An Interview With God Of War III's Design Director, Todd Papy
Last week at the preview event for God of War III, I got the chance to sit down with the game's Lead Design Director, Todd Papy. He was a terrific interview and had a great sense of humor about the some of the questions I posed about Kratos' gay icon status and even gave some humorous insight as to the oversized body parts of the previous two games' female characters (and I'm not talking about breasts). We also discuss more serious matters like the leap from PS2 to PS3, HD, the cinematic qualities of games and much more.
Read on for all the details!
Fruit Brute: In the move from the first God of War game to the second, there was a lot of talk about making it more "mythological" and now with the move to the third game I noticed another change that while still mythological, is much darker in feeling.
Todd Papy: Well, we can obviously push the gore and with more control over the lighting we can set the mood and get some more dramatic poses with the light and then the gore and the detail we can give to it now. Like having Kratos get bloody when he's fighting and when you swing the blades you can actually see blood fly off. Being able to rip the enemies in half using our zipper tech, we can create pockets inside of characters and have the intestines come out or being able to rip off the head so we're able to push it a little bit more.
FB: I am a big horror movie fan so I love seeing stuff like that in a game. Actually, while playing the demo here, I have in my notes "Guts came out!!"
TP: (Laughs)
FB: So, having worked on the previous two titles on PS2, it must have been an incredible jump to working on the PS3 hardware. Did it seem like you just opened up this door to a whole new world of stuff?
TP: From a design standpoint it was like "Yes! Now we can do whatever we want!," because on the first two we had to fake a bunch of stuff. So it was "Yes, we get to do whatever we want to," and then it's like "Shit, how are we actually going to do it?"
I mean before everything was a bit more static and level driven and now a lot of it was animation driven. So we had to work a lot with the animators and be like "No, no... scootch that up a little bit and make everything smooth."
FB: So did you find the jump to HD a hinderance? Because, if you'll forgive me, playing the first two again in The Collection in HD, you could definitely see some of the things where you said you had to fake it. Did you find that a difficulty? I mean did you really have to pay close attention to those things working in HD?
TP: Yeah, our artists are spot on and they really go through things with a fine toothed comb. In the first two, the textures were more implied... it was a little more painterly versus this one were we went a little more realistic with our lighting and our texture detail.
FB: Well it looks just fantastic.
TP: Thanks.
FB: So, one of the things I find interesting is the sexualization of video game characters. Because despite what some people would have you believe, it really happens all the time.
TP: Right.
FB: But mostly it's female characters who are highly sexualized.
TP: Absolutely.
FB: So I was wondering, when the character of Kratos was being designed, was there was any thought put to the fact that he's kind of a gay icon?
TP: Wow! (Laughs)
FB: Yeah, I mean I could show you any number of photos of gay porn actors featuring these totally ripped, shirtless bald guys with little goatees. I mean, I'm sure that's not something you really thought about.
TP: No, no it wasn't. What we were going for was really more of an animal. So basically when they first started designing him he had armor and all these other accoutrements and so we started taking that stuff off and that feeling rage started coming across.
Then there was the sex mini-game. We really wrestled with that at first like "Should we do this or not? Is it too cheezy or is it something that really fits his character." What we wanted to do was sell the character. I mean, humans are very sexual in nature and we wanted to sell that side to him where he didn't really care about other people. they were just background to him.
FB: Well, he's definitely a very hyper masculine character.
TP: Yes, definitely.
FB: I just think it's funny because so many of these male characters are designed this way, very hyper sexualized, and I don't think a group of heterosexual guys sitting around working on these things really realize that there's this whole other subsection of people who are going to see it that way.
TP: Right.
FB: Kratos has been on our list of hottest male characters voted by readers for the last couple of years.
TP: (Laughs) Wow, really? Even with the big scar and everything?
FB: (Laughs) Absolutely! So, in the first two games there were these very sexualized female characters with bare breasts and..
TP: Yeah, but they have man hands.
FB: (Laughs) Really?
TP: Yeah, if you go back and look... in order to make hands read well they have to have very large hands.
FB: (Laughing) So kind of like drag queens right? They're really pretty at a distance but if you look close they have these big man hands.
TP: (Laughs) Yeah, I mean our women don't have the Adam's apple or anything like that (laughs) but they've got those big man hands.
FB: (Laughing) That's great! Excellent!
TP: Yeah, so there you go. A little insight for people.
FB: Alright, so you've got two games under your belt and obviously mythology has a large pool to draw from, but there's not a lot of "locations" involved. I mean, in the first two games you say "Ok, we've been to Hades, we've been to here and been to there," how do you decide where to go next? I have to say I'm completely fascinated by the fact that the first level takes place on Gaia's back. It reminded me very much of Shadow of the Colossus. I think one of the things I loved so much about the second God of War game was the incredible sense of scale. How do you decide where to go next with your locations?
TP: Well, when we first started the series we had a different director with Corey Barlog. And then switching over to (current director) Stig (Andersson) basically we had some of the locations already built and it was one of those things where Stig had to craft his story a little bit in mind of those things that had already been built so we weren't wasting work and throwing away stuff. But, at the same time we wanted to make sure Mount Olympus is really just another character and then we've got all the different set pieces around that. You saw the scaling up the mountain and also saw the base of Olympus in the E3 demo. And there's the... well let's just say there are many other places to explore.
FB: I am a huge film buff and I am very interested in games making that reach to becoming more cinematic in feeling and this game has a lot of really amazing cinematic qualities.
TP: I think being able to have more control over our camera in this game really helps with that.
FB: Definitely. Something you said that really struck me was the concept of using Mount Olympus as a character. I think in a lot of games, people don't give enough attention to their locations as being an actual character.
TP: A lot of that we work on and say "Ok, well what's the back story of this area and how do we want it to feel?" And this goes for the color and the lighting and even the shapes. Making sure that the shapes are big and readable and clear. We are adjusting that stuff constantly.
FB: Do you ever feel daunted by working with such iconic characters as Zeus and the rest of the Greek god pantheon? I mean, these are a group of characters and locations that most people have a very strong visual in their heads about.
TP: No, not at all. It's our take on it. That was the whole thing: making Kratos our character and weaving Greek mythology around him. Let's go on an adventure, let's make sure that with every set piece you're seeing you're getting a big "wow moment." Stig and I created a "wow moment" document and said "Alright, we have to have at least this many and make sure it's roughly in the range of one or two per location."
FB: Do you ever have moments where one designer says "Well I really saw it this way," and someone else sees it the complete opposite? Does it really end up being a combination of everybody's ideas, or do you eventually defer to a specific person's idea?
TP: It's a combination of those things actually. If there's one idea that's really strong and we all like it, and in particular Stig because he has final say on it, we'll say "Yeah, let's go in that direction." But if an artist or designer feel very strongly about something and we can sell Stig on it then he'll say "Ok, let's do it." But, from a design standpoint, when we're talking about puzzles or something, we come up with thirty or forty ideas for each puzzle and then we narrow that down to probably ten or fifteen and then we pitch those to Stig. And then he'll say "Yeah, number three is it." Or he might say "Let's mix a bit of four, nine and twelve."
So, for the part you saw at E3, there was this puzzle that involved moving the ballista around and you were dealing with these gondolas and it just didn't work from a design standpoint so we ripped that out and started over again.
FB: Well. it looks like that's our 15 minutes. Thanks for taking some time to talk to me, Todd. I'm really looking forward to the game's release.
TP: Thanks a lot, so are we.
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 3 March 2010
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: god of war III, kratos, ps3, sony
Wow, I'm a little surprised that he wasn't aware of hw much Kratos resembles the average gay porn actor. I mean, even if you have never watched straight porn, you know what the average straight porn woman looks like :P
You know what they look like because of straight male hegemony.
On the other hand, you can see how sexual orientations other than straight don't even fly under the radar of straight people.
He wasn't even aware that Kratos was being sexually objectified.
The game appears to look good, but I hope the sex mini-game is optional. I don't get excited by being forced to hear women moan. The game has no gay angle whatsoever, though.
I had watched the featurette from the first God of War disk, and he spoke mostly of making Kratos all angry and ragey and stuff. Perhaps from a homosexual point of view we just dont notice that the whole point of kratos was as sexual figure meant to be sexually objectified. By all observers. Perhaps in a way that if you don't want him to ride you and make you squeel and grunt in slave creature speak all night, you may just want to be the guy who IS him, being all raw sex and stuff.
I find that a part of being a sexy male is that one can just have a healthy sense of basic creature nature. Kratos doesnt seem to be stupid or hollow, maby hes not highly educated, but hes quite drivin. Like raw meat that eats you. *melt*
Anyways, in short, sexy men are sexy because they're all sexy and stuff, not because they have the most toys or nicest set of olympian armour. Sexy stuff in my mind is stuff one earned for better and for worse, like a pair of whirling blades permanently shackled and forced apon you like a burden beyond the ages, yet hecklingly pretty enough to pass as the unwanted medal of honor.
His blades sorta have a love hate relationship with the charatcer. They offer the neatest trance, like a fire dancer on the beach at midnight, but you know they're like bonds that keep him from feeling emotions beyond rage, hate, and revenge. It was set in the first game that Kratos does feel love, but certainly not something that he wears on his already burdened sleeves.
Love that guy, ok ok, ill quit carryin on. KRATOS IS SOO HOT!
hehehehaha. whew....
Kratos looking like an average gay porn actor?
Out of the diferent kinds of porn I've seen (butch, twink and everything in between), maybe 2-3% look like Kratos. Hardly average.
Don't really see him as an icon either. My gay icons don't spend 3 games screwing multiple women.
I had to laugh though at how apprehensive he sounded when you started about sex. XD
Great interview FB!
...also Todd looks really cute too. :)