Sony God of War post-mortems: "An Unending Series of Compromises": Cory Barlog on Building a New Myth From Old Parts (USgamer), "Directing God of War" (Noclip)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

With God of War's release and reception firmly behind us, USG speaks to the game's director, Cory Barlog.

[SaysWho?]

I've been watching long-form interviews on the development and reasons of why everything is. It's such a well-crafted game, but it's cool to hear about changes that were made, what your main weapon should be, the Easter eggs, etc.

 

I'm watching a spoilercast with Kinda Funny that featured Cory Barlog as I missed it last year. Gonna bookmark this one to read!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[SaysWho?]

Quote

One charge made against God of War is that it reuses the troll bosses too many times. Kratos and Atreus fight a number of named trolls over the course of the game, and while certain facets of the fights change, the mechanics are largely the same. The thing is, according to Barlog, they were never intended to be bosses. They were just larger enemies, like the Stone Golems. The mistake was in the presentation.

 

"Yeah, they were interesting because to me the trolls were not meant to be bosses. As you're going through production, you have to cut other bosses throughout and we started noticing during play tests that people were referring to them as bosses simply because they're big," he says. "For me in hindsight, that is definitely one thing I would've fixed: we used the meter that we were traditionally using for the other bosses. And that was a decision like a lot of other things on a big project like this, where you tried to solve an immediate problem. You have a character that's so tall that seeing a health bar on them that was floating above their head was not going to work right."

 

Pretty close to what I thought. For me, they were mini-bosses. They're not meant to be like a Stranger boss.