God of War

RealGunner wrote:Honestly GOW never really interested me. Half played Ascension on PSP and got bored so dropped it.

But this one looks great though.

M99 wrote:Did not play till PS3 Both of the first games are in the top 15 best selling games of PS2
How did it become a premier franchise after 3

Also if you count MGS then GTA should be counted too. MGS was not an exclusive franchise both MGS2 and MGS3 was released on Xbox and PC, they just came out on PS2 earlier like all the GTA games. God Of War was the biggest AAA franchise after GOW2 came out. Kratos became the face of PlayStation franchise.

M99 wrote:What do you mean there was no Xbox, Xbox was PS2's direct counterpart.

Why shouldn't top 15 count? Is there room for only one premier franchise? GOW series was among the best selling exclusives of Sony.

GOW was mad popular when it came out and became a huge franchise after 2, don't see how you can deny that.

RealGunner wrote:Is the HD collection on ps4 m99? or just the 3rd one?

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

M99 wrote:What do you mean there was no Xbox, Xbox was PS2's direct counterpart.

Why shouldn't top 15 count? Is there room for only one premier franchise? GOW series was among the best selling exclusives of Sony.

GOW was mad popular when it came out and became a huge franchise after 2, don't see how you can deny that.

It came out so long after that it doesn't even count lol.

I can deny it quite easily and i already proved the point lol, God of War is 11th and God of War 2 is 14th. Those are not numbers of a premier Franchise.

Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts and Tekken 5 are just 3 of the games which sold more than both and that's without mentioning the major franchises lol. Also as i said God of War 3 sold more than both with a much smaller install base and it's 8th overall in the PS3 best selling games.

There really an isn't an argument to be made here in your favour really, nobody in their right mind would argue an 11th and 14th best selling game of a console is a premier franchise especially when the PS3 sequel sold better with less people owning the console it runs on.

@filthy_mortze ha. no…there is a whole game here. Just finished first full play through with the leads. very exciting milestone for us!

— Cory Barlog (@corybarlog) December 22, 2016

@Filthy_Mortze We finished most of the shooting, but there are still some things to shoot.

— Cory Barlog (@corybarlog) December 6, 2016

M99 wrote:
What I am worried about is the lack of Blades of Chaos or something similar. This game has to have sick combos and not have generic blade fighting attack moves like Witcher or Bloodborne.

Firenze wrote:I can see m99's concerners since he loved the original games, the combat does look vastly different, me, as someone looking to jump into the series for the first time, looks amazing to me. I don't think the combat looks bad, it just looks different to the old games.

Don’t worry. Barlog hates escort missions too. He unambiguously stated a dislike of video game baby-sitting during my demo, and made it very clear that Atreus, Kratos’ son, will never be a burden. You’ll never have to actively go out of your way to look after him, and beyond that, you’ll often find him taking an active role in combat, providing you more options, on the fly, entirely of his own accord.

An example I witnessed today saw Kratos struggling to get an ‘in’ on an enemy who was blocking all his attacks. The big guy launched flurry after flurry of axe blows, to precisely no avail. But then things change. Atreus, aware of his dad’s - and therefore the player’s - situation leaps up and climbs onto the monster’s shoulders, distracting it and wrenching it from its defensive stance. A few axe strikes later, and the foe is staggering. But Atreus isn’t all automated. While the killing blow ultimately comes from son rather than father, it’s absolutely the player’s kill, Atreus’ leaping bow shot entirely the result of a manual controller instruction. And damnably cool it looks too. It’s time to stop thinking in terms of ‘I'm playing Kratos, and also, there’s a son’. In the new God of War, you’re really playing the both of them.

Don’t worry about the sedate, weighty pace of the slaying seen in the E3 2016 demo. This is not Dark Souls: Odin Edition. Kratos can still slice, dice, hack and wreck with the best of them. His personal reach might no longer match that of his old Blades of Chaos days (though there’s good reason for his switch to an axe), but in the demo I saw today he was clearly as fast, ferocious, fearsome and flowing as he was back in Greece. His attacks have more direct, heavy impact nowadays, but his crowd-control efficiency remains supreme. Fear not. When you want to spill blood, it will be spilled. And when you need to deal with threats from further afield, hey, you’ve got a son with a bow.

Greek urns appear in today’s God of War demo. Clearly, Kratos is not the only Mediterranean export to Scandinavia. Referencing this, Barlog tells me that in God of War’s narrative, all mythology exists simultaneously, distinct from, but respectful of, all the rest. Don’t expect the original God of War trilogy to be entirely forgotten. There will certainly be a character or two in the new game who knows of Kratos’ origins.

Though if all of mythology is canon, this does raise some interesting questions for the future. Kratos in ancient China for 2032?

The partnership doesn’t end on the battlefield. These two are going to be a unit through every aspect of their journey. That bit at the end of the Sony press conference demo, when Kratos asks Atreus what the World Serpent is saying? He does that because he doesn’t yet speak the language of the land effectively enough to communicate with the (seemingly) benevolent monster. Kratos might be training his son to fight and survive, but as the brains and the heart of the operation - far more in touch with the world around him both intellectually and emotionally - Atreus will, geographically and existentially, be his father’s guide.

Another point about that serpent. Consider how that scene would have played out in any previous God of War game. We have a gigantic, canonically known, mythological monster, appearing as a big reveal at the end of an area. We have a normal-sized Kratos, eyeballing it, face-to-face. Ordinarily there’d be only one way this would go down. Blades, brawling, and bleeding. But here, we have a conversation. We have an uneasy alliance. We have ambiguity, and nuance, and a Kratos being drawn into a world - and its monsters, and its people at large - in a capacity beyond ‘seek and destroy’. This is a very different journey for both Gods of War, series and protagonist, and it’s going to take much more than berserker rage to navigate it. Reliance on old skills and traits will only go so far. This path is going to demand growth, whether Kratos is entirely ready for it or not.

Barlog admits, as QTEs are discussed, that he was tired of God of War’s trademark, cinematic combat trick by the end of the second game. Thus, they’re not coming in anything like the same capacity, in the new one. That’s not to say that there won’t be huge, stand-out takedown moments. It’s just that from now on, they’ll be under the player’s control, triggered by the same actions and agency as everything else in the game. There’s a grab button. There’s a ‘hit with axe’ button. Players know how to use such things, so Barlog is going to trust them to know how to combine them at the right time for the right, destructive purpose. Much as God of War’s exploration won’t hint or dictate with collectible checklists or leading waypoints, its violence is going to let the player carve their own path.