God of War III Preview

What could be so bad about your life that you need to revel in the act of ripping off a man’s head? And yet, rip it off you can in God of War III. The game is even "nice" enough to make it fill the frame as you do so, glorying in the tearing of skin and neck muscles, not letting you forget for a second that this is the first time you’ve truly played God of War in HD.

If the demo is any indication, the continuing need to up the ante has possibly pushed it too far. Who lusts for such a graphic depiction of ripping someone’s head off? Even if it does come in the guise of “Well, he’s a god in a video game, and the bad guy, so it’s okay”, he’s still based on human anatomy; there is skin, muscle and blood on the screen as you watch this vicious execution...

But it does look bloody impressive!

The question is, what will distinguish this third instalment over its predecessors?

The first answer is “scale”: The game seems freer to move between different scales, never skipping a beat. In the demo, there’s a point where the camera pulls back to show the Titan climbing up the fortress you’re running around, while Helios flies around the Titan in a fiery chariot, looking for all the world as inconsequential as a bothersome bee.

It was the E3 reveal that gave us perhaps the most exciting glimpse into where Sony’s Santa Monica Studios plan to show the scale of battles: It opened with Kratos doing what he does best in a forest, which needless to say wasn’t very nice, then there’s an earthquake. Or it appeared to be, but then foes started to slide along the ground as if falling. It’s then you realise Kratos’ whole stage had been on the back of a Titan. That Titan was only climbing Mount Olympus!

If this kind of Shadow of the Colossus approach to scale is implemented further in the final game, we’re all going to be spending a fair amount of time with our jaws agape after the release of God of War III.

Great graphics and the orchestral score to back it up = Business as usual? “But wait, there’s more!” God of War III hollers back to you like it’s on a shopping channel. There is indeed. Many, many little technical things that make a world of difference like having the load times going on while the cinematics play, or having the game throw three times as many bad guys at you at once. Sounds like a party.

Our jaws will be all the wider thanks to complete redesigns of the characters that are carried over from previous games. With Kratos himself seemingly the only exception, he’s still four times as detailed as in his last PS2 outing. Such redesigns carry on through to the weapons, where efforts have been doubled in making them more useful over the long haul, giving them more combos and upgrades to ensure they’re as beloved by players as the signature Blades of Chaos.

But this is Santa Monica Studios first PS3 title, so they’re getting by with a little help from their friends. Fresh from the successes of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and Uncharted 2 respectively, Insomniac and Naughty Dog have popped by on occasion to share what they’ve learned about PS3 development. Having collectively developed and released seven PS3 titles to date, that knowledge is bound to have been useful.

With the tremendous amount of experience at Santa Monica Studios, coupled with the extra help, that allows more time to be spent on the story this time around. Indeed, Stig Asmussen, Director of God of War III is quoted as saying “Key moments and things that were relevant in the first two games are profound in this game”. Who ever would have expected 'profound' from God of War?

With the people in charge of making the game talking the talk, it was nice to see the demo walks the walk. Making a demo is a real headache for developers. As a rule of thumb, developers only make a demo if they’ve got something to prove. In the case of God of War III, it’s purely for presence-of-mind, as marketing speak would have it.

God of War III has certainly got that, with just about every PS3 owner you care to speak to champing at the bit for some red hot ‘n’ bloody Kratos action.