Skip to main content

Level Design in God of War (Part 1)

Becoming the God of War

God of War is one of the most-critically acclaimed franchises to ever hit the Playstation market. In this pipeline deconstruction, I will refer to elements of the series as a whole.
Dominus the main character in concept, needed to be summed up in a single word -- wrath. Covered in the ash of his wife and child, the character is a demigod who seeks revenge on the gods who betrayed him. Once the artists stripped away his armor and shield, the character’s true raw, animalistic side was exposed.


Tall with upper-body musculature, covered in ashes and hunched over with his signature Blades of Chaos, Dominus was a force to be reckoned with. Dominus set the stage for the today’s Playstation mascot -- Kratos.


Level Design
Mood and exploration is a staple part of level design in God of War. Areas that are more open are also relatively barren; while many objects are placed around smaller areas like rooms. I think this encourages the player’s sense of exploration.
The level designers of the game wanted the player to feel as if they stepped into Ancient Greece itself -- enshrouded in the darker side of mythology, where the protagonist was at war with the gods themselves.
God of War tends to use two main colors for its level ambience -- blue for darker, colder areas and tinges of orange for brighter regions that manage to be just as imposing.
Players can search for collectible items such as chests that contain orbs, commonly found in rooms behind gates. The level designers wanted to allow the player to feel as though they "want to get out" of one area, and push to see what can be found in other sections of the level.
Once the designers receive the concepts from the 2D artists, they block out the level and set up the colliders for the environment artists to lay down the geometry. Establishing the sheet collision is an essential part of the level design process, as it’s precisely what Kratos’ mesh makes contact with in-game.
If the mesh colliders aren’t properly set-up with the correct surfaces, Kratos’ feet will sink into areas of the floor -- or worse he’ll fall right through the geometry. In the vast expanse of the world of God of War, the collision sheet confines the structure of the level.
In God of War II, later in the development cycle level designers added in pillars and divots with with colliders attached so that Kratos didn’t get stuck inside (or walk through) objects. The levels themselves are built very cleanly for the environment artists to easily 'destroy' it by adding in dirt passes, surface erosion and completed assets.
The models are built in Maya and high-poly assets are detailed in Z Brush. Detail down to the blood splatter effects had to look practically perfect in-game; during the production of God of War, the developers obsessed over the animations and particles effects that were involved in the action of ripping Medusa’s head off.

God of War: Ascension offered players more challenging ways of traversing the level by introducing the mechanic of sliding down walls and avoiding obstacles in Kratos' path.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

vRAM - 4 GB vs 2 GB

Get much for an extra $50? Take the NVidia GTX 960, for example. This mid-range card offers 2 GB and 4 GB versions, respectively -- at about a $50 discrepancy between the two cards. That being what the cost of a whole new game, for some, this makes the world of difference.     GTA V A memory-hungry game to the fullest; where the more vRAM, the better. That is, the 970's 3.5 GB is just about the bare minimum, to run this game at max, 60 FPS. The 960's 4 GB are not fully taken advantage of on the lower GM206 Maxwell architecture. Therefore any additional vRAM here would be best for a more constant frame rate, with less dips and stutters between lowest and highest framerate. While this can be easily rectified with vSync enabled - you do get about 3-5 FPS higher on the four GB model of the GTX 960. You can enable far more advanced graphics options in GTA V with 4 or more GB of vRAM - namely ancillary settings like higher population density, depth of view,

Review of the Alienware Graphics Amplifier

Laptop VS Desktop? Have both. What is a "graphics amplifier"? In essence an external GPU you can plug right into your system. Many companies have tried to release these onto the market, but sadly many haven't gotten past announcement phase. Users either resort to painstakingly building custom external graphics cards with components purchased all over the web or simply tossing aside their laptop and building a $10000 gaming PC for their graphics power needs. Both are acceptable, but Alienware and Razor (or any other company to announce one aain) give you another option: a mini-tower outfitted with a build-in PSU and cooling fan for your graphics power needs. Easier and More Flexible Wouldn't it be great to bring your laptop to work, coming back to your home office 2 hours later and gaming away as if it were that $10000 desktop? What a versatile workstation! No stray red, black and yellow cables sticking out of a shoebox or melted GPUs.

EA Play 2017 Announcements

EA Play 2017   Madden NFL 18 EA's presser kicked off with a  Madden 18 trailer showing off its new Longshot campaign mode. Alongside FIFA 18 and the newly-refreshed NBA LIVE 18 , this looks to be a step in the right direction for the Madden NFL franchise - especially, in the last decade.  Watch the trailer Battlefield 1 -  Expansion  Battlefield 1 now has eight new maps, within its 'In the Name of the Tsar' expansion. This boasts new vehicles, weapons, the addition of a women's battalion and interestingly a new gameplay mode based off of player feedback, was teased. More about that will shared in August, at Gamescom. FIFA 18  The official trailer for FIFA 18 was shown, alongside a video of Cristiano Ronaldo performing motion capture. EA announced the return of Alex Hunter in the campaign mode. A Nintendo Switch version will also be released, although a 'lesser product' than the mainstream next-gen release. Watch the trailer Need for Speed