In honor of the release of the long-awaited action movie God of War: Ragnarok, we were given the opportunity to interview the developers of the combat system. Mihir Sheth and Denny Yeh, who both worked on the game as lead combat designer, spoke to us about this aspect of the game. As we were told, they started working on this aspect of the game right after finishing the previous part of the series in 2018:
“We knew that in this part, our goal was not to try to completely dig the style of the game again, like last time, but rather to take this new concept and push it as far as possible. Previously, we thought of the combat system as creating music – the player is given “12 notes” and can compose their own “music”. We are particularly proud of how this freedom of the player in combat is demonstrated in end-game content. The more time you spend playing the game, the more depth you will find. We have more types of enemies than last time, more types of mini-bosses, more types of arenas and situations, mechanics like grabbing the enemy in the air and hitting the ground, and more variations for 1v1 battles and against more enemies at the same time.
“At the same time, we were thinking about how to make even more types of players enjoy combat. Our philosophy was literally: “Let’s make your grandma gorgeous by creating combos.” For these purposes, we took inspiration from traditional one-on-one fighting games. In addition, in 2018 we had four difficulties in the game, and now we offer five. We deliberately balanced the new one (“Give Me Mercy”) so that it is neither difficult nor easy for most players. We didn’t just do some general shifting of values or table changes, we adjusted for each difficulty and mechanic as such, for example the throwing ax is stronger on lower difficulties, because we found that it is often used by shooter fans who are less experienced in this genre fighting games”.
During the interview, I mentioned to the developers how during the battles in God of War: Ragnarok adrenaline flowed through my veins even more than in the previous part, how in some places it “forced” to press the buttons on the controller harder. and more strongly. I was wondering what behind-the-scenes combat system tricks were used to achieve such immersive wildness:
“We deliberately made it so that the difficulty of each encounter alternately rose and fell, our goal was to periodically throw a markedly more difficult challenge to the player, forcing him to be alert, lean forward with concentration on a sofa or chair, or maybe even throw the controller away from with the words “I almost failed!”. In short, this should not be a game that you play while lying on the couch. At the same time, it’s quite true that due to the extensive changes to the game since 2018, we’ve just focused on making the combat system work well. For this year’s game, we’ve been working all the time to improve it as best we can.”
Lean forward in concentration on a sofa or chair.
“We use a lot of these little tricks behind the scenes, we have removed, for example, knockdowns and enemy stomps, in general, all knockdown animations, in many cases specific to each weapon, these blows are now faster, more powerful, but still follow the general rhythm. Of course, more Camera improvements also play a role, and overall we had a lot more time to work with the tools we created for the last game.”
We also talked about the use of the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback, which some may find a little overpowered, which the developers explained as follows:
“While testing the game with various users, we found that the strong tactile feedback in the same intense game is too distracting for many. Therefore, we decided to rely more on visual and sound effects than on tactile sensations.”
Of course, we also talked about the most significant innovations in the combat system, although the creators did not want to talk too specifically about them yet, given the potential opportunity to surprise players who have not yet completed the entire game:
“This time, Atreus is conceived noticeably differently. Compared to his form in 2018, he is older and in dire need to prove to himself and those around him that he can stand on his own two feet and be his own boss. Some of his father’s fighting style is now reflected in his son’s fighting style, but it still relies more on speed and cunning than strength. Considering his age and adolescence, he is perhaps a bit more brash and sloppy, which the designers have also tried to emphasize, including by making his punches often riskier. As for the new weapons, players will only see a fraction of what we’ve been trying to add to the game. We wanted to make sure that everything that remains in the game is absolutely polished and cutting-edge. We wanted the content to be good enough for players to tell their friends about it. So whatever ended up in the game, we were absolutely sure of it.”
Source :Indian TV
