After the live gameplay demo of God of War III (which is recounted in our God of War III preview), members of the press got to throw some questions at the game's director, Stig Asmussen.
What follows is a transcript of the Q&A session with questions from G4 and other media outlets. All answers are provided by Stig unless otherwise noted.
Question: Given that a lot of people are going to come to God of War with the PS3 with this game -- for that platform -- are there any thoughts of catching people up to the story at this point? Are you thinking about repackaging the other games and releasing them?
Stig Asmussen: There has definitely been conversations about that. I think that’s a fantastic idea. And absolutely like I said, as far as the story goes, one of our criteria was bridging the series and we’re coming up with creative ways of kind of catching people up. There have been a couple games recently that I thought were really, really good games, but if you missed a couple games in the series, you were really left out of the story. I recognize that and I didn’t want it to happen with God of War. I think we’ve got a really good story and there’s room for a lot more fans for this game, as well.
Q: You just mentioned that some of the scenes we just saw with the gore that the ESRB has asked you to tone it down. Considering movies like Saw and Hostel, do you think the ESRB has actually gone a little too far these days?
Keep reading for the answer to that question and more juicy details about God of War III.
S: My opinion is that people have to stop looking at games like they’re a toy. We’re a pretty mature industry right now and with a lot of mature gamers out there. We treat these like movies and I think for the most part -- I’m not going to really comment on what ESRB’s position is on that, but from the public’s perception I think, is going to change. As we get older, we can get in charge and make sure that the things that we want to see in games are in games. I’m a husband, I’ve got two baby twins at home, and we’re not designing the game for them. We’re designing it for people like you guys.
Ron Eagle, Sr. PR Manager for Sony Computer Entertainment: I would further say that this is trailer based, coming from Sony to you. So it’s also got to do with some of our own corporate governance. And you mentioned some of the Saw movies as an example – if you go out and look at the actual trailers that were made available for public consumption, it’s toned way down versus what you actually see in the theater as well. It wasn’t a great surprise, and the team was able to adjust - again, because of the fact that everything is built in-game. They’ve worked their butts off making sure that you guys are walking away with what’s essentially the same trailer, just with some added animation.
S: I think just to further that, everything that we do is really within the personality of Kratos. And we’re not doing gore just to do gore. Some of the stuff is pretty over the top, so it’s going to draw some emotions from people. But we really think it fits within his character, and it’s not gore for just gore’s sake.
Q: This is kind of a nuts and bolts kind of question, but it struck me as a fan of the series. I didn’t see red experience orbs and things like that coming off of enemies. I was curious if you just changed the mechanics there or it was just too early to show?
S: You know, probably because it’s too early to show. Expect all that kind of stuff to come back… the major gameplay points… we’re not going to tinker with what’s not broken. But it wasn’t relevant [to today's presentation].
Q: You guys mentioned many times in the presentation that this would be the wrapping-up of the series, the epic finale. What does that mean for the future of God of War?
S: I don’t know about the future of God of War, I just know what’s going to happen with God of War III. That’s what we’re focused on right now, I can’t really give you anything more than that.
Q: I’m just wondering if you're going to strip down Kratos’ abilities in the beginning of the game again? Because you’re showing all these new moves, but is Kratos going to start out stripped down again in the beginning of the game?
A: That’s a good question. I think with that one we’re sort of exploring a lot of different options right now. You know, as a gamer, I’d really like to start with everything that Kratos has. But, as a game designer, it’s really hard to tune that. It’s also really hard to train people that’ve never played the game before with that many moves. So, it’s something that’s kind of in debate right now. We haven’t made a concrete decision on it.
Q: Considering that you showed the scale of the environments, especially within the trailer and the demo, that obviously opens up a lot of the gameplay boards, large-scale puzzle sequences, and things that could potentially get players lost just simply based on the scale and the scope on some of these environments. How exactly are you guys planning on still having these large vistas and large environments that you can solve puzzles in and have battle sequences, but still keep everything focused towards… kind of a main directive or objective in the gameplay?
S: That’s a very good question. Llike I said before, I’ve never seen anybody else working on this kind of scale. And unfortunately, because of that, we don’t have anything to refer to. A lot of times at work we’re say, “Hey, remember how they did it in this game?” We’re kind of doing this stuff for the first time and we don’t have any kind of gaming plan like: "ok you go to this marker and it gives you a hint" or anything like that. I don’t want to do that. I want to make sure that the design is solid enough that pretty much anybody who picks it up understands the flow of where they need to go and what to do next. And I can tell you, with all the God of War games, we do extensive play-testing. We do it internally, we do it externally, and that’s how we find out. You know, if you played any of our games in the past, we really didn’t drop hints or anything like that. And even though some of the puzzles were really tough, some were better puzzles than other puzzles, for the most part people could get through them, and we’re going to rely on that this time around as well. But I tell you what, working on these Titans, it’s a hog, I mean it’s tough. When we first started wrapping our heads around it, it’s like "man we’re doing something that nobody’s ever really done before."
Q: I was curious. When you’re playing on the Titan and the Titan is moving, how is undulating flesh going to be incorporated into the gameplay? Is that going to create new challenges when you’re on top of the Titan?
S: Perhaps.
Q: Is that something you’re definitely considering to be a component of the gameplay when you’re on the Titans?
S: It’s one of those things... we get this giant character and create essentially what’s skin collision. We’ve got a skinned character and Kratos is on top of it. When the Titan moves, Kratos’ navigation set changes and everything and just getting him in there and running the level, we start to find things that are really cool. You know, you came up with that one just thinking about it in your head. It’s obviously something that we saw, and once you kind of open up the box, it’s all these toys, these new toys that you really don’t know how to play with them yet. We’re learning how to play with them right now.
In case you missed any of our God of War III coverage, here's a list of everything:
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