We’re all ridiculously excited to return to Kratos after nearly eight years without him and while it seems we won’t have to wait long, we still don’t know a ton about the new God of War.
In a new interview with Game Informer, lead gameplay designer Jason McDonald spoke about Kratos’ new sole weapon: the axe that he exchanged his Blades of Chaos for. McDonald spoke in-depth about how the axe started out as a very basic, everyday axe and evolved into something much more special overtime.
“The running joke at the studio was that he had this Home Depot axe that he was just hacking everyone with because its first conception, the axe didn’t have anything very special about it. It took a while for us to do the first prototype where we actually had him throwing it.
“Every time he would throw it they would go ‘Well, how would he get it back? He’s not going to throw his axe away.’ Eventually, one of our designers came up with the idea of ‘What if we just let him recall the axe similar to how Thor recalls his hammer.’ So, we put that into the game and it immediately resonated with everyone who saw it.”
Once the team got the core idea of implementing a form of Norse magic in the game, the idea of expanding the gameplay became much easier.
“The core direction of this game was a very grounded approach, that’s why the axe was very basic and everything Kratos was doing was very basic so right when we started introducing the mythology of the axe having this magical element of recalling and throwing it out, it started to cascade into other decisions. What if enemies started to do this thing and what if we did this and that? Basically, the game started to get its mythical elements back into the core gameplay design which was great.”
McDonald also noted that using and throwing the axe around is incredibly fun and will likely entertain players throughout the game’s 30+ hour length.
“Every playtest and every time we put this into somebody’s hands, the first thing we see everyone doing is throwing the axe constantly and after hours and hours of doing that, no one seems to be tired of it so I definitely feel it has reached that polish level of ‘This is Kratos’ new axe, this is his new weapon’ and it has a different feel than the blades used to have but it has a feel of its own.”
Despite the new God of War moving away from its really fast combat for the sake of a more grounded feeling, McDonald says that just because it’s “slower” doesn’t mean it won’t be just as “fluid” and “brutal” as before.
God of War has no release date but many expect it to be announced by the end of January. The game is currently slated to hit in Spring 2018 exclusively on PlayStation 4.
