Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - God of War Spoilercast (wCory Barlog) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Special

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

God of War PS4 Director Cory Barlog joins Kinda Funny to talk about every story twist, massive boss fight, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome to your kind of funny God of War, spoiler cast, special, whatever the hell we're actually putting in the title. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Tim Getty's. Let's him, host. Thank you very much. I'm happy you're here. I'm happy. I appreciate that you beat.

Oh, is this a new jacket? No. Oh, it looked like it was velvet for 70. $1.com. Cool jacket. Just look for it. How are you feeling? You had a marathon God to war this weekend.

I bet it was a good time. Okay. We'll talk about that in a second. Over here! My Hispanic heartthrob, Andy Cortez. Oh, hi. I wasn't expected a greed out this early in the morning. It's early, man. You got to get warmed up, dude.

The energy up. And over there, man of the hour, from Sony, Santa Monica, Corey Barlock. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here. I know you haven't talked about this game anywhere.

So I have, thankfully you were able to get this exclusive have you come in and do this with us. Finally, we can grill them, Jesus. I know, right? No more, no more of the side glances when you're trying to, you got to look over the PR person on what you can't say. I will still be 122% evasive.

If you didn't know, ladies and gentlemen, this is a kind of funny spoiler cast where we're going to spoil all of God of War. The gloves are off. If you haven't played through God of War and beaten God of War, you have no business watching this video or listening to this podcast. Go away. This is not the spoiler catch you're looking for. It'll be here when you're done. It'll wait for you. It doesn't have an expiration date.

It doesn't go sour. Andy, does the milk go sour when we're talking about videos? Never, Greg Miller. That's what I'm talking about over there. That's some quality improv right. That was your chance to stop and get out. All right. Joey. Joey hasn't beaten it, so I want to make sure she can't hear it.

I don't know why she came in so early. I thought she'd come in late. She wanted to make sure she didn't come in during the middle of it. And then how would I do? You got to leave. This is it. We're starting right now. You got to put out of earmuffs.

Headphones on. Okay, okay, okay. Go, because now I'm going to start. It's going to start right now. It's happening. Bang on the wall when you're ready. She screamed. He might have fallen over.

Okay. All right. So I want to start it right now. All right. It's real. You're going to fucking tell me this kid's Loki the whole time. You're going to tell me. You're going to sit there with a straight fucking face and do this to me. Yes.

Yes. Good episode, guys. And that's a wrap. There was a moment towards the end. It wasn't the very end. It's when you're going up. It's after the big climax and stuff. And you're going up the mountain.

Like, you know where things are going. Or so you think. And then you start seeing the things on the wall. And I looked over my girlfriend who'd been watching me play the whole time. And I'm like, that motherfucker fuckers, Loki. Now I thought in the beginning. When you looked at the wall, you saw that. Nice.

The stranger I thought was Loki. You thought it in the very beginning. I heard that, yeah. Yeah, I definitely thought that he was Loki as well. And I was like, oh, here we go. Here we go. We're going to get this reveal. And it didn't happen.

And I was like, what? And then it was after the credit we were walking down. And it happened. I'm like, thank you. Fucking thank you. And she was like, I saw Balder. And I was like, let me Google maybe in a different sort of mythology. He really is Loki.

Like, I just could have sworn he was. And then the big reveal came and it was awesome and chills and goosebumps and everything. Oh, that's amazing. Of course we asked the audience to write in to kind of funny. We've already shut down the spoiler cast thing so you can't write it now. It's too late.

You should have been looking us on Twitter. But Keylock wrote in and said this. So I couldn't resist another. Well, I didn't put the first one in Keylocks, don't worry. But was it intentional to avoid trickster powers for Atreyes that would hint at him being Loki? I mean, Nordic lore states he's the reason for Baldur's death,

so I guess that kind of hints at it enough. But was there any foreshadowing you wish you could have done for Atreus but felt like you didn't, because it would have given it away. Oh, we did a lot of it. in there. A lot. Tell me more.

Because that thing is like, I come in like an idiot. You don't know what you miss. I'm a big moron. What I know about Norse mythology is the Marvel Cinematic Universe of Four. You know the moron though. Norse mythology is not widely known. I didn't know anything about it.

Like I knew what Marvel and Lord of the Rings taught me. Yeah. But when I started researching this, I found it was a very confusing web, right? Because there are multiple translations. There are scholars that dispute so many aspects of it, whether or not several characters are actually one character, the lineage of things.

And you also have kind of the Christianization to pull people away from paganism. So there was a lot of sort of changes to the mythology over the years. So it is a very confusing thing. But in the game, there's one that I'm not going to tell anybody because I want people to find it. I think it's amazing.

But when you find it, you're like, son of a bitch. It was there the whole time. It was there the whole time. But I mean, this one was more deep layer. You got to look for it. But when you have the demi-god reveal, when he actually tells his son that he is a god, what's the first animal he asks if he can turn into?

A bird? No. Can I turn it to an animal? Can I turn into a wolf? Loki associated with the wolves, the children. So that was one. Okay. We also have, one, we didn't translate,

but we sort of indicate towards, so that when he's talking to the world serpent, the world serpent in the language that we've sort of created for him because it was... Very loud and boom. Yeah. Very loud. He actually talks about how he recognizes him.

And that's why he says, huh, curious, you know, nothing, never mind. Yeah. So that one obviously is harder for people to get. And then, you know, him being the instigator for the death of boulder. Sure. Being kind of associated with that. And, you know, like I said, the first one,

there are two things at the beginning of the game. One that will tell you almost everything, if you look. and then one what is it? Tell me what it is. It's the spoiler cast. No,

that one, I want to save for people because that is like, you got to find it and then go seriously. Tom Hiddleson pops out and he like winks at the camera. Hiddleston did one line.

And he was like, the smile of the tongue big. Superbilling goals. Yeah, so the, the, the Loki thing, interestingly when we first wrote the story, he was not Loki,

right? Oh, really? We were still trying to figure out, like I hadn't figured out the kid's name until after E3, 2016, but after I figured out the name and I gave the writers a story that he tells at the end about Atraeus, the warrior that he fought with. Which was, by the way, such an awesome fucking payoff.

Yeah. He finishes. And Atres like, wow, you told a good story. Yeah, you can tell a good story. And that was, I had been agonizing over what we were going to name this kid and just mostly stalling and procrastinating for a long time. And I knew. and I had a bunch of different names but like you know it had to mean something

but it had to mean something more personal to Cratos and I wrote one a couple of different stories that were sort of of Cratos's past experiences he had in different battles and then the one that ended up sort of rising to the top was the one that I was like all right I think this one is it and we had made a huge list of names

and everybody was very worried about a Traus being associated with a god and I said actually that's kind of cool right because I think a lot of people will see the name and then assume oh, I know what this is. They'll look it up and they'll try to associate with that. But you can see that it's more about Cretus having the personal connection. Like he'd never, people say, oh, why didn't you name him Demos? But I mean, you know, if you know the story of what's going on, that's a pretty painful memory for him.

So to look at his son and say Demos every time would be way too painful for him, I think, to keep bringing that up. And then he would never name it after a hearer or a God. Like he doesn't idolize any of them. But to idolize somebody that actually stayed positive, that had hope. right. It's so antithetical to Cratos, but actually so much of giving you an insight into his inner life, right? That there is a desire, that little bit of hope that he didn't give to mankind that he left inside of there, but locked way deep inside. So, but after that, the writers are coming to my office and said, you know, I have an idea, I have a pitch. And the pitch they gave

me was literally the exact line that we ended up using, which was like, okay, so he goes and reads the, the mural, they go spread the ashes and they're walking back. And Atraeus looks at him and says, okay, so I get it. You know, I'm a God part giant. But the thing that was confusing is they kept getting my name wrong on the mural. They kept calling me Loki. And this was exactly how Matt Sophos had pitched it. And I was like, uh, where have you been my whole life? Why didn't I come up with this? Right. I was like, instantly, we have to do this 100%. Right. Because it started fitting into the overarching thing. I wanted a trace

to be way more connected to this world. And, you know, there's so much history behind Loki that is what we're going to tell in the future, right?

And our perspective on it is like everything. We've sort of taken a bit of the myth and then really changed it to what works best for the overarching story. It still respects,

I think, the core material, but it says, this is our take. Whereas Marvel takes their own take, we've kind of had the similar. From a game to,

oh, sorry. Go. From a game to all, standpoint. How early on was that decision made to call him Loki? It was several years in. I mean, we had a lot of

stuff my mind. Yeah. It bothers my mind. But that's the beautiful part about working with not only a team but an amazing team is that being open to really great ideas that just come out of nowhere. And we shot a bunch of stuff. So there was still like, okay, there's an impact

and there's a little hair pulled out from producers that when I say, all right, this is what we're going to do. But we had already started subconsciously peppering some of these things in, right? We had already been looking at like his ability to summon creatures, right, is a bit of the beginnings of that. But as with every character in this universe, I want to look at it slightly differently. I think Loki simply being the trickster is fantastic if that's where he ends up at. if you find that his arrival at that personality, that sort of description,

comes because he went through a very secuitous route, that he didn't begin that way. You know, that perhaps it's a defense mechanism. Perhaps it is what the world made him, right? Balder is a perfect example of, you know, in the myth, he was the beautiful, adored one, right? He was the touched one, the one who felt like,

you know, this is the aspirational goal of Balder. He is loved by everybody. But I think looking at him as a tragic figure, right, a figure who's not a villain, but who the world put him in that place. And it was love that actually took him there. It was his mother's love that actually pushed him towards that because she took over his decision-making, right?

And it's like a fantastic cautionary tale for Cretus who begins the game trying to take over the decision-making for his child, right? Because his history. He believes, hey, look, if I could have never known about any of this crap, would my life have been better? No, but he doesn't know that. He's still figuring all that stuff out.

He's got to figure it out on that path. And I think that to me is fertile sort of character development. That is amazing. Well, sure. I mean, that's what terrifies me about Atreus slash Loki now is the fact that knowing how Loki's tale usually goes and not really knowing, but knowing that he turns into Top Henelson and he keeps doing it.

But he turns to a whole deal. It's a whole deal. What a great movie. You got to watch Thor Ragnarok. I'm sure you've never seen it. I haven't had a chance yet to see it. Really? I am super excited.

Yeah, we don't really get a lot of, like, my wife and I watch mostly TV shows because we have about an hour to an hour. Sure, sure, sure. She's totally fine with pausing a movie and watching the last 10 minutes the next day. I can't do it. No, no, no. I got to watch a movie in one city. There's a lot of conflict between us because of that. That's the biggest man.

That's my life. That's my life. That's not true. I love you, Gia. that's what scares me about going forward is that I loved. I mean, I love the game period, obviously. I've told you that before. But I love how Atraeus's hope and heart are.

He's so pure in the way of like, well, yeah, we're going to help people. That's what we do. And every time it comes around where he wants to do one of the side missions and help one of the ghosts or whatever. And Kratos is like, why? Why do you want to do this? And he's like, well, we have to. They're in need. And like, you see Kratos waiver sometimes on it and feel a little bit for it.

but also always be trying to teach that hard lesson of you're going to get let down. Like, don't have expectations and you'll never be. To get to the end and find out that he is Loki, it worries me then for what you're going to continue to do in this franchise one day of going in and taking him to a darker side and what he's going to see. And even obviously the illusions here of like, you know how hard it is for Cratos to admit to Atreus who he is

and what he's done in that he did kill his own father because there are so many lines before that of like when we hear other mythos about it or you hear other stuff in the Norse mythology in the trace like that's crazy why would he kill his own dad and you see like Kratos just kind of like fret in his seat for a second and then seeing that last panel on the wall towards the end it's like oh fuck yeah like that can't it mean avoid that I don't know what could it mean what's a big question what's the last panel on the wall though I would take it as that our trace is going to kill Kratos that's what you think yeah yeah it seems pretty

was that it means seems pretty on the nose there yeah exactly because of craters being I'm gonna show you that one Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That one is a really good one for the audience to determine what do, what does it mean to them, right? Yeah. Right?

Because it is sort of a little bit of that mystery of like, okay, I am not Faye. So therefore I can't clearly see the future. I take at face value what I'm seeing. What does it mean? I don't know. Yeah. I think it's an interesting sort of potential future. I think it's interesting to ask what else it could mean.

Right. What else could it mean? There's a lot of potential. Him laying him to rest. Right. You know what I mean? He didn't do the killing blow, but he's right there at the end. But he was there.

Yeah. First off, hats to the environment team and then our team. Just everything's incredible. They are absolutely great. And all of the different awesome set pieces to look at were just beautiful, right? But for some reason what really made me just my jaw drop was getting to the top, looking over at Yotenheim and seeing all of the giants sprawled over the mountains. Just phenomenal. I'd assume that the concept art was very, very similar to what the final product could have been.

And like, it's beautiful. Yeah, I mean, the concept is always that fantastic start. And emotionally, I think it was the springboard. But it always kind of modifies you bring in other people and they start taking a little bit of their own perspective on it and just elevating it so far beyond. And something else I want to say at the end point. It's an interesting thing that was set up when the realization of, you know, a trace is going to be Loki had come up, this aspect of the sort of B story, the B story that was really deep layer

that I still hadn't, I think, coalesced in my head, started to bubble up to the top, this idea of identity. Identity's been such a big part of this franchise, but it's just not been a part that we've really delved super deep in. And I think for Cratos, there's this really cool aspect of he desires very deeply a different identity, right? He's been, he's been sort of given by his parents and the circumstance, the identity that he has. And then deep down inside, there is a desire, I think, for I wish things were different. And now at the end of the game, Atreus has given an opportunity, right? An opportunity that really Faye orchestrated all along, that she sort of assuaged to the idea that, look, I want to call him Loki, you want to call him Atreus.

I'm okay with doing that because I don't know if he's ready to be called Loki. And that when he's given the opportunity to see that he has one identity, that he's become comfortable with, and that identity is attached now to finally connecting with his father, he's presented this other identity. He's given that crossroads to say, like that point that when we go to college and we can reinvent ourselves. Who do we want to be?

Who are we? I have an Australian accent. Nobody knows that. Right. And you hold it back, right? And then maybe you should just let it fly free, right? Yeah. Throw a little minute work,

a little Nicole Kidman. Star quarterback in high school. Right. You don't look it up though, but you guys know that. Was it hard to show restraint with characters like Thor and Odin and Loki? Because they mentioned a lot in the game, but then you obviously don't really get too much of them. I mean, we had the thing in the beginning where the first draft that was written with me, Rich Gobert and Shane Leesgang. I realized after we put a bunch of work into this thing.

eight months or so, we're right in the second game. There was a really cool idea that we sort of sprung from, but it wasn't supporting the father and son story. It wasn't supporting the core concept of family and how we interact. And I had to make that hard decision of saying, like, look, I know we put a lot of work in this, but we're right in the second game. We can't do this, right? If we overwhelm ourselves with the sort of widely known characters, they overshadow, I think, the concept that we're doing. And part of the reason of choosing North Mississippi, was the isolation, the ability to focus on these two characters and put them in this amazing world, but also not make it feel like you're doing a ton of, oh yeah, I know all these

characters and they become the stars, right? It was the conflict we always had with the blades in the previous games that when you add a new weapon, that new weapon can't overshadow the blades. The blades are sort of the iconic main weapon. So we always struggle with that. And I think that helped me when I realize, like, okay, this is, this sucks. Like, not. sucks because the writers did anything wrong. They did exactly what we were trying to do. It's just I was wrong. I was steering them in the wrong direction. And that was a hard, hard shift, right? It caused a lot of conflict. But in the end, it was for the better. It made things better. And it made us realize like, okay, the presence of these characters being felt is more powerful, right? That their impact,

that you never really see them or when you do see them. It's very minimal. And it sets something up to say, all right, you've told me the beginning of this story. Now I'm ready to buckle up and get ready for the next one. And that was the thing I took away from it. You know, when we were describing it on the review with Jared, I was talking about how the easiest way for me to pitch to the people who hadn't played it yet was it, it reminded me a lot of a play where we had this cast of characters that wasn't hundreds of characters long, but people came in and went out and came back in. And I knew more about them when they came back in based on this was It felt in terms of a character roster and motivations, I kept saying it felt, it felt small and intimate in a good way.

In the fact that I had relationships with these people that, you know, when the stranger shows up the first time and we fight him and I break his neck and throw him off, there's that thing of like, he'll probably be back. But then for so long he's not talked about in this journey. Or I'm just like, no, he's dead. And then no, he's back. And it is this. And we started getting into it. That by the time we got to the ultimate fight there, right? And it's me and Balder fighting.

Freya's yelling, all this stuff's happening. I had forgotten the fact that when I started this game, I was so sure of like, all right, killed a stranger, now I'm going to move on. Eventually Thor is going to show up, we'll fight him, and it all ended with me fighting Odin. You know what I mean? I'm seeing Odin's Ravens.

Of course, I'm going to run into him at the end of this. When it actually stopped and it finished and I got to the top of the mountain, I was like, wow, what a great. Oh, wait, hold on. Like, none of the things I thought that were going to happen, happen. This was just, it was just, in quotes, this one story. Odens, I quit killing my Ravens, man. I just want to see.

I just want to know what's going on. Even the shopkeepers, though. Like, I love that, like, yeah, the entire cast of characters is what, eight characters, including Thor's kids, you know? And it's like, I feel like all of them I felt for in some way. And I, you know, I love the coming back to them constantly. And it was a cool thing.

And I love that I agree with you where as I was going up, especially at the end of the mountain, I was like, wow, there's so much shit that I thought I was going to do that I didn't. And I thought that was a good thing because I, me and Kevin were talking before we beat it, we're like, oh, so we're going to go to Asgard. Like, that's going to happen. Sure. We didn't. And on top of that, when you go into tears, little trying to wire,

and you're looking around, it's like, then you start getting all these hints of, like, other mythologies. And I'm like, are you about to drop some, like, Chinese shit on me? Like, that would be nuts. Right. What was that Kevin back there? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the helmet, the Egyptian helmet that a trace is trying on in the treasure room. Like, all of it is, like, little subtle indicators. I love it. It helps build them. mythology of tier being this sort of beloved god that began a lot of the Norse myth

before the Azar gods came in and kind of kicked them out. But he was connected to a lot of other things. There's things in the myth that show there was connections, and whether or not this is legit or if it is literally just somebody expanding on the stories, that there was connections between Roman gods and Norse gods, right? Even a small connection between that shows that, all right, you know, precursor to the Viking era where they were sailing all everywhere was potentially the gods and the monsters actually connecting to other geographic locations. How much of a pain of the ass

was the single shot camera? I can't imagine having to sculpt a game around this single idea. Yeah. It was a lot of attention and a lot of stress in the beginning. And then I passed that stress on to Dori Razi

and everybody else in the amazing Cinematics team to deal with. And then, you know, got passed on the gameplay. and G. Trough and everybody else on the engineering side to figure out, how are we going to connect to all this stuff? Right. It was a nonstop sort of learning experience for us to find new tricks. And many, many, many conversations of why don't we just cut here?

You know, like, well, it's fine, just cut here. Like, even when we go and do white fades, the white fades are solely because we've edited something out and we have to travel a little bit further. So we just don't want to show that traveling. It's like, ah, pacing-wise, it's just not that good. the camera still doesn't cut. It simply moves to that location.

We just kind of cover it up just a little bit because of sort of late game edits that we had to do. But at no point do we ever feel like we have to cut, except for the battle I lost in the beginning, which was, if you saw that stream, you saw that Cratos was like pulling the axe off and slotting in ruins inside the game. That was the original intent of all the UI,

was everything was going to be in the game. But as we started realizing all the upgrading you needed to do and everything you did, it just felt like, it's just unrealistic. Like, that's a battle that I don't think, it's worthwhile for anybody to fight on the first one because we have so many things to do.

Maybe there's something we do on the next one to kind of eliminate going to the menu screen. But yeah, it's... We need Brock and Sinjury back then. Don't do this to us. We need to watch them put those fucking ruins in those slots guys. Oh yeah. I love those guys. They are amazing.

A great arc for them too. I was going to say, and that's I think one of the other super impressive things about this game is that you made me give a shit about these brother blacksmiths. People who are just there to take my stuff and make my stuff better and get out. Yeah, I actually cared about reuniting them.

And Atreus cared about it and that made me care more. And that was the original sort of edict that I said, any character involved in here is going to be a sort of reflection, a mirror to either teach them something or they will teach someone else something. So that they each impact the world, the world impacts them, and that there is no ancillary characters. We're talking about even some of the spirits that they they run into around the lake.

They learn something, right? They learn a little bit about the reality of letting go, you know, when they run into Gullveg, right? And Gullveg is the perfect example of, you know, don't believe people when they promise you something that you know in your heart is unrealistic. Yeah, exactly. And I'm trying to teach that as he goes through,

or as they go through. And everybody has a lesson. I think initially when I talked to people, I said it was the Resident Evil, what do you buy in? What are you selling? Right? I said, but imagine if you actually understood what was going on with that person.

Why is he just that giant white? How was he everywhere? How is he everywhere? Where's his accent from? It's funny you say that too because I got Resident Evil four vibes from this game. Mainly from the pacing of the gameplay and the pacing

of the story as well where I feel the thing this game does best is go from small battles to big battles but both of them feeling equally as epic and equally as important as you go through. And I think the camera really helped with all that and it's like this might be one of the most well-paced games I've ever played.

and Resident Evil 4 is another one I would put up there as well. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I agree. I think I was telling Greg this. Because Greg obviously got the game before all of us did. I'm more important than everyone.

We got it a few days later. They got my scraps. And I don't think anybody had started it up, but I was, I had maybe for the first night played like the first three hours and I was just blown away. And I was talking. As soon as I got to work, I was like, he was like, God of War. I was like, God of War, dude. And that's literally all you said.

That was the whole conversation. Walked away with God to each other. I got on my car and I left and never be seen and we talked about it just how in the beginning of the game before it opens up to say hey go explore and do your thing in the leg of the nine you

yeah it does feel it does feel just so impeccably paced going from story to to conflict to more story to conflict and it never feels like I get this feeling a lot of open world games where you're sort of

let free and you sort of lose momentum in a way and I didn't feel that at all so hats off to whoever the fuck's idea that was the credit tour along there's someone in there everybody was involved in getting that to where it was

that initial concept was sort of the when your parents thought you how to ride a bike they're holding on to you and running along with you a little bit wobbly handlebars Right. If they let go too early, you're going to wobble and you're going to crash, right? And it is that trick of figuring out when is the perfect time to let go.

And we went back and forth. I had many people coming and saying, 45 minutes, we better be in the exploration. I was like, it's too early. And they're like, I find 60 minutes. I'm like, no. I'm like, we need to set everything up. You need to care about all these sort of characters beforehand. You need to establish everything.

And then you need to get to the point where you think, oh, well, this is all the game is. Yep. That is the magic point. The same thing with Balder is that the trick doesn't work if you immediately show Boulder again. Like we had a lot of feedback during the place that's to say like, oh, the, you know, the main villain disappears. And I don't hear from him for a while.

That was the point. He wasn't supposed to be the main villain. There is no main villain. He is simply another person in this world who has a tragic story that intersects, right? And it is a fantastic story of mistaken identity, him showing up at your house and being as vague as he is being, right, because he's just so certain, is you thinking, all right, Kratos is all about me, right? Everything's all about me, but the reality is, has nothing to do with him, right? And you look at the rest of the world as a whole, and you're like,

wow, this, it really doesn't, right? He's, he is small in this world. He is not the focal point. He is not the thing that everybody's searching of. His actions create attention to him. So he and his son become a focal point. But, yeah, that, that beginning was hard earned, I think, for us that we really had to go back and forth a lot. It works so well. And it's even the reveal I feel. So like for me, I went and played the two and a half hours

down at Sony Santa Monica, right? Awesome stuff. Really enjoyed it come back to everybody how amazing it is. But I always thought it was an interesting place to cut when we cut because it cuts right when we come back with like the mystical warthog back to the witch's tree.

Charlie. And I remember. So you had got to the fight already? You'd gone to the balder fight? Oh yeah. Oh, cool. Okay, okay. But I got through all of that.

And then when I played, I played through all of it again at home, when you leave the trees, when they're like, all right, here's the compass. And I was like, oh, and I texted a ROM, you know, our PR guy. And I was just like, hey, I'm really, still awesome. Now I see why you cut where you cut, because you didn't want me to know that. And then playing further, and when you get to Lake of the Nine, and then a little bit further when it's like, all right, cool. Now it's really open. Yep. Now it really is go do what you want.

And I texted me again. I'm like, I was wrong to even say that was what you were hiding. Like, it's just, you gave the breadcrumb of this. cool and then to go there and then finally blow it up even longer out further out to be like this is what everything is like wow I did not expect this born in paranoia as well like that wasn't the plan the plan was to stop at the serpent reveal and it always felt weird to me I didn't know why but I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach constantly like am I doing the right thing and I'm like no I got to trust it this is the the idea and I think it was probably two weeks before the preview

event that I was like just came to the office I said no we can't do it we have to we have to cut earlier you know we have and we don't have a way to do it that was the problem is that so much of this game was right at the very end getting everything done we did not have the bandwidth to actually create a demo stop so it was basically like all right well the cinematic is so long that we're able to kind of say all right well we can always stop people we can see the cinematic starts and then like go over to him and tap them on the shoulders simply because we didn't have the bandwidth for any program is to put in an actual demo stops. And I kind of just ruffled some feathers and went in and it's like, this is what you got to do? And everyone's like, well, wait a minute. We're planning

on doing this. We got to show people more of the game. They need to see this bigger. I'm like, no, no, no, this is the surprise. This is a surprise that we want people to have when they're actually reviewing it to go, oh my God, right? That this is, I didn't realize it was going to open up like this. And after passionately pleading to several people and everybody kind of going like, no, I think this is right. Yeah, I get it. I get it. It makes sense. I had to then figure out how are we going to do it? And Jee Troff, one of the lead gameplay engineer, had figured out the idea that,

all right, what we're going to do is just introduce a crash. So when it says the demo's over, it actually, he just introduced a crash specifically at that point. So it's like the most ghetto version of like a demo ending ever. It's awesome. But it's still, like,

that is, I think the testament of like one, trusting your instincts and being open even at the last second to change something. Yeah. That, I think, is the hallmark of what we do, but also, you know, like our homies over at Noddy Dog, man. Those guys are, they are absolutely.

Oh, no, they're good. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. They're absolutely wonderful. Look, these guys are willing to throw out things at the last second. They're willing to go reexamine something right at the final bell. And it's inspirational for me when I hear some of the stories of what they've done to make those calls to kind of go like, all right, it gives me a little bit more confidence to say, like, I need to trust this.

I need to trust it even though if everybody, all 300 people, People are looking at you going, you're an idiot, don't do this. Like, if it feels like the right thing to do, you got to trust it. And then if it fails, at least it's your fault, right? As opposed to, oh, man, I wish I would have done this, you know? Yeah. Have you or other people on the team had conversations or felt offended by the reaction to God to War PS4?

Because I feel a lot of it. A lot of it is people like me of like, hey, Cratos always sucked as a character. I was never into it because this, that, or the other. This game is awesome. And I'll just keep throwing the heat of myself. Of me being like, I look at this game the same way I looked at Horizon last year, where, man, I've known the gorilla folks forever. I've covered PlayStation for more than a decade now. And I've known Herman forever.

And it's always broken my heart that these awesome people didn't get the love, the limelight, all this, like, attention in the great scores. And then Horizon came in, suddenly it was like, whoa, look at this. These gorilla guys had it. They had stuff for years. I feel like there's something here with that too where you guys, Sony Santa Monica, have definitely stepped up. I feel a level in terms of the way people think

of your studio now, and the same way people thought of guerrilla and the same way people thought of Noddy Dog with Uncharted 2 when that really came around. I don't think, no, not offended, but like I think we have a fairly good sense of self to understand where we were. You know, I mean, I always compare it to the idea that we, you know, our early games were in our car,

college years, you know, the idea of we're taking on the industry, you want to make the best thing. And I fault myself for not being, I think at that place in my career to look deeper into something, to actually see the forest or the trees. Like I, I know that everything seems to happen at the time it's supposed to happen, right? But I look at it as like Janusz Kaminsky. He is a director of photography whose first film was cool as ice. starring vanilla ice. Sure. Yeah, of course.

He also then went on to DP Schindler's List and won an Academy Award. So I feel like we all in our journey. We all have our cool as ice. We all have our cool as ice. And I don't necessarily think our early games were cool as ice. I think they were more of our beginnings, right? I think my cool's eyes is working here are kind of funny.

You're eventually amazing. We're going to be amazing. I thought your cool as ice was being a football player earlier. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Right. So, yeah, I think that for us, our past defines who we are. And we are infinitely proud of it. I don't think any of us would go back and put flashlights in the soldier's hands or anything like that. But at the same time, I don't think any of us would go back and make the same game, right?

They exist. They're there. And if you love those, you can go back and continue to play those. But as we move forward, we are influenced by the journey that we're on in life. I love how this game kind of addresses all that via the story. I'm gonna especially think that there's the moment of this game when you get the Blades. And I love... Hello, old friends. I love... Oh, my God.

And I've never cared for any of the God of War games. I played a little bit of part one, and I didn't even try part two or three, just because they didn't appeal to me. During those days, like, I didn't have a lot of money to buy video games. It was like metal gear for me, middle gear. That's like really all I played. That's also a good game, though. Sure, yeah.

But, yes, to go along with this Blades moment, like... For someone who has no pass with it, I was suddenly like, oh my God, Kratos, the blades are back. Yeah, totally. You made it all, like, contextualized it in a way that it, like, it all mattered even if it didn't before to us. And I love how long that moment took. Like, I love the build up to get them. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you for saying that.

Because it's the moment where you're like, oh, they're going there. And I was telling Greg about this. Like, I loved that, I mean, it felt like it was 15 minutes of, and it did that thing where you couldn't sprint. And whenever you can't sprint, you know. No shit's about to get real. And like when you get on the boat and you go and you start seeing all the the different characters and hear the voices and stuff, I was I had a moment where I'm like are they just teasing and we're not going to get it? And even that I would have been satisfied with. Really?

Yeah, because I feel like it's the idea of it, but like I loved him not needing him. But then the moment he got him, I'm like, oh my God. This is so light. It's the exact same thing. I echo everything they're saying. And it was that thing of I, you know, it was basically media blackout outside of the trailer. I'd see at the trade shows where we'd have to talk about it or whatever, you know, going down to play it.

So as entering in with as little information as I had because I already knew what I saw, I already liked what I saw. I never stopped to dream and think. You know what I mean? I was very much like, oh, I'm going to fight Odin and I'm going to fight Thor. But I never, I was like, oh, that's the weapon. They're distancing themselves from that.

I love even playing it when there's callbacks to it and there's, you know, Kratos is wrestling with what to say or what to do and all these different things and making references that obviously talk about his past or make him think about his past. it was like, cool, I never anticipated that happening. And maybe that's stupid and maybe every, you know, hardcore god of war fan was like, we clearly are going to get the blades again.

But when it finally happens, thanks to the ESRB, some people already knew. Yeah, see. And so like when he starts, oh, really? Yeah. Wrestling with the trophy list too and all these other different. Yeah, the trophy lands. Yeah. But when he got there, like for me, side and scene and he's like, I know of one weapon that can,

and it was like, oh, wait, really? And then, yeah, he's like wrestling with it. And then him getting on. And then again, like, you know, Athena, who, this is the first time I'm talking about Athena, like in a, what, a positive light that's talking about it. Usually I was like, Athena, Calliope. You know, it's just like, that's all when I'm making fun of Cratos. But for her to pop up and he'd be like, get out of my head and like, da-da-da-and-you're a monster. He's like, I know.

And like to go and unwrap them and put them on. And then the, all of that, the powerfulness of him wrestling with it to then be mixed with us having it and having like, holy shit, this game plays completely differently now. To go from the axe, which was very methodical, very, I'm going to hang back and engage you this way to be like, I'm here to fuck shit up now. And I shouldn't have assumed that it was going to be half-assed. Like, I see the blades and I'm like, oh, we're going to get this weapon for the final few fights.

And it's like, oh, they have their own upgradable skill tree. This is, fuck, Jesus Christ. And I thought like the game was so well designed with each weapon in mind for like the big chunks of the game that you had. Because like, once I got the blades, I stuck to the blades. I feel like the game really led me in a way to be like, all right, use the axe for this amount of time,

use the blades for this amount of time, and then for the final third, mix between the two when you want. I'm like, God, this is so dead. It's depending on the enemies, right? Like the ice to go back. Some enemies, I mean, Boulder also switches between the ice and fire force you to kind of do this.

But yeah, there's, you know, the comet team, the engineering team, the animation team, the sound team, like none of those creators are even remotely half-ass, like no matter how much I would be like, we need to get some of this done. they are perfectionists. They are the sort of inspiration, I think, throughout the day for me to try to be better at what I do.

Right. So it's amazing. But it was scary as hell because the blaze weren't done until like the last year. So we're talking three and a half years of development on the axe. And I'm just like, guys, we got to get to work. That's more of the thought that I had in, like, in terms of just game development cycles and like knowing that, fuck, like how well implemented are these blades actually going to be? And then seeing them and just this fucking game, man.

Earlier earlier you were talking about how in the other God of War games, it's like no weapon would compare to the blades. With the Leviathan axe, it's like, that thing is, might be the best weapon I've ever used in a video game. Like, it's so fun to use, no matter how many times I threw the thing, it's still felt satisfying. And like, it's all the things combined.

It's the sound design of it coming back to you. It's the controllers vibrations. Like, dude, every time it comes gunk and like it, I feel my hand jerked back with it. That's how good it felt the throw, grab. And I feel that the decision to have the triangle button be the return, and it wasn't like a boomerang automatic thing. It gave it such agency.

Like you had control over these moments happening. I actually went back and forth with them a lot on this, because their first instinct was the button recall. And then they were starting to want to do say, oh, nobody wants to hit the button to recall. And I'm like, are you kidding? This is the coolest part of this. I feel like I'm way more in control.

I can make choices. that are completely fluid and completely sort of non-deterministic, right? And they're like, oh, no, people really like the whole automatic boomerang thing. So we went back and forth, and it did become a point where I just had to say, like, I don't care. We are doing the triangle button. We are not changing it. And I think eventually then people start to see, oh, no, we can do even more. The puzzles sort of fit in with that as well.

The forcing function basically made them go like, oh, okay, now I will go even further on this one. And part of it is that perfectionist of, like, that was their first instinct. So they're like, certainly it can't be right because we did triangle button right away. That was our first prototype had the triangle button. So clearly that's wrong. We have to change it, right?

No, no, no, no. You hit on something amazing. So part of, I think my job also is that when we find something good is to just keep people from noodling with it in certain ways. And it's like, make this better, but don't change that part.

That part is amazing, right? And it just took years for us to get to the point of going, oh, no, I get it, right? Getting the right sound design and the right visual effects in and the animations just to kind of match.

Because, you know, initially you tried to prototype something, it doesn't look that great. And you have to kind of squint your eyes and go like, oh, okay, this is going to be great. For me, it's what the old God of War games, which were great in combat. And I always applaud them for that. But I never, this is what I always felt like they, for certain players, that's what it was. Where for me, every button press, everything I'm doing is choreographed. And I know what I'm about to do rather than a god of war where it was like, just, you know, the old God of Wars, the trilogy, jumping up and spinning around and doing whatever.

Here it was a very defined choice of throw the axe that way, break out the blades, kill this, go back hand to hand. Now I'm going to smash them this way. All right, cool. Ooh, I just unlocked this new ability that I've powered up to, you know, throw ice along the ground and have that spike up. I want to use that here. Like going through to that my new detail where it was, you know. Because more methodical. Exactly.

You're older and you're smarter. And so many people talk about me and Kratos, exactly. Yeah. Honestly, that is a little bit of that. Well, so many games try to do that where they're like, oh, play your way. and we give you all this stuff. And it just turns out to be like, all right, cool. I've found the two skills I like and that's what I use.

Whereas this game was about experimenting, changing, doing different things. You know, having a Traus go from, I'm not going to put any of my upgradables into him. He just sits there and like yells, which is good, but I don't need him for anything. But then when it started unlocking his tree and it was like, oh, he can spawn like a whole bunch of wolves to attack. Those wolves are so clutch. Oh, okay. Then, yeah, I'm going to do that. And I can make his arrows cost more days.

I also loved, like, the being able to play how you want. It goes all the way just the options. I really appreciate the ability to. change your controls because that's something that I wish every game did. And I feel like this game does very well. And I did change them. I ended up changing the shoulder buttons to be... Classic.

Not classic. I didn't go classic, but I flipped them so that heavy was on R1 and then R2 was more hack and slashy. And I switched the circle and X just because it dodging with circle felt more natural to me. But then also the difficulty level. Being able to... Maybe it was that. But being able to switch whenever I wanted with the difficulty was huge because I accidentally

was playing on hard in the beginning. I was having a real tough time with some of the bigger fights. And I was like, oh, man, I was talking to Greg. I'm like, this is hard. You know, I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, oh, man. And then, but then I looked and I was like, I'm going to go to easy and see how it is. And I realized I was on hard.

So I went to normal. But then as I started unlocking more skills, I pushed back up to hard. And I played majority of the game on hard. And it was awesome. Because it's like, I feel like the combat is so methodical and it is so in your control that I was like, I want to, I want to do this. You beat. I did be cup head, dude. I did be cup head.

But then there was fights towards the end. I'm like, I'm just going normal just because I want to get this beat. Yeah, if I made... But I love that I could switch back and forth. Do you have a cheat code where I could beat the Valkyries? I was going to interject, fuck these Valkyrie fights. God, I'm like, I'm such a badass. I'm so great in this game.

And then every time a Valkyriek kicks my teeth and I'm like, God, fucking deep. The point of the Valkyries was that sense of we would let you get there early and we let them whoop your ass, right? Yeah. There is a game I played a while ago, you had seven. And right when you come out of the first town in that game, there's this little, like, branching path to this gigantic brontosaurus-looking creature, right? It hits you once, so you have like 120 health, and it takes off like 1,180 health, right?

Like, I want to hit, you're like, oh, cool, that's awesome. Like, immediately I'm presented with something that lets me know I have a long way ahead of me. And the Valkyries were that concept of even when you finish the game and you're starting to do a lot of stuff exploring the world, you really have to be on point, right? Like, these are the hardest of the hard. and some of our most devious comment designers put that together.

Yeah, I doubled back to them after beating and I was like, all here we go. I was like, well, no, I'll come back to you. And I'm just doing

all the mist. Just I'm like, get every chest, get every portal, then I'll worry about it. It requires you to be like fully upgrading rage, getting resurrection stones

using the, the perfect sort of load out armor for that character. That's what I've been going up against them, right, and getting, then I'm coming back like,

what are they using? Go in, change all my stones in there to make sure I need, you know, flame resistance. I need this kind of attack. I killed the one in Alphi, and I was just like,

I almost do my controller at the wall. After you beat it? No, I mean, after like the seven or eight times in it, like, the fucking jump up in the air, like, oh, shit, I didn't dodge it. I'm like, I'm not. You asshole. We haven't even really been asking. We just been, like, gushing.

We're all over it. We're all part of it. Don't worry about it. I mean, what do you want to know? I mean, there's, I forget. At the party, did I talk to you about the thing that happens when you beat the final Valkyrie? Yes. Okay, cool.

That's a good one, too. That's a good one. What are you talking about? Huh? Do you want to mention it? Sure, because it's a spoiler cast. Tim's never going to get there. This is way harder than Cuphead.

He can't do this. Sure. So Freya, huh? Yeah. She's the ultimate Valkyrie. She is in the myth, too. Yeah. She is the sort of queen of the Valkyries, the shield maiden.

And it's interesting to see that as you go through everything, all these characters have deeper connections. Yeah. deeper sort of roots in everything that's happening. And sometimes you're expecting and sometimes you're like, oh, that's interesting, right? But it's all continuing to be set up. And it's like, Freya's one of my favorite characters.

Because we've set up this origin story, this origin story that has both sort of tragedy and then, you know, kind of getting knocked down and this feeling of like there is a mountain that is going to be ascended by her. And it's like, you can just sort of feel, what is that next thing going to be? And it's like, what I love is that I think everybody's going to interpret a different way of where they think it's going to go.

Right. That final speech, Danielle Basudi, who did the sort of performance of Freya, just utterly nailed that last speech to Cratus and Atraeus and set the stage for something. I think that's going to be wonderful. Was there anything, some of this may be going into territory that you don't want to talk about because you might be saving stuff. But was there anything that you thought, fuck, I really wish we. we could fit this in, aside from like the UI sort of in-game UI stuff. There was a bunch of stuff that I had to cut in the second and third year that we started ending up realizing it was maybe a little too big, right?

Like people are like, this is ridiculous, the game's too big. I'm like, come on, it's like 10 hours. Don't worry about it. And then I just, there was a point for a year that I was in scoping meetings every week, right? And that was just me feeling and not correctly. feeling this way. The producers are utterly amazing on this project, but I would always feel sort of embattled. Like I was, it was like me versus the world, right? And that's just my weird conspiracy theory, fear brain speaking. Everyone was looking out for the betterment of the game,

right? But I was always like, no, no, no, my toys, my toys, don't take my toys. But I think everything we did get rid of was for the better, even though it was wonderful. There's some amazing level designs that we just could not realize. Muspelheim was, you know, two-thirds larger than it was. That's a one-third level that we ended up with, simply because, hey, we ran out of time and we're like, all right, you know what, we can still make this. This still works. Was it going to be the same idea of the same thing? It was just a much bigger of okay. It was just huge. And the time it took to get up there was amazing. And it was, it felt like this sort of epic journey in and of itself. But it also was fairly unrealistic for us to get

done in the time frame that we had. So we made smart calls that were at the time feeling hard, but like I said, they felt, you know, everything's sort of happened for a reason. Cool. But from a story perspective, from a sort of mechanics perspective, and just the overall feel of the game, this is the first thing I have ever worked on where I feel like it is done, right? And that's weird because I know a lot of people say on the creative side, like nothing's ever done. You just sort of get forced to put it out. And I do feel like a lot of other projects I've had that where it's like, nah, I wish I could have had another year on it. Not only from a health

perspective that I don't wish I had another year on this, but I think from just the feeling of satisfaction, like I played through this game so many times. And I've never made something where at the end, I felt satisfied, right? That I felt like, oh, this is good. Like, I'm not sure if anybody else is going to like it, but like, I feel good about this. I feel like we got like the initial vision, right? The first PowerPoint I presented four weeks after coming back to Santa Monica in August of 2017, right? Which was like, you know, here is the core tenants of this. And I look back on it. I actually did a presentation to the team right before we were done that basically I pretended as if I was giving that pitch four weeks in. So I just stood up in front of the team. I had no

idea what I was doing. And I just started saying, you know, hey, thanks, Schu, Scott, for coming. I'm going to give you an update on the God of War game, you know. So here's our plan for the next few years, right? Yeah. A few years because I really did think it was going to be a couple of years. Yeah. We'll get it done in two years. No problem.

And it was amazing when you're really looking at you go like, wow, what we set out to do, we did, right? We sort of stuck to our guns. We fought hard and we worked our guts out. And I feel like we reached a point where every one of us was proud of the thing that we did. And I kept saying to people, that's what I want. Regardless of the response out with the people, It would be amazing that every one of us is proud.

Like, I want to tell my son about this. I'm proud to tell my wife what I did. I'm proud to show her what I did. And I've worked on some pretty crap games in the past. And not the God of War games, but like, you know, backyard wrestling. I'm looking at you kid. I don't know. Yeah, right.

I'm talking robots. And again, everybody worked their ass off on those games. They're not, sure. You know, they're not for lack of people trying. They're just, you know, try to make a game in six months. Like, not exactly the easiest thing in the world. But now I'm to a point, like this one. I don't know. I don't know if I can ever repeat it.

I'm so happy that you recorded your reaction to the reviews. It's videos like that. Those just like wholesome gifts, all that stuff. I love. I love that so much. And like seeing your reaction to it, it's so genuine that it like, it's just, it's so heartwarming. And it's like, I love that within three seconds, you see your eyes go from like, oh, thank God to, oh, really? To fuck yeah. It's so great. I didn't expect that reaction.

Like, I did it simply because I was like, I love reaction videos. I sort of consume them obsessively now, thanks to E3, 2016. So I was like, oh, I should try that, right? And I mentioned to something, I'm like, oh, I might try that when I read the reviews. And I'm like, oh, you should totally do it, do it. I'm like, all right, cool. And I have this ritual where anytime anything comes out that reviews are there, I am sequestered.

I go away from everybody, you know, have a little whiskey and just sit and consume what it is, whether good or bad, I sort of take it all in. And you know, I'm in a hotel in Sydney. By myself, I just had an awesome day at Evely Station where we were casting axes and blacksmithing and I'm carrying around

1100 C crucibles of brass and stuff like that. Just imagining I'm the asshole who drops it and, you know, burns the guy who's a blacksmith. And thankfully, no, I was not that guy, but I was afraid that I was. And, you know, it was Lucy O'Brien who burns someone.

And, you know, I got back and just did it thinking, oh, whatever, I'll probably never use this. Yeah. And definitely, that thing was like 15 minutes long and most of it was just me, like not being able to collect myself. But it was awesome. I think it's cool. Like, it's awesome that people are responding positively. Right. I really, I really did show this because I wanted my son to see that it's okay to show emotion, to be vulnerable.

Right. I think that's an awesome lesson. for him. I think there's a part that I wasn't really seeing until recently that I think part of it was for my wife, that she sees me as somebody who doesn't show emotions. I try to be the calm person in the chaos. And I think that's bad. And I think maybe a part of it is an apology to her that I don't, I don't open up enough. Like she is, she truly is sort of the North Star for me. And I would never make get through any of this without her. And I think, unfortunately, my son hasn't even seen it because he's in kind of a sad place now. It's interesting. He's, he loves bugs. He loves salamanders,

but he's afraid of flies. And the weather is changing in Sweden right now, so there's a lot of flies. And it's just emotionally very challenging for him to see flies. It's the weirdest thing, right? Just in conflict, yeah. Right. So that conflict is basically saying, she's like, I don't know if I want to show him because I don't know if they'll understand that it's a happy thing. I haven't explained it.

And I said, that's all right, because I'd like to watch with them. I'd like to talk about it. And they're thankfully coming back in May. I'm so excited. How long have they been gone? Since January.

I've seen them for three days over the last four months, and it's been exceptionally trying. You know, I kept trying to tell her that, no, you know what I'm going to be working a lot of this. Totally fine. You guys are better off there,

but there's a piece of me that's missing. Sure. It's been missing for months. Totally. And it was an, amazing thing after the Norway event to see them for three days in Sweden, but it was also super sad, right? Because... The clock's ticking. I know I'm gonna go on it's... Clock's ticking and like the day before I had to fly out. I had to leave it really early in the

morning next day and Hilo finally understood that daddy was going away. And he just sort of buried his head and my wife's Jess and then kind of got up and went into the other room and closed the door. And it broke my heart. Like I was just like, oh, what's going on? She's like, yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't like to be sad in front of us anymore. And I was like, oh, I'll go talk to and I open the door, he's like, go away. I was like, oh, man. Boy. There's a lot you can learn from this game called God, O'R.

It is, yeah. It's like, I really feel like, as creators, we do have a tiny bit of a responsibility to connect to people and perhaps share something, perhaps help elevate people just a little bit. And I think, I've never done that in anything I've previously done. You've definitely done that here.

Thank you. I mean, I'm glad that people are responding positively. No, I think not only in the message of the game, the lessons learned there of seeing Cratos mature, seeing Cretus deal with emotions and how to be a father and all these different struggles that I think he comes out, obviously, better on the end. Like, even, like, you know,

because that was my fear of playing the game is that it would always be the, you know, him not touching the boy. Like, oh, come on. It's all about the fan. We address it so early on and continue to address it, continue to see him evolve change in the way he interacts with him. But then to the reaction video,

whether you knew, it or not, I think that's so important to what it is to be a creator in 2018 and what it is to be a video game developer in 2018 in the way that I think it's been getting better for a while, but more and more, and thanks to videos like this, people are understanding that there are people behind the games. You know what I mean? People are starting to understand the sacrifices that people make to make these projects and games. And for a while, I think it was something that didn't get represented really well in the media because it's hard to write that when you're reviewing a game. that we weren't doing personality interviews

for the longest time. But you see that now and then to see, you know, I know Katako put a, or maybe it was a game spot, maybe both collected all the other studios congratulating you,

right? On how well got a door. And it's like, there's another great thing. See, it's all, it's not a console war. It's not this.

These are human beings who all hang out and go to dice and see each other in between their projects and make something awesome. We have an amazing community. I mean,

I'm so privileged, I think, to be part of making games with the people who make games now. Yeah. Because we all intensely, intensely love the thing we do. And it's not like, oh, we just love telling stories.

No, we love making games. We understand that our field is different from TV and movies. And that we are just, I think, truly getting our sea legs to understand the power that we have and the connections that we can make to people. And it is amazing to see other studios, you know, be able to say, hey, great job. Yeah. Right? because I mean, I'm the giant fan of all of these people.

So every time they make a game, I am in awe, right? I completely fanboy out and all of these amazing creators, right? Because I'm part of this community, right? I feel very connected to everybody. So it's amazing that we can perhaps get back to a little bit of what, you know, almost like what GDC used to be, right? I keep saying this. Like, GDC used to be that, like, get together and go, how did you do that?

Yeah. Oh, that was amazing. How did you do that? It's like I brought the game over to show Neil just because I'm super in admiration of him and everything they do over it, Noddy Dog. And it was unexpected, but also expected of, like, we went into their screening room, and a bunch of people from the team came in and they're like, how did you do that? What were you doing on the text ramps there?

We did you know about this one? And it was like, they were asking you a bunch of stuff that I had no clue about. You're like, no, I signed it to you and they just make it out. And I was like, I really wanted to brought some other people here, because that is what's so awesome, is that we look at each other's work and we go, how did you do that? What were you doing there? What were you thinking, right? And I think, to me, that's how we make great things, is that we,

challenge each other, we inspire each other, and we also elevate and help and lift each other up, right? That we are not in competition, right? Perhaps there is the friendly internal competition. We all want to be the best, but honestly, for me, I am just so enamored with ever being considered a colleague of any of these people. It's amazing, right? Just answer every question with a volumetric fog. Volumetric fog. That's how you got to say, yeah. Or subsurface scattering. For the longest time on the the project, everybody knew I had no clue what subservice scattering was. Do you know what subsurve scattering is? It's when you could see through

the ear, like when light is behind it or through different skin. Check out the big brain on Brad over here. He used to be a developer. Former game developer. He made the slated DC universe I had to have that explain to me multiple times. Just like the Twitch thing, right?

I am a little bit, you know, thick. I don't connect to a lot of stuff now because I'm so heads down working on the game, but we were in the car and a ROM showed me the screenshot of Twitch saying, you know, hey look, Godd Wars on Twitch number one. I'm like, oh, cool, nice. Didn't really get it.

What the fuck does that mean? Didn't really equate to me, but I was like, yeah, I'm not totally pretend. Like, half my job is just pretending I know what I'm talking about. Then I get back to the studio and I'm walking past a bunch of people and they're like, hey, man, how about that Twitch thing? I was like, yeah, right on. And then Eric's like, yeah, the Twitch thing is cool. Eric Williams just looks at me.

He knows me better than so many other people knows me. And he sees the vacant expression in my eye when I say like, yeah, that's cool. he's like, you don't get it, do you? And like, all right, no one else is right. Yeah, I don't get it. Can you explain to me? He had to explain it to me. Close the door, Eric.

Yeah. You're breaking it down. And he was just like, look, this is what's up. Like, it's all multiplayer games. Like, take a look at all these things here. Like, for a single player game. In an age of the death of single player games, it is the number one thing streamed.

Even if it's only for one or two days, that's like, take that, you know? Like, I think it is proof positive that, you know, you make something that you care about. You make something that people resonate with. And it doesn't matter. are great multiplayer games, great single player games, great cooperative games. They are consumed by people who love games. But clearly I have no idea what Twitch is all about. So I need to learn more.

Twitch.com. Do you have Amazon Prime by chance? I do. If you have Amazon Prime, you have Twitch Prime, you get to give away a free 30-day subscription. We'd love to have it at kind of funny games. That's totally just organically blended into the episode. I'll put it in incognier mode. You can log into Amazon.

I'll give your subscription to us. That's so fantastic. Always be pitching. I want to get through some of the reader stuff. We'll go faster in a little bit. I'm going to end at 10.30 if that works for everybody. I think you said we had us for two hours, right? Perfect.

All right, great. My question for you is a hard one, kind of ambiguous, but stick with me. I like these. What is next? You've been talking about, you know, you went too far. You're going to do the next game kind of thing. Is that the plan? Do you have, in your head, is this now a trilogy?

Is it as long as it takes? My one request is, and I think we're on probably in the same page, Don't do DLC? That was, yeah, I don't have any DLZ plans. Okay, good. Because I wanted everything. Like, I didn't want a DLC to feel like, oh, well, I'll save this for DLC. I was like, no, I didn't save anything.

We didn't leave anything on the field, man. We put it all in there. I struggled with this, I think on a Games Daily talking to either Andrew or Jared about it, of this question came in of like, do you think they'll be DLC? And I'm like, I hope not. And then I was like, well, it's not because I don't like the game. It's that, you know, at IGM we always say, you know, a 10 out of 10 doesn't mean it's perfect.

It means it's a masterpiece. I truly believe this is a perfect game and I think it is so complete and so well done and the fact that I am now I don't know 10, 15 hours into it post credits post story where I'm and I, it's always still clung behind my eyes that I just want to go play it.

Like I don't, I think there's so much in there that it's a perfect game that there's nothing more you could add on or do or unlock any other realms for that. I don't want that. I'd rather see your story continue the other way and let this exist as it is. The things that you couldn't access, are part of a larger plan.

Okay. Right? That for me, we had mapped out really a good understanding of where we want to go. That doesn't mean we sort of have a script for the second game done or anything like that. Oh, sure, sure. But, you know, I think the idea of supporting the game a little bit,

you know, a lot of people been saying new game plus, like something I wanted a while ago, but as everything was coming together, it was like certain things just didn't make the cut. And part of what we built in this one was that Castlevania, you flip into the castle in the middle, right? It felt like while the core story's done,

I didn't want a differentiation between the core story and everything that you could do in the world. It had to feel just as connected, just as much attention paid to it, so that when you got to that point, you're like, okay, it's the end of the game, wait. No, it's not the end of the game, right? It is that feeling I had when I first played symphony at the night

and I was like, well, what? I loved how that was done, because I feel like there's, you know, especially in the age of Marvel movies and stuff, of post-credit scenes, and people kind of know what to expect from all of that. Biggest post credit scene ever.

And I love that though. And I feel like it's segues so nicely where you're playing through, you have this big final battle. And then when you go through and it calms down, you're doing that walkout, when the credits start rolling, but you're still playing. I was like,

this is such a brilliant decision because it feels like it's not actually ending. You just like the, you get the end credits so you know you're that thanks for playing thing. But then it's also like, so what do you want to go now? Like, oh, let's go do this. And there's like,

they're already giving you ideas of like where you should It's like, oh, you should go home or you can do this. And then you go home and do all that stuff. And that's Thor. I love that it wasn't the end screen of like, you can continue Commander Shepard's adventures. Congratulations. I'm beating God of war. There's still more stories to see here.

The funny part was that I was texting Greg about this. I had rolled credits. I don't know what date was. But then three days later, again, I'm not the type of person to ever jump back into a game. Just because when I'm done, I'm done. And it's like I want to move on something else. But I want to,

I enjoy the combat so much, whereas in a lot of games that have these phenomenal like cinematic experiences and stuff like that, I feel like I'm moving from cutscene to cutscene because I'm so invested in the story,

but I love the combat in this game so much and it's so addicting and it feels great that I wanted to keep on playing. So I'm playing like three days later after I beat it. And then I was like,

oh, I haven't gone home. And then I go home and I experience that. And I just text, agree, like, now I just rolled credits. And holy fuck, what a, what an awesome moment. And that's like, again, like this awesome Marvel sort of cutscene that... That was the experience that I wanted, was that sense that I didn't want to put a

marker on the map. I didn't want to force you. I wanted to mention it in a cinematic that, come, let's go home. And then if you choose, you have that moment of, oh, I haven't done this yet, right? Yeah. And then you get the surprise. Because I feel like it is only a little tease, but that little tease is so much more potent when it feels like you were the one who had the agency to go home as opposed to like,

oh, you're forcing me to go there. We had a little bit, I think people were like, oh, people aren't going to know to go home. So we really directed them to it. And there was a bit of a ho-hum response simply because they were like, oh, you forced me to go all the way back here. Right. And I was like, that's the magic of everything in this game is that we don't force you to do it. Give a little bit of information. If you choose to do this, you get that sense. I discovered this. Agency. Right. Yes. Agency and a feeling of ownership over the discovery. had so many moments in previous games that I've played throughout my life

that I felt like I was the only one who found this right and I know my my sort of logical brain said like clearly everybody else found this but you feel so much more invested when it's like no no no I'm the first foot here right and that's amazing right it's the modern day or the past equivalent of like

first post right yeah first right and then once you have that little fucking firestone that feels really good and sounds great when you hit the glass like just all All of that feels so great and the sound of it, like, I want to kind of do it on my own, you know. But then you find out that like, holy shit, there's all these doors that I never open.

Like, yeah, it's just so great, man. Yeah, Metrovania. Exactly. It's very, very cool. Exactly. Shout out to the head, man. Mimir, I was going to say. Character of the game.

Dude. So fucking. Such a good decision to have an extra. Me and Kevin were talking about how cool it is that, you know, for so long, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just like, great, now we can get exposition in a way that doesn't feel forced, but it's fun and like there can be more joking and like shit talking and. It feels like somebody's telling you the casual story of what happened between these gods the other day at a party. The amount of times, I, oh, there's where I'm going

and I'd row up and he's still talking. I'm like, well, we're just going to check. Yeah. This is too good of a story. I'm enjoying it too much. I'm so glad. Was there, I hope there wasn't. But was there ever a decision to add combat in the boat? Because I'm glad there's not. Oh my God. That is amazing that you should say that sir. Thank you. Everybody pay attention. Game Journals. No more on games journals, guys. Yeah, there was, combat was one of the things cut.

The boat was very controversial through the development of this project. A lot of people hated the boat. There was some loathing for the boat. And I initially wanted swimming, but, you know, it was 3D navigation of an AI partner when you're already dealing with the 2D navigation

of an AI partner. Just put a trace on a little pallet. Right. And it was basically just a bridge too far. Right. It was like there's no way we can do this. Technically, it's going to be difficult. We can do it.

It's not impossible, but it would mean that you're sacrificing someone else or something else. And I said, all right, fine. I'll give it up because in the boat we can connect more. We can have them go in there and we can tell stories and all this kind of stuff. So the idea of doing that was from the beginning, but we always wanted exploration narrative or narrative exploration combat. And combat was the third thing that eventually as we started to scope more stuff out, the combat became ejected from it.

It was like, no, I think this could be strong enough, but the boat didn't feel good for years. So everybody kept going, I'm looking at you, boat, this is terrible. Like, this is the one thing we don't need to do. Boat of war. But, you know, there's a lot of flying leaps you take, I think, at the beginning of a project that you just have to sort of, if you believe in it, you got to push through it,

even if everybody's doubting it. And then find those three or four people who are like, I'm going to make this thing sing, right? And I think that's the key to this team, is there's always something that somebody goes, you know what, I want to take that on. I want to be the one to realize this. I think I can make it amazing.

And it's that sort of tenacity that they fight through any of the uncertainty and the doubt and actually make something that is amazing. I agree with you. I'm glad that we didn't have comment on the vote just because I think it created that time to enjoy stories. And it didn't click for us until your sort of example happened in Playtest naturally,

where people were listening to a story and they arrived where they were, and they turned around and just started like circling and then doing that and they were like, does he not know how to dock the boat? Did the button not come up? Everyone's getting really worried. Like, oh, man, they get broke and it broke.

And then all of a sudden he goes over and docks. We're like, what was that? We asked him. He said, no, no, no. He was just telling a cool story. So I wanted to wait. And I was like, yeah. All right.

Gotcha. Yeah. And I'll get back to that later. Yeah. Oh, that's a good accent there. Thanks, man. Appreciate it, Greg. Because I feel like at any moment,

the boats could have felt like the elevators of Mass Effect one. where it is just like this chore that you're doing but you made it important and you made me so many times not do the next thing because again I wanted to hear what was going on so I just feel like everything was executed so goddamn well

it's impressive that this game even works like I believe it's beautiful too like I got a beautiful TV and man this is my new standard for HDR where it's just like you need to come over and see it it's going to convince you to go I mean, when we played at the thing, it was, yeah.

It's just so nuts to see the differences between light and dark. Yeah. So what's really funny is, I don't know if this was mentioned the first time you're here, but our community manager, Joey Noelle, the person who introduced her to Kind of Funnies content is an environment artist, Galen. And he worked on the game. So that was a really cool connection. And the first time I met him was at E3.

and growing up in game art, like I went to school for game art and somebody that I idolized was Raff Grissetti. And I like, every day in class, we were looking at it. We were looking at his blog, and it's just like, how the fuck does he make it?

Yeah, he worked on Mass Effect 2 as well. Jesus, how did he make that? And like, he just posted something two days ago. Now you already have this thing. Like, the guy's a fucking, like, a genius at what he does or whatever. So it was a wizard. Yes, exactly. So it was really cool connecting with,

Galen talking about like, fuck, you work with because he walks up to me. He was like, oh, you work with Greg, how's that? I'm like, you work with Rath, how's that? It was a really cool moment and yeah, I thought that was like, disappointed. That's like some inside baseball kind of funny. You're braced while you cry. You're both geniuses. You know, I have

been called that. I haven't called. I want to get some questions in here. Final few minutes. It'd be as fast as you want to be. You know what I mean? Tin Man, 215. Remember if you want to be part of the show, follow kind of funny on Twitter.com slash kind of funny it says, was there any particular reason you made Cratos always call his son boy? But when there was trouble, he would call him by his name. This was a great game, by the way. Congrats on all the

success. P.S. is Cratos the world serpent? There have been fights on the Reddit about this. Oh, wow. Interesting theory. All right. First and foremost, boy was born first of me procrastinating and not coming up with Atreus's name. And then I had a hook that he was going to call him by his name for the first time at the end of the game. So the reveal of his name would be the Atreus, which is where when we started realizing the Loki thing, that's when we said, oh, we're reversing now, we're going back. So it wouldn't be, he calls him boy the whole time and then refers him that. And I was like, you know what, this is great because it makes us realize son is the sort of

moniker that I think is the personal connection. When he refers to him as my son, he takes, and not in the weird way of like ownership, but he takes ownership of the role of being his father. he acknowledges his son as being his son, I think, for the first time. And that was super important to have that moment click. And I think all the things that just sort of fell into place made that happen the right way that he needed to. Is Cretos the world serpent?

No. Because you've seen him in the same place at the same time. But you know, he got kicked through time or whatever. Remember the world serpent exists kind of all over the place. That's true. And then Cass, you know, Cassier says in the same thing. So as the serpent is Loki's, Atreus's son. That's in traditional myth.

That is the myth. Okay. Is he going to be born as Kratos dies? And indeed Kratos being sent back in time to help them stop the true ending of Ragnarok, explains the beard and the white and the red scales on the world serpent. All right. All right. That's a lot of stuff.

And most of it is like potentially... Spoilers, Nick. Spoilers for the future. No, Nick, didn't you hear Nick beat the stranger and put down his controller? And he was like, that's a great game. Big meet that stranger and he put down the God of the war He said that he said that he said that

Cause I can tell you that all these things are going to be answered In the future But you know we've set we've set a lot of things in motion with this game And we intend to sufficiently answer every one of these things Maybe it's Loki because Loki loves animals snakes Right you know oh he does love snakes yeah we learned that in Thor Ragrock By the way, you got to watch the movies.

I really have to watch it. Sony buy Thor Raggeron for this guy. Kenny wrote in to Twitter.com slash kind of funny vid and said, I'd like to hear about the Souls games influence on God of War. I'm a massive Souls fan, and Bloodborn has been in my favorite game of all time,

and I was psyched to see how much the Soul style combat is in God of War, not to mention the Perry system, even the level of challenge on hard mode. Is Corey a big Souls fan? And if so, which games in particular? I'm very little, so I'm a little Souls fan. I would say,

for me, personally, there is an influence on the soul series when I heard the story of Miyazaki sort of talking about the birth of these, right? That he loved D&D and he couldn't read English. So therefore, he would read the D&D books and sort of intuit from the images what the story was. And that kind of gave birth to this idea

that he would have a game that you had to work a little bit, right? That it wasn't on the surface level that everything was explained to you. You sort of had to work. I thought that was awesome. From a gameplay perspective, there's a little bit of that. I think Jason McDonald,

the lead combat designer on this game, is a huge fan of what he calls the game of the century Neo. And, you know, there are aspects of, you know, the combat system within several games, Bloodborn, Dark Souls, and Neo as well. And even Ninja Guidon and Onamusha,

you know, these are all influences from our past and influences of games we're playing now. So there are definitely touches of all of these games within some of the decision making that we have But at no point do we ever really look at something Let's just make that, right? It's more like how did I feel when I played that? How did I feel at this moment?

Why did I feel like that? What did they do? Oh, that's really interesting. Could we do something like that? It all kind of boils down to like how each individual player feels when they're doing something. That is the inspiration I think we pull mostly from. Good answer.

Et Rio. Is that how you pronounce that, Andy? Etrio. Etrio. Et trio. Says how much of the canceled sci-fi game was reworked into God of war? None. Yeah.

You know, not a disrespect to the sci-fi game, but it was just vastly different. There was a very different direction that they were going in. And what was worked in, I think, was the collective sort of creative energies of everybody who came over. Sure. Immediately after that and just kind of dove in headfirst on this project.

A red room writes in and says I think there's loads of awesome attention to small details in Goda 4. What are some of your favorite little things in the game? Mine of the way Cretos punches open chests and the short animation of Cretus slash Etraeus passing Mamiro's head back and forth as they get in and out of boats.

Okay, I love the passing the Memeer's head, but there's a funny story about the punching of the chest because throughout the project, I was trying to steer people away from some of our initial decision making, right? meaning decisions we would have made in the past. I wanted us to try to think differently just so that we could potentially find, discover a new way of something.

So it got to the point where, you know, when Atreus is carving in the sand, I didn't want him to stab the knife. I was like, I think we can come out with something better. It turned out that was the best thing, and I was just being a baby about it. And the punch chest, as it was here to forth, referred to as, I was saying, oh, man, like, I love this. It's really cool. But I feel like that's sort of the way we were.

would have looked at it before. Is there another way we can look at this? I'm Cretors and I'm angry. But it turned out that again, instinct's wrong on my part. Instincts right on the team's part to kind of keep pushing that one. So I liked it, but at the same time I was like, ah, maybe we, and it looked really good right away. That was the other thing is that

somebody had really gone overboard and done an amazing job the first pass. So it's harder to change it when it looks great, right? So I was like, all right, well, I guess we're going to look at it and go like, oh, there's no reason to change it. We won't maybe find that magical idea, but turns out, we found that magical idea. It was awesome. It was a great indicator of Cretus's character.

For me, the little touches are these moments with Cretus and Atreus. I mean, my favorite moment I think in the entire game of a little touch is when they're in the boat and they're having a conversation and Atraeus says something and Cretus goes, huh? And Atreus goes, did you just laugh? Yeah, I love that. I do not laugh, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So good, right? Those moments just felt so legitimately real and it's like in the early portions to have a bit of his armor breakdown, but then come right back up, lets you know that later, right, he's going to loosen up. So when he has the wine with his son, right? And that thing, that was added at the last minute. My son and I did that like the night before the shoot. And I was like, ooh, and so we're on the set,

and I'm like, guys, I want to add this, right? I got an idea. And at first they were like, that's a little corny. I was like, yeah, you know what? It is a little fucking corny. Fuck you. I'm in charge of fire. And at that point, I was fearful that, oh, man,

did I just screw that scene up. But it was cool because. it was taken from a legitimate moment that I had had with my son, so it's a great moment. Yeah, that and shout out to the one that, first one that cracked me up was when he rotates the thing out in the middle of the lake.

And Trace's like, that was really heavy. Did you hurt your back? No, I did not hurt that. Like that's such a weird, honest conversation with Cato. All those moments were cool too, where like, cratis would lift something super heavy and it was like, wait, what that's hell right? Even the beginning, right, of like when he comes out and like, why these people have been interested in us? We're nobody's. What happened

out here and that was like for me as the player like oh he doesn't know anything like we didn't even have to have it told to me at that point that yeah oh my god no you didn't know this at all and he's just dad i mean that's the thing it's like you don't have any experience with any other people dad being able to do these things he isn't questioning it in the beginning but as he starts to get further in he starts to wonder like even when he's talking to fray at that point he's like yeah dad's always been strong right it's just that very matter-of-fact thing yeah that he doesn't really fully get it and as the world gets bigger his understanding of things starts to come And he starts asking all these questions as we do when we're kids. Why, why, why, why? What's this all about? And I think that's just such a fun, organic development of this character.

A final question from a person who's definitely not me in the questions. Andy knows how to model and texture stuff. Can he make a pot or a vase in maybe Asgard? Because he knows how to use 3DS Max and Z brush and substance painter. It's definitely not me asking the question, Corey. Before you answer this fan, you can go look at Andy's Twitter. last night. You can even work Premiere Pro. So I don't know if it's really... Fucking bugs, dude. You want to bring on your team right now. You don't have to answer that. You could say yes. It's all good. It's fine. It's fine. Nick's assassin can get the final one.

What was the hardest part about making God a war? Wow. That's an open question there. All right. What was the hardest? What was the hardest part? All right, so... He's known for his open questions. Man, there are so many difficult challenges to making a game. of this scale. I think it is the length of time you have to stay alert, you know, four years of constantly

being on point, right, and constantly keeping an eye on every single aspect and that, I just felt like there was a year of time at the end that I could have easily just passed out and slept for a month, right? That I was very much. ready to be done. And there wasn't, even a point where we had said, like, maybe we're going to release in October. In fact, actually, it wasn't really us. Other people were just telling us,

you're going to release on October of 2017. And we're just like, you're going to, hey, we're like, that's crazy. Like, no, you could totally do it. And I just, dude, we're not, no. Right. Like, we'll tell you when we think we're going to be able to release. And we really didn't want anybody to know the release day

until we knew for sure, right? Like, that was one thing that I think was very good about this team was, you know, we're going to commit to a release day and we're going to make that. You're too good. It's like I love that you're just like, okay, we're not going to put a release date out until we know. We're going to make sure there's no microtransactions. We're going to do no DLC. It's all going to be their single player game. It's like, what? Why? I fear that you have ruined games for me for the rest of my life. Seriously. I honestly, I just remember so much of the joy I had when I started playing games, right? That sense of we would go to a local video store called President Video. right down the street from us, me and my friend Scott. Right? Yes, yeah. And we would rent, you know, an NES, or then when the Super Nintendo came out,

we would rent the Super Nintendo, we'd find a single game, and we'd play the hell out of that all weekend, right? And it, you know, we couldn't afford to buy games, but I think at the time had we been able to afford, we would buy that one game, and that one game would provide every single thing for us, right? We would have this amazing experience. We'd go talk to other people at school about it. We'd come back when we got new information,

and we try something else out, right? I still remember linked to the past and this memory of, holy crap, you can put a bomb against the wall and you find other stuff inside of there and then us just going and pouring over every aspect of it. To me, that was the amazing part of the community, was the community on the playground,

the community at school, the community of me and my friend passing the controller back and forth and just going through this. And it wasn't that it was any one type of game. It was just the joy of exploring, having an adventure and feeling like, wow, this is new, right? This is something that a movie can't provide us.

This is something that a TV show could not, although at the time TV was not as big as it is right now, but movies could not provide us. Sure. And I don't know. I continue to be thankful that some people still roll with us on this idea of, you know, we're going to give you everything. Like the orange box affected me deeply.

Sure. in the sense that they gave me more for 60 bucks than any game had ever given me. And I was like, this is awesome. And from that point on, I kept constantly telling people, like, I kind of want to have an orange box, right? And it isn't just a collection of games. It is what that means. It says, we love you here. Yeah.

Right? That you are the reason that I have a job, right? And that you're, you know, you're going to allow me to keep being a child for longer. And I thank you all for that because I am. incredibly thankful. I don't do something in which I just sit in the room and I'm unaffected or unconnected by anybody else. I am employed because people support the things that we do and I'm unbelievably indebted and humbled by it. Corey, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you for God of War. I'm pretty sure you've made my favorite video game of all time.

Seriously, that's amazing. That's awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. Of course, this is the kind of funny God of War spoiler cast. If you're not one of our subscribers already, please click that subscribe button, subscribe whatever podcast service you're listening to. Consider going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. As soon as we sign off, Corey's going to use his Twitch Prime for our Twitch.com

Why don't you? You got Amazon Prime, right? Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, it's been our pleasure to serve you.