00:01God of War, Sons of Sparta is set in the lands and around Sparta.
00:06Laconia, it's the southern peninsula of Greece.
00:08This is where you'll start the game. It's like the boys' backyard.
00:16In Sons of Sparta, Kratos and Deimos are both a-goge cadets.
00:20They're young soldiers for Sparta.
00:22The world of the game we're telling is a lot more about the Laconia region outside of Sparta.
00:28The boys venture out. They get their first pass to leave town and go off on their own.
00:34And so we get to explore a lot of the countrysides and things that exist outside of the walls of
00:40Sparta.
00:40When players start to explore Laconia, I think they can expect to find a lot of various interesting biomes,
00:48a lot of fun enemies to fight.
00:50And it's like you're taking on the adventure of young Kratos along with you,
00:54so you're experiencing something new along with them.
00:57In designing the levels, we had a great back-and-forth process with SMS
01:01where we would come up with these level concepts and sort of hash them out as to
01:05why they fit the game, why they fit the Greek setting,
01:08and then how we could apply the God of War coat of paint.
01:12The way we approached level design in God of War, Sons of Sparta
01:14is to treat each level like it is its own character.
01:17So not just visuals, but things like color palette, shape language.
01:22Filling out the environments was figuring out where the locations were and finding their
01:28real-life counterparts within Greece to kind of see what kind of plants grow there.
01:33And translating that into pixels to make everything feel more distinct from each other.
01:38When making the game's map and its environments, we worked at the Santa Monica Studio
01:42to make sure that each of these new regions felt at home in the God of War universe.
01:47We wanted to make them feel authentically part of Laconia and also authentically part of the series.
01:53New maps are packed.
01:54Every level has these new places for players to explore and find out more about this world.
02:00That might be useful in the future.
02:02Better remember this spot.
02:04We've been using the term breadcrumming,
02:06and it's the concept of having these tiny rewards and these clues
02:10taking this massive map and gives the player this sense of agency.
02:16They can go where and how they want.
02:19I think that's something that has driven a lot of our design decisions
02:23because it's such an important pillar for what makes games in this genre fun and unique.
02:28Thank you, Nike.
02:33We look to the original God of War games for inspiration,
02:37such as Pandora's Temple.
02:39It's a big, sprawling environment.
02:40You go off into these side rooms and you solve puzzles to defeat monsters.
02:44In this genre, typically environmental puzzles are pretty prominent.
02:48So we try to balance between regular mechanical puzzles.
02:52There's some that are hidden in the environment that you won't be able to tell off a first look.
02:56Sometimes you've got to move things around.
02:58There's a lot of traversal puzzles, too.
03:00So you'll be using your whole toolkit for most of the game to figure out most of the puzzles.
03:04Not only does searching for and exploring for the rewards
03:08give you actual currency or resources throughout the game to help your experience,
03:15there's also certain things that you can look for that help you understand the lore better
03:21and they also give you the story around Laconia itself
03:24so you can get like a deeper knowledge of the world that you're living in.
03:28Most of the areas in Sons of Sparta are all original locations
03:31and some of my favorite really support the theme of the game of this coming of age.
03:37For example, the Onus Vineyard, you know, it's an area where grapes are harvested
03:41and then cultivated and then pressed into wine and matured
03:44and it kind of is a mirror to the boys' journey of, again, coming of age.
03:49I'm definitely excited for players to see the Port of Messenia.
03:53It's just a really nice area.
03:54The way the art has evolved over time just makes it feel so much more solid
03:58and the art overall in the areas are just really interesting
04:02and they all come together in a unique way.
04:04I'm very excited for people to really get to experience
04:07this side of Kratos that they only hinted at in other games
04:12about his younger life and the kind of person he was
04:15before he became the Kratos that we all know.
04:17We're excited for fans to explore Laconia through Sons of Sparta
04:21because the way it shows Kratos' homeland in this new pixel art style
04:25we put a lot of effort into making these areas authentic
04:29and not just to Greece but to the God of War series.
04:33We think that we have all the elements there that fans will expect.
04:46PlayStation.
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