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00:21I'm Todd Pappy, Game Director at God of War Ascension.
00:24What you're about to see is I'm making a video that we've been shooting over about two plus years.
00:28It gives you a good idea of the inception of an idea all the way through to the final product.
00:33Keep in mind that this is a work in progress. Enjoy.
00:44Today was our really roughing out the beats for Hecaton, which is our opening boss level.
00:49I needed a reason to make Hecaton come alive other than Hecaton was already alive right off the bat.
00:55Because I thought it was far more interesting that Hecaton had the city that was built on top of it.
01:00And you didn't know that. Hecaton is the beginning of the game.
01:04Kratos starts in Hecaton. It's essentially a prison.
01:07The player doesn't know why Kratos is here just yet.
01:10And where it is in the story is the very, very, very beginning.
01:13It's like pre-God of War I.
01:14So Kratos has already killed his family and he's dealing with the torments of that.
01:18He's kind of locked up in this prison and the Furies are torturing him about what he's done in his
01:22past.
01:23Like the Furies are the ones that want to keep Kratos there and they want to continue to mess with
01:26him and torture him.
01:28And it's against their wishes that he's getting out of there so they'll do anything in their power to make
01:32sure that he doesn't escape.
01:33There's still so many things that we've got to basically answer.
01:37The stuff that I've seen so far I think is really promising and hopefully feels very, very different than what
01:43we've done in the past.
01:44And again, that's what we're striving for is to make this feel new.
01:48We've got probably roughly the first five to ten minutes flushed out.
01:52There's still a lot of questions on the table.
01:55Currently, I'm focusing on the first boss encounter in the level, which is the Hecatom 10 you see in the
02:01background here.
02:02This is the first fight and it's going to be actually simpler compared to the rest of the boss fight.
02:07So this is like a warm up for everyone. Try to put all the pieces together.
02:11Every single God of War game has like amazing opening.
02:14It's always like set the benchmark pretty much for the game.
02:17Everyone involved here, we all feel a lot of pressure to deliver.
02:21We see in the early stage, you know, we see how everything pan out.
02:25You know, everyone will try their best, you know, try to make sure that we will meet that quality bar.
02:30From our standpoint, it still doesn't feel like a Titan.
02:33We need to make sure that we're selling the movements and the scale of it.
02:38And that's some of the things that we're trying to fix in art and animation and cameras right now.
02:44These are the basic poses. There weren't really a lot to do because he's so wide and thick.
02:50This one, I'm trying to show a little bit more of the arm so that it feels like a whole
02:55hand.
02:56Even if he just does a super or something like that, he pulls out and then goes back in to
03:01sell that.
03:02I mean, I like the ones where he puts his hand down.
03:05I like this type of pose more like when he angles, like he puts one of his arms towards.
03:11I think it looks more dynamic.
03:12Because of so many moving pieces in the opening level, constant communication between art design and programming is required.
03:20Because we have a level where you would tilt any directions and we have a wall cumbling and the boss
03:26character just, you know, destroy this piece of the structure at the same time.
03:31It's going to be that feel like you'd want it to almost.
03:35You have this gigantic arm and then it comes, then it's moving around and then it props up to an
03:40arena.
03:41And if it just does this, then it's not going to, to me, it's like, I really want to see
03:45constantly this, you know.
03:48So what you see here is actually the very first shot of the game.
03:52We want to put a twist on this opening.
03:55For any fans of the God of War, they probably would be really surprised by this opening.
03:59Because Credo is looking in the puddle and then we change from a seemingly third-person perspective into a first
04:06-person perspective.
04:07He get caught by the Fury and he just wake up and he look at his situation.
04:11By the way, this is not the real Fury, this is just a sand-in.
04:14Credo finally breaks free and got his hand on the Fury.
04:18But the game just started for the Fury, so he was having fun.
04:21This is the chase where Credo is going after the Fury.
04:23Immediately, we highlight all the new mechanics in the game.
04:26Environment is being destroyed.
04:28That's the beginning.
04:29That's the third beginning.
04:33Typically, with animation, we're used to animating bipeds and quadrupeds.
04:38You know, things that you're more used to seeing in our real world.
04:43Whereas Hecaton is bizarrely different.
04:46He's an actual hand.
04:47He's got no legs, so he moves a lot different.
04:52This is a rough pass of Hecaton transforming.
04:56When you first encounter him, he has this closed hand pose.
04:59And he goes from that to where he rips the outer layer of his skin from the fingers down.
05:05And these fingers become two huge hands that attack you.
05:09The ring made it complicated to really make it convincing that these things were ripping.
05:13So I have to go through another pass to make it seem like it's really painful for him.
05:22This time we're trying a very different approach in terms of storytelling.
05:26We've got a wall.
05:27We are going to do different flashback sequence.
05:29So that's why we try to set it up at the beginning.
05:32You feel like personal.
05:33There's a mystery.
05:34Why Credo is here.
05:35He's after something.
05:37This is a storyboard of the very first shot of the game.
05:40So Credo is waking up, looking in the puddle.
05:42This is a surprise moment for the player.
05:45Because from a first person perspective.
05:48And then Credo waking up in this prison-like structure with his hand chained.
05:52And physical fury appears.
05:54We just try to get a sense of what elements are involved in each scene.
05:58This is more like a guideline.
05:59How are we going to approach this sequence?
06:01So Credo is a struggle to get out.
06:04And Megara comes in.
06:06This is a new type of minigame we're trying.
06:09Hopefully it will be more intuitive to the player.
06:11This is a semi-arctic level.
06:13This is actually on Hekaton's giant arm.
06:17So Credo crashed through this wall.
06:19And find another prisoner.
06:23And Hekahan appeared in the background and killed him.
06:26Right now the hand is poking through the ceiling.
06:29Because we don't have destruction yet.
06:31So we're going to put in those pieces later.
06:34When you stun Hekahan, he will crash into the arena.
06:38And at that point you can actually pull down this entire building.
06:43And drop it on the Hekahan.
06:45And crush him.
06:46You're basically closing a section of the arena.
06:48As the fights progress, the arena is actually getting smaller and smaller.
06:53So it's more intense.
06:54So this is the beginning of figuring out exactly how we want to implement the destruction of the level with
07:00the actors.
07:02There's a lot of things the cameras can communicate and help gameplay first.
07:05If you stop and leave Kratos at some places at some time, you need to be able to find out
07:09where is he going next.
07:10You need to be able to pull back to show the player enough when he's fighting, what he knows is
07:15safe, what areas aren't safe.
07:16Kind of add it on top of that.
07:18And then we're able to kind of show them what the environment to communicate.
07:20Kind of the story, the setting that you're in.
07:23And kind of immerse them a bit more in what's going on.
07:26Here we have the Art and Hekahan level.
07:29And these green areas are the camera zones where Kratos is located.
07:33And then each one of these brighter green spots are the actual cameras that are activated.
07:38So instead of zones based on word locations, you can kind of see as Kratos runs by, the camera will
07:44switch to follow the Hekahan monster.
07:47So here he's doing a special move, so we activate another camera.
07:50So here now he's boxing us in, the camera's pulled back a little further.
07:54Now he's attacking, so we pull back even further than that to keep his claws in view.
07:57This way the player knows, and they don't lose sight of what matters.
08:01So there are, I think, three different sets ingested in this location, and those sets have two cameras each.
08:07So you can see these big green and red balls are camera targets.
08:11The large volume gives it a larger radius for the target to move in.
08:14And that means it's actually a softer target.
08:17The smaller ones are much stronger.
08:19Targets, and so when they move, it's a bit more of a one-to-one motion.
08:22Some of the changes are subtle, but in a lot of it's to make sure we keep Kratos in frame
08:26and then provide different moments.
08:34When you kick through this door, we're gonna have a cinematic to show this hand transform into the monster.
08:41But we don't have that right now.
08:43But we have the boss fight.
08:45You're going to fight the hackathon head.
08:48What he is going to do is to pick up this platform in his mouth.
08:52And then you're going to battle enemies AI on this platform.
08:55While hackathon head is chomping away on the platform like a piece of pizza.
09:00Eventually the head will break this piece off and swallow it.
09:04So the arena will get smaller and smaller.
09:06The player will be able to cause him to drop the platform.
09:09And now the platform is vertical.
09:12Once you're there, you're going to break this one too.
09:14Which causes you to toss it away.
09:19And now we have another hackathon combo.
09:21So now you're fighting both of them.
09:23So the idea is you turn hackathon head into a giant rival.
09:27And use him to attack the face.
09:30So that's what we're working on.
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