IG: We played the E3 2009 demo for the game recently – great stuff. How much of that content is one-for-one in the final game and how much would you say has seen improvements?
SC: All of the demo has been polished – it was originally done about the E3 time frame. It didn't have final lighting and we hadn't added motion-blur, depth of field, shading filters and framerate optimizations. We try not to kill ourselves on the demo, because we're going to kill ourselves on the game; we choose an area best suited for public display and then after we have that section, we tune it to be the demo and include the things we want to show off. So the location is the same, the fights and look are different though.
One of the things we were doing with God of War III was making a new engine – we'd constantly be doing stuff like relighting the game, adjusting the particles etc., so it was never really finished until it was finished. It was hard to get something out to the press like, 'Ok, it's finished,' because it was never like we had sections fully done, so we pulled out sections that were done-ish. We never finished pieces of the game, we took complete passes at the game and finished it as a total project.
The Chimera doesn't stand a chance...
IG: What do you think will pleasantly surprise people the most with God of War III?
SC: The thing that I think they will be surprised with are most of the real-time events; there aren't a lot of moments where you're just watching - craziness is going on around you while you're play!
One of the most gratifying parts is how people wanted the full experience. There are some people, even journos, who I ask about the game and they say they haven't tried the demo. I'm a little bummed out about that, until they say that they want to have the full experience all at once. They're reacting the way I am when a big movie is coming out! Where I sit down for a new movie, I don't want to see any trailers, I just want to be there in the theater on opening day and get the whole experience – it becomes an event and this game has become like that.
IG: One of the ways God of War III has become like a movie event is the omnipresence in pop culture, like Kratos on a Slurpee cup.
SC: That's awesome to by the way! It'll be the one time my wife will let the kids have a Slurpee.
IG: Certain other games recently, that shall remain nameless, have tried to 'borrow' the God of War formula. Are you confident that when God of War III releases, Kratos will still claim the crown of mythological action/adventure titles?
SC: I hope so! We certainly strive for that! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but from our standpoint, we're running our own race. We're trying to outdo ourselves and we're our own worst critics and we often beat ourselves up. We take a lot of pride in what we do and we want to do the best we can on the games we make and we don't want to leave anything on the table. We want everyone to have the same experience, one that we all agree on, and when you put the game on now we want to be able to look you in the eye and say 'We gave it our all.'
For us, it's always been about previous games we've worked on. Nobody came into the office one day with a game someone else made and gone, 'Look at this, we need to have this in our game.' It's always been about outdoing ourselves; with God of War II, we had to outdo the Hydra and I think we did it with the Colossus battle and this time, we had to be even bigger than that with God of War III. I'd like to think we succeeded.
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May 5, 2010
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