God of War Goes For a Personal Story With No Camera Cuts

The new God of War was shown at Sony's press conference at E3 last week. After the conference, there were obviously a lot of questions and a lot of interest. The new title is known to be a soft reboot of the series, but apparently, more than just the setting is being changed.

In an interview with Eurogamer, game director, Corey Barlog talked about what's changed for God of War in terms of cinematography. As we saw in last year's initial reveal of the game, the camera was re-worked to use over-the-shoulder angles instead of the series staple cinematic shots. According to Barlog, they're also doing away with Quick Time Events, something the gaming community is a bit tired of but was none-the-less popularized by the franchise.

While some of these may be disappointing to some, the really interesting change Barlog mentioned is the lack of camera cuts.

"The aspiration when I got back was to tell a much more personal story. God of War is traditionally known for these cinematic, pull back cameras, which I think are fantastic. But trying to get in there and really get to know the character a little more, I realised it'd be interesting if we got closer.

The vocabulary of film is camera cuts, it's how they communicate. But games are different. We don't really need to do that. We do it because it's a language that we're familiar with. It's hard to not do it, I'm realising that now, but it's a challenge that I really wanted to take on. I'd been looking for a project that I could do this on and I felt like this was the one. There was big resistance, but I have probably one of the best teams in the business, so as much as they were pushing back, I think they all kind of wanted this crazy challenge."

Basically, the story is going to stick with Kratos and his son. We're not going to have a cutaway that features another character. "That doesn't necessarily mean that Kratos is always on-screen, there are things that motivate us to look away, but we're always returning and usually trying to frame Kratos so he's anchoring everything that you're looking at," Barlog explained.

He gives a few reasons as to why they went with these changes in the new God of War in the full interview, but to compile his answers, games change. Not only do games change, but games need to change or they become stale. When the original God of War came out, video games were violent, action-packed superhero-esque adventures. Now, with titles like The Last of Us and other even more narrative-focused titles, games tend to have a deeper character development.

After spending three major titles with Kratos, we grew to care about him and know his story. But we knew it from the story told to us, not from experiencing it ourselves. It seems that Barlog may be trying to tap into that story piece.

We can't wait for God of War, especially after this giant painting of it was finished in Downtown LA.