God of War: Ascension

Not counting a brief foray into mobile, God of War: Ascension will be the sixth game in the series’ short seven-year lifespan. In that time, Kratos has fought some of the most intense battles in videogames, while also taking gory disemboweling and delimbing to a new level of detail. At a press event in New York I spoke with David Hewitt, game design manager for Sony Santa Monica, about the game’s hallmark violence, the difficulty of making sequels, and whether game mechanics can be used primarily for emotional reasons.

IGN: There was a lot of criticism about violence in big games at E3 this year, and God of War: Ascension was frequently mentioned. Do you have any thoughts about that criticism?

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He was tricked into killing his wife and family. He’s literally covered in their ashes during every moment.

David Hewitt: The core of the God of War series is Greek mythology, and that’s blood and guts, vengeful gods, horrific things being enacted on mortals. What we’re doing is injecting a character into that and telling a story of revenge. Kratos has been through this before. He was tricked into killing his wife and family. He’s literally covered in their ashes during every moment. His motivation is violent, bloody revenge, and the milieu of mythology puts us in this distant, exaggerated world. We do revel in it somewhat but the violence is there to show Kratos dealing with his demons and enacting that revenge in a very physical, hands-on way.

IGN: I wonder if a part of it was that many of those games were using violence in an increasingly familiar way, and not necessarily that this year was so much more violent than any other year. People are becoming familiar with that level of gore and exaggeration and the unnerving effect of it has worn off.

David Hewitt:  I think that if all we had was the affect of showing violence in a game then we’d be in big trouble. It’s the mechanics of the game that matter. The presentation plays a big part in drawing people in initially. I think if the context is a wartime setting or something a little more modern than our game it has a different impact. Your reaction to that might be a bit more ambiguous. But we’re far removed from what your day-to-day experience is when we’re in this vastly different and weird mythological world.

The series has wanted to keep upping itself in presentation and making sure we have those moments where people kind of recoil a bit—genuinely uncomfortable moments that are part of the feel of this franchise. We’ve stuck by those, but the game’s not driven by those.

What we’re pushing for is mechanical innovation, making the combat rewarding, having every button press feel magnified with a lot of feedback. Some of that comes from these gory outcomes, but what we’re looking to do is provide that extra level of depth and complexity, to give the player more tools to use -- new weapons and sub-weapons, the new tether mechanics and so on.

IGN: Do you have an internal line of what kind of violence you won’t show in the game? Is there a line that you wouldn’t cross with Kratos?

David Hewitt: We do. In fact the team has a set of rules that define those sorts of things very clearly. Where it shows itself is how the combat designers and animators have designed Kratos’ moves. He’s always leaning forward, he’s always moving forward. He’s seeking revenge and he’s after his ultimate objective and he will tear through enemies -- rip them in half -- as quickly as he can. But there’s not a lot of flourishes, there’s not any kind of enjoying the moment. There’s nothing about this that he’s enjoying.

There are some things we’ve pulled back from. I think where this has been an issue is with violence against women -- the team’s pulled back from some of that and assessed that a little more carefully. There are certain things that carry has a different kind of resonance that we don’t want to get into. This isn’t about statement-making in that regard. It’s about fleshing out this character.

IGN: When I first heard Ascension would be a prequel to all the other God of War games I was excited that it might be a chance to rebuild the game around a totally new idea -- to have Kratos be a mortal and not supernaturally powerful and not be obsessed with revenge. Is it constraining to always have to go back to the same general set of mechanics and that revenge-driven tone?

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There are some things we’ve pulled back from. I think where this has been an issue is with violence against women...

David Hewitt: The game isn’t a reboot; it’s a continuation of the series. We’ve gone back to an earlier point of the story. There are a handful of things that are pillars of this franchise. They want to see ridiculous, epic, over-the-top moments, huge bosses, fluid combat, lots of options for combos, climbing, maneuvering around the environment, puzzle solving. Those are baseline expectations for the series that we need to build on regardless of whether we’re going back in the timeline.

Kratos is really struggling with his demons here, he’ll go through some seriously heavy events. He gets beaten up over the course of the story, he’s more vulnerable with some of the enemies than he was in the past. His movements have changed too. In the previous game he would just stab his blades into walls to climb around and in this one he’s more grabbing on with his hands and using footholds. That’s been a really nice refinement. In combat he’s got the ability to pick up other weapons, he can grab a sword or a spear -- or disarm weapons. So we’ve tried to expand on the toolset. We want to build on those things, but in a way that makes sense for a real human individual.