00:21I'm Todd Pappy, Game Director of 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.
00:39When we first started talking about it, it was alright, let's run on some snakes and see what that looks
00:46like.
00:46What I was given was there's a python that's wrapped around this entire level.
00:54My first reaction about this snake was this is going to be huge and epic and it's going to take
01:00a lot of work.
01:01You know, that's what God of War is, is big challenges and epic pieces and things like that.
01:06These are initial concepts of head designs. For instance, this one's more stylized.
01:12This one's a little bit more serpent, dragon-like and more kind of ancient looking, kind of more mechanical.
01:20So, I went through lots of variations on scaling patterns. Some of these show a little bit more direction, some
01:28are more stylized.
01:29Trying to keep the overall feel of python stripes. And this one's the most finalized version.
01:40It's a mechanical snake. It's the key to getting inside of the temple.
01:45We aimed for about five pieces that we could string along together to make one complete python.
01:51This is our base piece right here. So, this is kind of a U-shaped hallway.
01:55It's the same thing, but slanted. And this is a quarter piece that's cut out. We can rotate this.
02:02This can become walking space, climb space, or ceiling climb.
02:06So, once I had the shapes that I wanted, then I strung them along together.
02:10Each color here represents a different shape. And one mechanic that we're going to use is a sliding mechanic.
02:15You're controlling them, and you have to move side to side and actively avoid falling off while it's moving.
02:23I think all the time spent up front and all the planning and everything, thinking through everything on paper, helped
02:29tremendously.
02:32In our studio, it's the job of the designer to come up with a wild idea that has never been
02:36seen before.
02:37That is almost unachievable. And it's the artist's job to figure out how can we pull this off?
02:43And can we even pull it off? And where can we cut corners and do some tricks?
02:49This is the first snake that we have in production.
02:51We've been going through a lot of testing of how we can actually manage to build it.
02:55And what we ended up coming up with is a kind of color-coded system with different sections of the
02:59snake that we would duplicate.
03:00Once this is built out by the artists, the tech artists will go in and we create a snake map
03:05that's color-coded.
03:05We take this red section and just duplicate it five times right there.
03:09We'll take the pink section and duplicate it four more times.
03:12And that's where our red noting comes in.
03:14Because we only pay the initial cost and memory for that first time.
03:17And all those other sequential times are basically free.
03:20So looking at the exterior, this is our first snake when we get to the top.
03:24Did you see how big it is?
03:25You know, if we go to our wireframe, we can see actually how much detail that is.
03:29It's pretty amazing.
03:31It's almost like a solid block.
03:33We're really pushing the system right here at the limits.
03:35I think if I fly back a little bit more, I'm just going to crash it because it's too much.
03:39There it goes.
03:41Frozen.
03:42So we're right on the edge of pushing what's possible on the PS3.
03:48I've been on Delphi exterior for around six months.
03:52I've seen myself being on it until the end, which should be another year and a half.
03:56The final ride back started off with just me typing up 20 ideas of cool moments you could have on
04:04like a kind of fast-paced ride.
04:06This is going to be the wild ride since it's a top.
04:09And then he just kind of said, okay, I like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one,
04:12this one, not this one, not this one, not this one.
04:14That's how it started.
04:16So this isn't one of them where it's really rough and probably no one can tell what's going on except
04:20me.
04:21There's obstacles in the environment, so if you don't move, they brush you off.
04:25There's another one that we have where you're sliding and you see it kind of curling and going ahead and
04:31below you.
04:33It gets this big jump, a very cool moment that we had.
04:37Once Todd was happy with those, I went back to paper and then I took those moments and laid out
04:44how I wanted to tie them all together.
04:46And I just laid it out on the timeline. I continued and made actual paths, stringing everything together.
04:53So once I was happy with one move, then I took it back together and I pulled it out.
04:58Here we have that section where you're brushed off of it.
05:01You slide on the environment and you see it twisting below you.
05:10Jump and land back on top.
05:12The challenge was figuring out a way to have it all make sense.
05:16I always imagined something big and grand like it is.
05:20Delphi series coming together, it's obviously using our Titan tech in a different way that players never seen before.
05:27And, you know, this is a big wow moment.
05:29This level is like an insane amusement park ride.
05:32We even went through this thing and it's really tense.
05:35It's really kind of stressful.
05:36It's a really stressful level because you're used to these amusement park rides where you're just sort of riding along.
05:41You're like, no man, you gotta jump, you gotta go, you gotta do this stuff.
05:44What I'm working on right now are these interior ice caves.
05:47Giant caverns and small little tubes the snakes burrowing through.
05:51I'm working on some of the architecture and also some of these big giant massive chains that are helping to
05:57propel the snake along.
05:58One of the interesting things we have is the technology's height map where I can layer on the snow in
06:03a very realistic way.
06:04One of the great things is it can actually sit inside all of the little cracks.
06:08Previously, it would just lay on top of it.
06:10One of the other interesting things is ice technology.
06:13I have this layer of ice that sits on top of the brick.
06:16And with this height map tools, you can really make it feel like the ice lays inside in the cracks.
06:22And I have the ability to add variation to this thing.
06:28So here we have the large cavern and we see these tower architecture and some of the chains that are
06:33kind of propelling the snake along.
06:35In Delphi, we now have these giant mechanical snakes that, once Kratos powers up, are just tearing through the environment.
06:46You can go in them, you can climb on them or under them, but they're still swaying and undulating.
06:52Making good cameras that worked with that undulation was a real challenge.
06:57Here's an example of just some of the shots that I'm afforded by being in an outdoor environment where I
07:03just want to let the scene speak for itself.
07:07This is a really cool area that the artist Derek Jacobson helped put in where I give him the camera's
07:13path.
07:14And then he put really cool artwork in front of these blocks of ice.
07:18It's very much like a cool carnival drive.
07:30A lighting artist basically populates the world and brings it to life.
07:35I always consider myself kind of a painter, but I paint with light.
07:39I think it's incredibly important. It's kind of a unifying element.
07:42It brings the textures and the models and brings it all together and gives it atmosphere, a mood, and, you
07:49know, helps tell the story.
07:50So you can see all my lights in this file right now.
07:53And some of them have really small radiuses, but I can also see them in Maya.
07:58So here I have a firelight. If I turn on my radius, you can see the radius, how big it
08:05is here.
08:05So that's a visual representation. I can make it bigger. So then it'll affect more of the scene.
08:12I can make it huge. It'll affect even more. I always play around a lot with the radius.
08:17So see how I bumped up that light now? I can really make it go extreme and really strong.
08:26And see now it's affecting more of the scene.
08:28So this is the scene that went through first-pass lighting.
08:32Here you can see the sunlight and the ambient affecting the scene.
08:36If I turn off the sun, the scene would look like this.
08:39And all you have is the ambient light.
08:41If I turn off the ambient light, it would look like this.
08:46And you can see, like, all the shadows turn completely black and you don't have any information in there.
08:51When I do the lighting, I always like seeing the environment artist's reaction.
08:55They're like, oh, wow, you made my level look awesome.
08:58I love that level. I mean, it took us a long time to get it to the point that it's
09:03at right now.
09:04But that's because it was new, uncharted grounds. We haven't done that stuff before.
09:10I love it. And I've had plenty of people come up to me and say,
09:14Louise really knocked it out of the park with the art that I've been seeing.
09:17I mean, I think this will be a huge showcase for the project.
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