God of War Developer Goes Behind-the-Scenes of the Stranger Boss Fight
The latest God of War featured several major boss fights. One of the most dramatic was the very first, against “The Stranger”; a character later revealed to be the god Baldur. Now, one of the senior developers from Santa Monica Studios has delved into the creation of the fight in a behind-the-scenes entry on the PlayStation Blog.
Behind-the-Scenes in One of the God of War Boss-Fights
Denny Yeh is a Senior Staff Combat Designer at Santa Monica Studios. His recent blog post took a behind-the-scenes look at God of War’s first major boss-fight; “The God of War series has always had some spectacular opening boss fights: The Hydra, The Colossus of Rhodes, Poseidon and his water pony, among others. During these fights, the camera was usually zoomed out very far to show a sense of scale. This was because these fights all had one big thing in common: Kratos was fighting a massive foe. We knew we needed to do something just as epic in the new God of War, so when it was decided that the opening boss fight of the game was going to be against a smaller humanoid that was only about as tall as Kratos’ shoulder; we knew we were in for a big challenge.”
Yeh goes on to explain how the team used individual impacts to make up for the lack of scale. The developers accentuate each strike and blow between Kratos and Baldur, and as a result, the developers emphasize the “feel” of their clash; “We wanted the player to feel like a god fighting a god,” explains Yeh; “with the environment around you paying the price”.
Early prototypes of the fight explored different aspects of the battle, including the level of environmental destruction, the arena size, and so on. After the first stages of development, the team also constructed a rough plan for the whole battle. From there, the fight’s skeleton was improved upon by the cinematic team. Yeh’s blog post details the fight’s construction from start to finish, and can be read in full on the PlayStation Blog.