-person perspective that blends addictive hack and slash and puzzle play gameplay mechanics.