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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 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.
00:39Level design is a fantasy. It's I want to do something that I can't do in real life.
00:44Level design is also a challenge. It's not easy. It's not handed to me. I feel like I accomplished something
00:49when I did it.
00:50And in the end, level design is about giving that reward. You want to do it again and again and
00:55again and again.
00:56Moving to a multiplayer game, we can't take all of the things that we did with single player and think
01:01that they're going to work in multiplayer.
01:03That involves levels in terms of how you're going to funnel players together while they're playing cooperatively.
01:09Or how you're going to get players to run routes in a map when they're playing against each other so
01:15that they don't all clump up in the same areas.
01:17God of War multiplayer is all about telling the single player experience of God of War in the context of
01:22a multiplayer environment.
01:23You have the exotic locations, the grand set pieces, the cool mechanical contraptions that you're used to using in God
01:29of War.
01:29And the lore that takes place in the God of War universe contained in these maps that are very well
01:35thought out, with very high level design and production value.
01:38I think you'd expect that the levels in multiplayer are simpler than the single player, but they're, I'd say, five
01:43times as complicated.
01:44We've got traps, we've got different capture points, ten different chests, big titans in the background, things like that. There's
01:51just so much going on.
01:52I haven't seen a multiplayer out there like our game, and for us, we wanted to make sure that we
01:57weren't copying anybody, and it feels like God of War.
02:00We're going to breed a lot of fresh life into this genre, and we're really creating kind of a whole
02:05new multiplayer genre.
02:08The tutorial level that we're going to have for multiplayer is basically the player's introduction to multiplayer.
02:13You're going to start off as a warrior. You're imprisoned in a location that I cannot name, or I'll get
02:20killed.
02:21Your life is about to flash before your eyes. When that happens, you're summoned to the gods, and the gods
02:26teach you how to fight and how to go, you know, bring about glory for them.
02:30So how we want to kind of do this is you see, like, the establishing shot of the actual warrior
02:35coming down, and then you wind up seeing, you know, the Zeus out in the foreground.
02:40So you're going up to actually go meet with the gods. Obviously, when you're in this point, you won't have
02:46your armor, you won't have your weapon, but since I'm telling you I have a head, I don't have a
02:50head right now.
02:51So, you know, right now, I'm just teeth and eyes. There's these statues that represent all the gods in the
02:56background.
02:57You know, you get prompted to select one of your allegiances. You got Ares, Hades, Zeus, Poseidon. I walk up
03:03over here, and when I come to Ares, Ares makes a plea for me.
03:06You know, once you select the god, you actually get whatever weapon is best for them. So, like, for Ares,
03:13it's the sword. For Hades, it's the hammer. Zeus is the gauntlet. Poseidon is the spear. You start seeing the
03:21light of him when you interact with it. That's when this guy appears.
03:24From this normal tutorial, you know, he's just asking me to, like, do quick attacks on them. Then after you
03:30go through, like, the quick attacks, things like games, the heavy attacks.
03:33There's certain things that we need to teach you in a way that's directly related to the game. For instance,
03:39like how I told you to do my L2 if my L2 is escape. And that's very key because that
03:43gets you out of, like, a lot of situations. And once you actually beat them, you know, you get the
03:47praise from the gods. You get to go, by that point in time, this is done. You should be able
03:52to at least do basic fighting.
03:53We really recognize that we need this after a few playtests and people that didn't know a lot of the
03:57moves in the game and they just use too much to absorb at first. So, okay, we really need to
04:02have them go through a tutorial level.
04:04We'll take this and we will do a bit of a walk-up where it's a little bit more detail.
04:11Increase the scale. You can feel a little bit more epic. You know, we added these stairs. You'll see Zeus
04:15living there, actually. We've got these statues just running up here.
04:18This is the tutorial level running the game right now. See kind of what it looks like. Just get a
04:24feel for it. It's all coming from the last second, but, you know, we're behind it. It's going to be
04:27awesome. I'm pretty excited about it.
04:38We're trying to make it as epic and as cool-looking as possible. That's kind of the challenge, making sure
04:44that there's always something to do for everyone. There's always some cool moment that's a very good war moment.
04:49One of the first levels we started designing was to destroy them. The idea behind that one was, you could
04:54look at the two factions, the Spartans and the Trojans.
04:57It made sense to have a map that kind of is spaced around the war between the two of them.
05:03There will be an objective at some point that gives them kind of a big bonus and that is to
05:07fire off a catapult to one position.
05:10So the Trojans will be trying to destroy the Trojan horse and then the Spartans will be trying to destroy
05:15the statue of Apollo. This is an overview of the Troy map.
05:19Spartans start from the left, Trojans start from the right. There's like three tiers basically. The bottom tier, the middle
05:26tier and then the back top tier.
05:28And all those tiers are kind of interconnected and you can cross over between all of them. The unique thing
05:33about this map is that you can use the life cycle which appears in single player as well.
05:38So you'll see like for example this bridge here. That can collapse away. One of the first things you can
05:43do is pick up a life cycle. At the moment it looks like a flag but it will actually look
05:46like a life cycle.
05:48And what you can do with that is life cycle different areas in the maps, for example this gate. I
05:55can life cycle it up and that creates like an area no one can get through but they can actually
05:59hack through it eventually.
06:01But it will slow them down. I can bring them down again of course. Here there's another life cycle thing.
06:06So if someone for example is chasing me I can just stop life cycle that way.
06:10If they get killed by it it counts as a trap so I get the extra points for them as
06:14well. And then one of the bigger life cycle moments is the bridge in the centre. So this one is
06:21kind of connecting the two middle points. You can life cycle like part of it. You can life cycle the
06:26whole thing. Here's angry soldiers that are throwing spears at you.
06:30Here's another hidden trap. So this flame thrower I get this view from my side and I can kind of
06:35suddenly attack someone. On the other side they never really see. If I'm really behind there they can only see
06:42the flame and they don't know if someone's actually waiting for them there.
06:45As the player of the life cycle can actually bring the catapult back to its original kind of position. I'm
06:50the Trojan and I head it out. It will rotate to the left and fire off something to the Trojan
06:56horse. Catches on fire. Looks cool in the macro. You get some points for it.
06:59It doesn't end the match but gives you some favor. We definitely want to encourage the level side to kind
07:04of support two or more players working together.
07:07Trojan is the biggest level we have. It's absolutely massive. You can take two large levels from say God War
07:133 and you can fit them right inside of Trojan. And Trojan is still there. There's just so much there.
07:19And on top of that we have to have it running with eight players. That's the biggest challenge.
07:24The other challenge among memory performance is just getting it done.
07:27Trojan is fun because I remember seeing the first block model of the game and it's like this whole city
07:34and so I was going oh wow you know when I'm painting this it's like okay here's the armory and
07:39maybe there's like a garden down there and this is where people would go to the market and buy stuff.
07:43So this was from the level designer. The block model before anything else is existing. It's really fun and challenging
07:51to work on all this because it's so abstract that you're like okay what can this be? You know what
07:56can I turn that shape into?
07:57So I wanted to show this city that's in ruin and since it's at night you know I wanted the
08:02lighting to be really dramatic so the city sort of goes down and it's on fire and then this is
08:07a closer view of one of the areas. Just going in and populating it and refining some of the architecture
08:12a little bit.
08:13And then this was an object in the level that you can grab and it's our flamethrower. You can get
08:18behind it and roast your enemies. These were really fun to design as well.
08:23My favorite part of the level is there's this little section where there's a building kind of in the middle
08:30and there's a flamethrower at the bottom. This is the concept for this building. So originally you enter on the
08:37back side because for the gameplay we had to change it. See the camera is looking this way so they
08:43can see. I opened up this wall so you can get in here and you can use the flamethrower.
08:55When I set up to create a multiplayer map it's very similar to what we create single player maps. I
08:59like to start with one idea of something to hook it into. For one of the maps the idea was
09:04there's this huge Gordon statue. She's the kind of focal point of this map and then everything is built kind
09:09of around her. You can see the levels kind of built on top of the creature and then we'll get
09:13down here and I can kind of show you what space feels like.
09:16Here's the flamethrower so I can kill guys with that. I can jump down below. There's a lot of cool
09:21stuff. I can pick up like the club which I can swing and I can throw at the guys. It's
09:24just very exciting to run around and be able to manipulate different things in the environment.
09:27From here I can use the cannon which I can fire and it will basically as you can see kind
09:31of mortar everybody down below. And then I can move that actually up to a higher location as well and
09:37then do the same with the tops here.
09:38So we saw guys before that we were using the various weapons and using the head. I can surprise them
09:43and hit them with the cannon.
09:44Then if I jump through the portal and back in the middle so you can see that it can use
09:47it in and out of itself in a balanced way. It makes sense.
09:50People seem to really like this map and it's exciting to be able to get it to a place where
09:53it feels pretty complete before art goes to it.
09:55I think the most rewarding part next to seeing people play level and telling me they like it is certainly
10:00getting the art on top of it.
10:02As part of an artist on multiplayer you really do need to keep in mind that the player is the
10:08main focus of everything.
10:09If people remember from God of War 2 there was a whole level of the bug and we're kind of
10:14bringing that back into extension, revisualizing it, making it prettier and making it more nostalgic for the players.
10:21So we fleshed out that we wanted dark tones accented by gold or bronze. Just looking at the vines happening
10:27here, trees in the edge over here for the rocks.
10:31There's a lot of roots going on, there's a lot of broken pillars. This is the stuff that really takes
10:36the most time.
10:37Adding personality to the level, little nicks on the columns, little cut-offs. This is a pretty important piece.
10:44So this would be its own unique texture. Whereas this column or these pieces right here, this trim even, it
10:53would be tile-able so that it would be easier to use throughout the level.
10:56I like to start off by kind of getting the shape first. Right now this is smooth and eventually I'll
11:04convert it to actual polys.
11:07And this is obviously way too expensive for the level. So we take this and bake it down to the
11:12low poly and it already has all that detail.
11:14And as I'm working, I'm going to keep using these elements that I've established here and eventually bring it up
11:22to the other parts of the level that aren't already yet.
11:25It just makes things a lot faster. This level has gone through so much design changes and I feel like
11:31I'm almost pressed up against a wall, sort of.
11:33I definitely need to kick in an overdrive now, now that everything's settled.
11:48This is the Labyrinth. The high concept for it is based off the Labyrinth from God War 3.
11:53So we're trying to bring back some iconic locations from the previous game.
11:56How cool would it be to have the players kind of even inside the Labyrinth whilst being constructed?
12:01This is the starting cube where players actually jump out of the other side. The Trojan side will have the
12:07same set up so they can get into theirs.
12:10Both of these cubes meet up together and then they start kind of rotating around each other so they change
12:16their positions 90 degrees.
12:18And then eventually a third cube, the green cube, comes in. The green one, the red one, and the blue
12:24one kind of lock into place.
12:26And then you're moving between all three of them. Then that's where Medios will bring in the Scorpion.
12:30He will actually kind of come up from the side of the cube and try and attack. That's the basic
12:35set up.
12:35So this is the intro. Each faction starts on their own side. The cubes lock into place. Then you can
12:41actually jump down and you're on the top tier of the cube.
12:44Here you can get the pickups. You can set some of the traps. This is where the domination point is.
12:50While you're doing that, the two cubes actually meet up in the middle. Each level has its own traps. So
12:56this one, you've got your flamethrower there and you've got like a conveyor belt kind of mechanism that you can
13:02use to jump off at different levels of the map.
13:05The cubes start rotating and now they'll meet in the center. So now these have connected. Now this opened up
13:12new areas.
13:12The hard part designing this level was trying to keep it as simple as possible and still have the movement
13:18and the rotation without confusing players.
13:20So that's why you see it's mostly kind of looking at it on a side view. You find that was
13:24the easiest way for players to kind of know where they are and where they are in relation to everyone
13:28else.
13:28So you see in the background, that's the cage where Pandora was in the actual single player. You'll see cubes
13:34moving around in the background throughout the game.
13:37So things are slowly happening in the background while Kratos is basically assembling the ladder of the Inglotable 3.
13:43Scorpion should appear as well. There he is. Basically he's kind of harassing him and protecting that point and trying
13:48to swap players off it.
13:50But the idea is that you'll eventually get favor for hitting his arms or you know kind of damaging him
13:55and potentially killing him or throwing him off the edge or tearing off his arm and putting it into the
14:00grinder or something like that.
14:01It's like the cubes are moving around. They're sliding in and out. You gotta be careful because they move and
14:08everybody will get thrown off of it.
14:09So like there are these huge titans and then there's also the scorpion that makes his appearance and comes in
14:15there and attacks you while you're on the edge of the cube.
14:18So for God of War, people who play God of War 3 is going to be an awesome level. People
14:22who have never played God of War 3, it's going to be awesome for them too.
14:24One of the cool things that we have an opportunity to do in our multiplayer is to give fans new
14:32places to play but also go and revisit older places that they love from the previous God of Wars.
14:40One of the things that we're always trying to do is like how can we make this aesthetically feel like
14:45it was ripped apart.
14:46And so one of the things we talked about, maybe the exterior wood of this cube is really dark and
14:52damp but once it's ripped open all the wood inside is like dry.
14:56So that might help sell our story a little bit more.
15:00And then what are the main like iconic pieces of these cubes from God of War 3 that people will
15:06recognize and it's like oh these like cool clamp sort of doorway pieces and going in and going oh yeah
15:11there were all these really cool Icarus kind of murals around.
15:14So let's put some of those in. Even though we're not going to go over here we're going to break
15:18some stuff up.
15:19We'll put some moving stuff there and really like let the players imagination fill in the rest and imagine that
15:25you know this is like this huge mechanical marble that extends beyond where you can travel.
15:31Going more detailed and going to the top, the top is all wood and you have that large clamp and
15:36then maybe the next layer of wood got ripped off so then we can see more of that refined metal
15:41where maybe there's gears and vents inside of that.
15:44So we try and put love into everything that we can and I think that's what makes our game great
15:50and really separates it is how much sort of detail as it funnels down.
16:04So let's go!
16:07Let's go!
16:07Um...
16:08...
16:08...
16:09...
16:09You
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