God of War III, the final chapter in the story about the Spartan warrior Kratos and his great war against Olympus and the Greek gods is just a couple of days away from its release. We still seek many answers in Kratos’ final adventure and the franchise as a whole – what is happening with his brother and will we ever meet him? What are the parts of God of War III that have been removed due to lack of production time? What is the relation between Sony Santa Monica Studio and Naughty Dog? What is the current state of the God of War movie and who is the best choice to play Kratos? Is it save to say that God of War III outdone Uncharted 2 technologically? How much power did Sony Santa Monica use from the PlayStation 3 for the latest installment in the series? The Game Director Stig Asmussen is ready to answer to all of these questions [and then some more], for the Universal Gaming Database.



UGDB: Please, introduce yourself briefly: what is your position at Sony and what is your professional experience in the gaming industry so far?

My name is Stig Asmussen and I’m the Game Director of God of War III. I’ve been in the industry since 1998. I’ve started doing games right after I’ve finished college, first I was working for Atari in California. After Atari I went to Midway, where I’ve worked on several Gauntlet games. I’ve done a couple of PS2 games, including the little and very interesting Dr. Muto. Then suddenly, Midway fired more than 200 people, my studio was closed and just a couple of days later I was in an interview for an Environment Artist position at Sony Santa Monica for a game called God of War. So, I have worked on several of the biggest levels in the first game and then in God of War II I was promoted to Art Director, then I led the whole art team. In God of War III Cory Barlog was a Game Director for a several months, and then the boss asked me to become the new Game Director and here we are.

UGDB: God of War III is almost ready to hit the stores on 16th of March in US and three days later in Europe. Looking back can you tell us what the most difficult part of the development process was?

SA: The most difficult part was definitely the encounters that we call “titan encounters”, where we basically build creatures that are as tall as a skyscraper and Kratos is walking on top of them. As you may already know they are like moving levels, but they walk, they talk and you will be fighting enemies on top of them. Doing that kind of stuff was incredibly hard, because we had no reference for that in other games… The closest to these encounters is Shadow of the Colossus, but there the characters are really small compared to the titans in God of War III. So, this definitely was the most complex thing that I’ve done in my career.



UGDB: One of the trophies in the first God of War (part of the God of War Collection) is called, “Legend of the Twins.” To get this trophy the player must watch the “Birth of the Beast” video that tells the story of how Kratos and his brother grew up in Sparta and that the weaker of the children were sent to die in the mountains. Kratos’ brother is sent to survive in the wildness and we never found out what happened to him. Will God of War III give an answer to this question?

SA: [Laughs] No. We will not tell this story in God of War III.

UGDB: Are you planning to tell this story in another God of War game?

SA: This is a very interesting storyline, it is very inspiring, but I cannot discuss what the God of War future will be at this point.

UGDB: The previous games had some really great environmental puzzles. What’s the puzzles/action ratio in God of War III?

SA: It is more action oriented this time around. It is concentrated more so on the rhythm, the pacing, what is hiding around the corner, and what is the next big moment… When you play the game you will know what I’m talking about. We have fewer puzzles than the previous games, but overall there are such puzzles that sometimes you won’t even realize that you are doing the puzzle – I think that we’ve done fantastic job incorporating them to the pacing and the action, they are very seamless. So, God of War III is the most combat heavy of all God of War games.



UGDB: Are we going to see any beams of light save points in the game or they are gone for good completely?

SA: They were gone for good. We had at one point something like a smart save system, which had chapters that would allow you to autosave based on checkpoints. Actually we had that system working in the game, but once we put it there, there were a lot of logistical problems that sprung up. We’ve taken out that system and put the beams of light save points back in. They argue the creation of chapters, but we still have an autosave for checkpoints, you can play through the whole game and not use one of the beams of light and play it just based off of your autosaves alone. You only get one autosave, so if you want to go through the game and record spots you wish to play again later you have to use the beam of light.

UGDB: If we assume that God of War I was epic and God of War II was twice as epic, where does God of War III stand?

SA: Maybe you expect from me to say “three times as epic”, but God of War III is much more about the memorable moments. We have a lot of big moments in the game. I think that we have some parts of the game that are incredibly epic. I can say that there are some sequences in the game that are so epic that when you play them, you will agree that you have not seen anything like that in any game done before.



UGDB: Dante’s Inferno has been around for some time now. Have you been able to play it? What are your thoughts about it and is there anything that you saw from it that you regret not including in God of War III?

SA: I played the whole demo, which I think is the first 40 minutes from the game or so and when the game came out there were several people from our studio that played it. I was watching mostly, but I can say that I’ve seen pretty much the whole game and the controls are really fantastic. Visceral has added some really neat things to the control scheme of the game. But what we can pull from Dante’s Inferno? I think that we could have done a better job with the traps and stuff; I wish to have had a few more of these in the game. We have one area of the game that is specifically about various traps, but we could have done a better job dispersing some of those in other places of the game. But in general I do not have a lot of regrets about God of War III.

UGDB: We noticed a little animation glitch that appears during the loading screen [basically the Omega letter runs a bit to the top left] of the E3 demo. It’s interesting to note that Uncharted 2’s loading screen has exactly the same glitch. On the other hand we know that once Uncharted 2 development was completed Naughty Dog, they made their tech available to all of Sony first party studios. Is it safe to conclude that God of War III is running on an updated version of the Uncharted 2’s technology?

SA: We shared a couple of ideas with Naughty Dog. They’ve shared with us a lot of techniques, and we are really close to these guys, but the Naughty Dog engine is a completely different engine from ours.



UGDB: What happened to the God of War movie project that was announced back in 2005? And if you could pick one actor to play Kratos in the movie who is that going to be?

SA: [Laughs] Gosh, you know as much as I do, believe me. I do not know anything about the movie. As far as whom I want to play Kratos… That is one of those things that I think all the time. I do not see anyone from Hollywood that fits that role. I know that many people are saying “Vin Diezel”, but I do not think that this will work. Therefore, I do not know who that person is; I have not seen him yet.

UGDB: So, perhaps there is one unknown European actor maybe, which is hiding somewhere, just waiting to be discovered?

SA: Something like that, yes... T.C. Carson has done his voice and he is a great part of Kratos, but he really does not have the size to play Kratos, and that “somebody” should be able to capture all that emotion that he has in his voice



UGDB: After all, there are great technologies in computer-generated animation, too…

SA: Yes, it will be somewhat cool to see it as Beowulf movie or something.

UGDB: We already know that in the end of March there will be a six-issue comic book series about Kratos’ Spartan childhood. Can you tell us something more about that?

SA: One of the main criterions when we started to do that comic was that Kratos has two paths that he is on: the first one is the current path that he is on, and the second is the path that leads to reflection in something that happens in his past. Those two storylines will kind of come together in the end.
The comics will go deep into the story of God of War in general. So, it should be a pretty interesting read and I’m really happy in how it came off.



UGDB: Speaking of comics, have you ever considered making an animated movie like Uncharted: Eye of Indra? It’s a pretty popular trend these days; Dante’s Inferno and Dead Space also have one.

SA: Yes, we talk about it. Right now, we have a comic book and a novel in the works, but the question is: how many of these types of things can we juggle? So right now, it will be too hard to take on something like that, because we have a very active role in all of our side projects and properties. We’ve discussed it, but it is just a matter of resources and what we want to focus those resources on.

UGDB: The year begins with tons of great titles and it seems that this year will be yet again one of the best years in gaming. Do you think that God of War III can be the undisputed game of the year and what are the games, in your opinion, that are going to be your main competition in this category?

SA: I hope that the people will consider it that way. I’m playing Heavy Rain right now and it is just amazing game that definitely should be considered as a nominee. Mass Effect 2, haven’t played it, but the people seem really on to it. Moreover, we should look forward to Halo: Reach, because that will be a pretty big thing, too.



UGDB: When a studio makes a game, during the pre-production stage there are tons of ideas, lots of which do not make it to the production stage. So, can you give us some examples (characters, bosses, areas, enemies, weapons, etc.) of what has been cut in the early stages of the development of God of War III?

SA: As a Game Director one of the mistakes that I think that I’ve made is that we have done the cuts too late and I’ve forced the team to work extra hard just to keep all the stuff we ended up [within the pre-production phase] within the “shipping list”.

UGDB: So you had some parts of the game that made it past the pre-production phase with a good amount of time in development, but then for one reason or another didn’t make it to the final version? Can you point who these parts were?

SA: We had an interesting puzzle with a guy named Exion that was kind of attached to a spinning fan. He was a pretty crazy, twisted guy. He was based off the sidekick from The Road Warrior (a.k.a. Mad Max 2), the guy that had a little fly machine. The way he looked and everything was based on that guy. So we had a puzzle based around him, but we decided to cut him from the game on a pretty late state of development. We had a big Cyclops. No, I mean really, really, really big Cyclops, and we had a really cool branching mini game on it, but it started to feel too complicated so we couldn’t get that into the game, it was a real bummer. We also had a huge titan moment that I’ve talked about before, but we had to remove it from the game, so that we could set that time that we have in the other titan moments. Those were some of the highlights of the things we had to remove from God of War III, or lowlights I guess you could say.



UGDB: Was there any fear in your mind while developing God of War III that it may not top in the mind of the players God of War II? And now that production has ended and reviews begin to be released do you have any fears?

SA: For the first question – yes, absolutely! That was always something in my mind. But I think that we’ve definitely topped the scale of the second game.
For the second question – no, because most of the reviews are giving us really high scores. I think that we did it. I’m very proud of it. Moreover, as I already said we are just keeping getting better and better in crafting games. We are very passionate and we have enough energy to keep doing great games at our studio.

UGDB: With God of War III we saw your studio make use of the real power of the PlayStation 3; do you think that it is possible to go even further with the team’s next title?

SA: Absolutely, we can do much more with it. I don’t know if we are even close to 50% of PlayStation 3’s power at this point.

UGDB: Wait… 50?!

SA: Yes, absolutely!



UGDB: Can we expect any DLC after God of War III’s launch?

SA: If we are going to do a DLC it will be more like in the form of new skins, different types of challenges and that kind of stuff. Maybe we can put that thing with the Cyclops, but I do not know at this point how we will incorporate it, because the game is heavily scripted and designed and I don’t know how we can put it there without ruing the whole game. So, basically this is one of the main flaws of the heavily scripted games – it is just too hard to find something additional to stick it in.

UGDB: Do you think that it is possible to include some kind of a co-op mode?

SA: It’s definitely possible. But as I said with the previous answer, it will be really hard to not ruin the game that way.

UGDB: Where do you see the God of War franchise after 10 years?

SA: I hope that the company [Sony] will not expect us to continue to do it every couple of years and milking it, because it will become irrelevant at some point.

UGDB: What is your personal “the project of my dreams” then?

SA: Actually, recently I figured out what my dream project will be. As I said, I’m really inspired by Heavy Rain right now, and the one thing that Quantic had done really well is that they have succeeded to make a game appropriate for people that are 25 and plus years old. I’m not talking of just the violence and sex here, but for emotions and psychology – things that the older audiences are more concerned about. Right now, the industry has a big group of people that are making straight, plane games and considerable part of the market should start thinking on how to attract the older audience.