Author: Misty Crow
"Thanks to the little black box for inviting me to write"
sequence
As one of the most iconic works of the PS platform, the God of War series has always been known for its epic stories, lively battles and ingenious level design, and the protagonist of the series, Kratos, has become a legend among players. How did the series come about? How did the image of Kui Ye come about? What happened in the 8-year-long gap after 3 generations? How did the rebooted series continue to saga? And listen to what I have to say for you.
Groundbreaking God of War I
"We don't want traditional Greek heroes who wear feathered helmets, short skirts and robes, and sandals with their feet. What we want is a chilling bastard who unleashes the dark side of his heart. ”
—David Jaffe, original producer of God of War
The beginning of everything
In 1999, Sony employee Allan Becker founded a studio next to Naughty Dog Studio, which moved to the suburbs of Santa Monica, California, and named it Santa Monica Studio. To prove the studio's development capabilities to Sony, they spent two years building their studio debut Kinetica and developing a PS2 development engine of their own.
Although the response of "Kinetica" was mediocre, it successfully proved to Sony the potential of the studio, and what is valuable is that the studio already has a game engine with excellent performance, and now they only lack a chance.
(Kinetica on PS2)
Among the developers of Kinetica is a designer named David Jaffe, who entered the game industry as a game tester as early as 1993, and in 1995 launched the first game work, Twisted Metal, which was widely praised by the media and players, and even entered the IGN ranking of "25 Best PS2 Games ever" list, ranking ninth, and the game was also released by Sony. Toward the end of kinetica' development, David presented studio boss Shannon Studstill with a mythologically based game concept code-named "Dark Odyssey.". Shannon took an interest in it and applied to Sony for more development resources after the development of Kinetica was completed.
Due to the success of "Chariot of Fire", Sony trusted David's ability, invested a lot of research and development funds, and gave David full leadership of the project development.
(David's masterpiece)
In the game industry at that time, Japanese manufacturers occupied half of the action-adventure genre, and even claimed that "Europeans and Americans can't do action games." The young and vigorous Santa Monica team could not tolerate this evil breath, and David quickly finalized the style of the new work - Greek mythology + action adventure with his rich film and game experience, especially Capcom's work "Ghost Warrior".
David briefly explained his ideas to the team, and immediately set off an uproar, for European and American players, it is simply impossible to do the Greek mythology that has seen the big ones since childhood, especially the art team, which is ready to show their skills.
There were few works in the game world at that time that adopted the Style of Greek mythology, and in order to seek inspiration, David led the team to watch a large number of film and television works and then select materials, but there were few fragments that met his inner expectations. Compared to the traditional Greek hero, he had in mind a more bloody and violent, dark and deep character that could inspire the player's primitive animalism.
(Early concept design of Kratos)
In order to make the team more intuitively understand their inner thoughts, David led the core team to spend several months making a simple demo, showing some of the game's scene style, fighting style and characters, although the appearance is very rough, but successfully let the team get a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg in David's mind. Although many of the content in the demo have been deleted and modified in the end, but that is the last word, we will leave it until the end of the paragraph to talk.
Another advantage of game Demo is that the works that can be played are obviously more motivated than dry dictation and text, especially for the young team of Santa Monica, rebellion and self are originally synonymous with them, and the frenzied atmosphere contained in God of War gradually penetrates and feeds back into the team's work, and every member is extremely excited.
(God of War Early Demo)
Except for the art team.
The birth of Kratos
Since Santa Monica was only two years old when god of war was made, the size and structure of the team is not yet mature, although I use "art team" in the text to refer to all the artists, but there is no such team within Santa Monica, and all the artists are fighting for themselves.
Charlie Wen is one of the brightest rising stars.
(Concept Master Beauty Charlie)
The creation of God of War is very different, David did not write the plot completely at the beginning, but first refined the elements of the game, and then gradually perfected the script during the production process. But this way was a disaster for Charlie, who had to create a character that had never been seen in the history of the game without a script, based on the keywords that David called "violent, cruel, and anti-social".
David's approach to this is very abstract – "Work with anger and see what happens." He told Charlie, who had no choice but to feel the stones to cross the river, and slowly sketched the character image with his artistic accomplishment and understanding of the word "rage".
In the beginning, Charlie sought out a large number of lone wolf hero images to get inspiration from them, often carrying a child or a wolf, which is a very classic art style. But David did not buy this, especially for the attitude to the armor, whenever the team added some armor to the character, David would feel "tasteless", gradually, the team understood that the "fury" in David's mouth may be related to the primitive animal nature of humans, and gradually removed all the armor decorations, although it was farther and farther away from the traditional Greek style, but it was getting closer and closer to David's fury.
In this way, a muscular, shirtless, bald head, and eyebrows of the anti-hero character gradually unveiled, and he is destined to become a well-known character in the history of the game.
The internal "war" that is full of smoke and smoke
Although Greek mythology was finalized as the main art style of God of War at an early stage, David did not want to create a world of myths and legends step by step, but to create himself on the basis of the original style while ensuring authenticity, and then get a "magic realism" style game world.
"We want to immerse players in our own world of Greek mythology, so that when they see a four-legged, three-headed creature, they will think it's a three-headed dog of hell, even if it's very different from the image in traditional Greek stories." That's what team artist Terry Smith defined in God of War's art style, and in order to achieve that, they had to drain all the features of the PS2.
"I'm definitely the one the program wants to kill the most because I'm constantly pushing them to the limits." Level art Ken Feldman said that although there is a legend of "PS2 unlimited function" circulating in the jianghu, it is still stretched in the face of the colorful world in David's mind, especially at the node where there is no major breakthrough in technology, the team has worked hard to balance the diversity of scenes and the expressiveness of the picture.
(Interior of Santa Monica Studio)
"We want to fight from time to time, and as time goes on, the anger value will accumulate more and more, and it will not be pleasing to anyone."" Tim Moss, the main programmer, said that in order to achieve the effect that David and the art team wanted, the program team continued to improve and perfect the Kinetica engine, thus presenting the feat of spanning dark and gloomy dungeons and sunny deserts in God of War, which stunned the players at the time.
While the art and the program are fighting, the animators and battle designers are also full of gunpowder, and the main animator Cory Barlog and the action designer Richard Foge get together every day to discuss the character's action design, in order to show David's "rage" feeling, they hope to make Kratos's movements look powerful.
"I'll put Kratos and a bunch of enemies in the arena, keep fighting, and then gradually adjust the battle rhythm, enemy configuration, action design, and so on." Richard said.
But this is not difficult for Cory as an animator, to know that in the era of motion capture technology is not yet widespread, all character animation is handmade by animators, Richard envisioned the precise and exaggerated action performance means an extremely large workload, and he also has to be responsible for the action performance of the various enemies in the game, so the two teams constantly communicate and compromise.
(Principal Animator Cory)
The core element of God of War
"In my opinion, God of War has three core elements, fighting, decrypting, and exploring." David says so, and that's what the team is working towards.
In fact, these three points were the iconic elements of action games at the time, and there was certainly no problem for God of War to do it in this direction, and the team members continued to improve in quality, adhering to the principle of "doing it to be the best", striving to catch up with the industry's top level, and the final product also successfully represented the industry's top expressiveness level.
But in addition to this, God of War also has a core element that is rare in the game at that time - the sense of cinema.
Greek mythology has always been the darling of the film and television industry, according to its adaptations of countless works, David although he said that he did not refer to the film much, but he must still be influenced by those film and television works, the camera design in "God of War" with a fixed perspective is very cinematic, and the same is true of Kratos's finale close-up shot and the interactive shot of the environment, conveying a magnificent epic sense to the player all the time.
The original God of War was officially released in 2005, and GameSpot reviewers said that the game "combined the action performance of Devil May Cry" and the decryption design of "ICO", and a year later, it sold 1 million copies in the United States alone, and was voted the first place in the "25 Best Games in the History of PS2" by IGN, which was widely praised by players and the media.
Compromise and regret
Although Sony gave David great resources and production autonomy, Sony was not Microsoft after all, and at that time PS2 had become the focus of the company's revenue source, and they needed to launch more boutique games on the platform, which for Santa Monica meant limited development time.
In addition to the pre-planning stage, the development of God of War lasted about 3 years, and on the way, David repeatedly changed the settings and deleted a lot of content, such as the demo we mentioned earlier, the protagonist is actually a dying Cyclops, and it also includes a whole test level of Icarus Wings, David hopes that players can fly freely in this level, but also be able to land on the ground at any time to fight the enemy, because of the construction period had to cut the entire system.
(Icarus Wings level in Demo)
There are also several levels in the demo that are well-developed in art resources and layouts, but some scene elements and adjustment time are missing, and eventually had to be cut. The most obvious is the Pandora level, which was originally designed to be a boss battle, where a huge eagle banshee hovered, and the player needed to stomp on her eggs to provoke her, but in the finished product it was just a palace.
Although some of these regrets have disappeared in the long river of time, some have been reincarnated in the dirt during the development of God of War II and have been relished by players.
(Pandora level in Demo)
Stable play of God of War II
"We wanted to build on the previous game and add more epic scenes, and we chose PS2 to allow 100 million players to play it."
—Cory Barlog, producer of God of War II
Get off the wrong foot
"Cory, what are you doing?" It's a piece of shit! David pointed to Cory's nose at the meeting and scolded with a red face, "You have to start over, no one is going to play with this garbage." ”
Seeing the frenzy set off by the original "God of War" among the player community, Sony certainly hoped that Santa Monica could launch a sequel while it was hot, but it was the eve of the console generation change, the PS3 console was about to be launched, and the team was facing a crucial choice at this moment, is it to launch a guaranteed sales on the PS2 platform with an incomparably large user base? Or is it a continuation of the legend on the PS3, which has greatly evolved in performance?
As mentioned earlier, Cory gave the answer, which was also reflected in the cover of the game, and they wanted to avoid "number 2" as much as possible, so that players thought it was a sequel to the previous game.
After setting up the development platform and the intensive preparations, David, the producer of the previous game, decided to take a back seat and assist in the development work as a creative director, and the producer position was held by Cory Barlog, the chief animator of the previous game.
(God of War II is based on the second development of the previous game)
Compared with David, who looks arrogant, Cory is much calmer and more low-key, and his tone of voice is more low. He served as lead animator for Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This at Home and X-Men: Next Dimension at Paradox Studios, and joined Santa Monica Studios in 2003, where he succeeded his father, J. Berger. M. Barlog is a writer of fantasy novels, very good at writing magnificent fantasy stories, the story of God of War II and the story of the sequel "Spartan Revenance" are written by him, david greatly admired his ability, until a few months later, an evaluation meeting, the opening scene happened.
Since God of War II was Cory's first time as a producer, and the achievements of his predecessor God of War were daunting, he was desperate to prove his ability, adding too many game systems to his early planning. The Icarus Wings abandoned in the previous game, more boss battles, more magnificent scenes, more animations and so on. Although the size of the team has expanded, but still can not be comprehensive, a few months of development has passed, in front of the core team, but in front of a rudimentary system, bugs frequent defects, which makes David feel extremely angry, after all, to put it bluntly, "God of War II" is just a product of the second development on the basis of "God of War", and it is reasonable that it should not be worse than the previous game.
Although David is no longer a producer, the prestige he has built on the team is still there, and the team has no choice but to overturn the project and start over, and David left santa Monica studio on the eve of the completion of God of War II in 2007.
Willow dark flowers bright and another village
Due to the failure of the preliminary preparation, the team's construction period was further shortened, Cory and his father argued about the construction of the script, while dealing with the development problems of the team, any link that appeared flawed needed him as a producer to review, and large and small meetings were also continuous, once overwhelming Cory.
Thankfully, the team has the incredibly solid foundation of the previous game, and Cory doesn't have to worry too much about the basic design of the combat, he just needs to add some cooler ideas.
(God of War II has better action performance than the previous game)
At GDC in 2006, Santa Monica officially announced "God of War II", Cory revealed a lot of game-related details in an interview with the media, including the direction of the script and gameplay design, etc., he said that "you need to write a story that fits the character setting of Kratos and can satisfy the player", "The combat system will add more magic, but there will be no stylistic changes compared to the previous work, but more epic bridges will be added." ”
In fact, compared to the actual work pressure encountered in the development process, the mental pressure brought to Cory by the previous work "God of War" is more serious, "what to do to surpass such a remarkable work" has been plaguing Cory, PS2 has entered the end of its life, and the technology-related breakthrough team has reached the limit in the previous work, and it is difficult to make people shine from the picture performance.
Team leader Stig Asmussen gave a different solution, technically unattainable, then we improve the quality of art.
(God of War II Main Beauty Stig)
As I mentioned earlier, the original God of War did not have a single art team as a whole, resulting in extremely low efficiency related to art. To compensate for this, the environmental artist Stig Asmussen in the previous game was promoted to the position of studio director, responsible for leading the entire art team. Charlie, who excelled in her previous game, also had a concept art group to share ideas about the game.
Stig's image is the complete opposite of people's stereotypes of artists, and with a big bald head, he looks like a silent killer who doesn't talk much, and so does his attitude to work. Before he wants the team to do something, he will do a part of it himself, and then let the team start working accordingly, and for him, the work is obviously more convincing than lip service.
Stig's point of view opened Up Cory Maosei, although the art styles in the previous works are diverse, but there are indeed compromises in precision, and many of the conceptual art designed by the team in the early days has not been adopted, and this is not the perfect time for "waste utilization"?
In 2007, God of War II was officially released, and players praised the game as the best ending of PS2 on the basis of retaining the essence of the previous game, improving the pain points in the previous game and adding more playable content, which sold 1 million copies in just three months and was unanimously recognized by the media as "the best curtain call of PS2".
*Note: God of War: Chains of Olympus on PSP and God of War: Spartan Revenant are outsourced titles developed by Ready at Dawn Studios and will not appear in this article.
The perfect ending of God of War III
"This will be the last God of War series, and we want to use this title to define what a PS3 game is."
—Stig Asmussen, producer of God of War III
Wave goodbye
On November 6, 2007, the Santa Monica studio was filled with unusual tranquility, all the employees gathered in the hall, but did not speak, only Allan Becker of the product department stood in the middle of the hall, his muffled voice echoing in the vast office, piercing the heart of every employee.
"Our old friend, Cory, will be leaving the Santa Monica studio in two weeks."
Cory was also sitting in the crowd, he had expected the other colleagues to be shocked and insulted, but that didn't happen, and dead silence ran through the studio, only the "bang bang" heartbeat in Cory's ears.
"I thought Cory would be the last to leave Santa Monica, who played a crucial role in the development of God of War II." Chief film animator Mehdi Yssef said the phrase also expresses the voice of the vast majority of Santa Monica's employees. After David left, it was Cory who led the team to successfully make God of War II continue to be brilliant, without him there would be no God of War II, and now, after being the producer of God of War III for half a year, he is leaving.
No matter how reluctant the studio was, Cory was already determined to seek new opportunities, of course, his story with Santa Monica is not over, and we will not press the table here.
After Cory left, the first question he faced was, who would be the producer?
Two weeks later, Allan announced the answer, and another veteran of the team, Stig Asmussen, the lead artist of the previous game, will succeed Cory as producer. Although Stig didn't stay on the team as long as Cory (a year shorter), his enthusiasm and ability to work impressed most of the team members, and although he seemed to be a deterrent, he actually got along with a warm and enthusiastic colleague.
In this way, in the midst of Halloween laughter, the God of War series once again ushered in a new leader.
New technologies, new faces, new difficulties
Four months before the release of God of War II, Sony launched the next-generation console PS3, which is a huge performance leap compared to the PS2. As a first-party studio owned by Sony, and santa monica studio that has just made such a blockbuster as "God of War", it actually got a prototype of the PS3 development very early, but at that time, due to the construction period and user volume, the team did not choose to make a game on the new platform.
And now, it's time.
The team's main program, "Three Dynasties Elder" Tim Moss is both excited and worried about the PS3, excited that the new technology and performance can achieve too many functions that could not be achieved before, worried that the original engine has become obsolete, and the new technology is bound to be accompanied by a lot of learning costs.
(The sub-era host has brought great development pressure to the team)
Not only the program, the technical improvements, while benefiting players, mean far more work for developers than ever before. "It used to take 5 days to make a character model, but now it takes me 8 weeks." The team modelers said that the improvement in the expressiveness of the picture means that the accuracy of the model has improved, and now they need to spend more time polishing the details.
The same is true for animators, high-precision graphics mean more delicate action performance, the original kind of open and closed action design requires more details to let the player feel the progress of the times, and every team member must learn new things.
Although difficult, the best thing santa monica studio is to smile and face difficulties, especially under the leadership of Stig, who once knew both technology and art, and could be a good bridge for team communication at the same time, plus he was a generalist himself, where there was difficulty, he would go to help wherever he had difficulties.
The team came out of the sea of knives and fires step by step, and the program team spent several months re-producing the original engine based on the new platform, but the interaction logic was consistent with the original, which greatly improved the development efficiency of the game. The animation team began using motion capture technology to obtain unprecedented ultra-high-quality animations through the role of live actors, and everything was in order.
(God of War III achieves a leap forward in the picture)
The crowd gathered firewood and the flames were high
As a producer, Stig naturally has to take care of all aspects of the game, but as a series that already has two previous games, how to continue the story has always bothered Stig, fortunately, Before Cory left, he had left a plot outline, and has been working with Stig to improve the story line since then, which makes "God of War III" a perfect continuation of the style of the previous game.
Another old friend, David, the original producer of God of War, will also come to the studio from time to time, and Stig is also very happy to talk to the "Father of God of War" about game design, and the latter also put forward a lot of constructive suggestions, avoiding many detours for Stig.
(Happy to fuzzy .jpg)
With the concerted efforts of the team, the development of God of War III became more and more smooth and the quality of the show was getting better and better, which also made Stig feel confident, and finally decided to release the real-life demonstration of God of War III to the media for the first time on May 10, 2009.
Although Stig still looked restless before Media Day began, when it was all over his face he had a smile of satisfaction on his face. Revolutionary graphic leaps, rich action design and original violent experiences have all been praised by various media outlets. A few months later, the same was true for E3, where the demo area for God of War III was packed with players, many of whom preferred to line up for an afternoon to get started, and they couldn't wait to play all day at home.
(God of War III's performance on E3 was well received by players)
The reputation from the media and players has made the development team breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and it is a physical and mental exhaustion to carry out years of development work in a completely closed environment to the outside world, and the lack of player feedback means that the development team has no idea what fate their work will face. And now, they can confidently and boldly perfect it.
On March 16, 2010, God of War III arrived as scheduled, selling 1.1 million copies in just two weeks, becoming the fastest-selling series in history, and the media score was basically the same as the previous game, and this Kotos finale was perfect.
After experiencing the baptism of the trilogy, although Kratos temporarily left the story stage, the long-standing problems of the series are about to erupt. Where does the God of War series go next? What is the secret behind the reboot? We'll talk about it in the next part.