In one week, the newest installment of the God of War franchise will arrive exclusively on PS4. However, it won’t have the “4” that most are expecting of it, and that’s because it’s basically a reboot of the franchise that respects the original story and moves on from it. But that’s not the only change. Another major change is the combat. Gone is the button mashing and multiple weapon using of the original series. This new game has a more refined combat system, and one that uses two characters at once at times.
The question though is, why did the team at Santa Monica decide to change it up? Why diverge from what worked before? Well, in the mind of creative director Cory Barlog, they needed to change it up because it was used in seven previous God of War titles. He tells Gamespot:
“I was looking around at how incredibly talented our systems and combat team was, and I was like, ‘I need them to take on the challenge that we had on God of War 1.’ That challenge of nobody really knows what that system was when I first got there in 2003. Combat was, I don’t want to say a mess, but it was more like they hadn’t found their sea legs with combat.”
To be clear though, Barlog said that they didn’t just “want to change it”, they had a more pure reason for doing so:
“Looking at the new God of War, we need a chance to show what we’ve learned over the last decade. So I didn’t want to change it for the sake of changing it, I wanted it to reflect how all of us [at the studio] have grown up. What we play is different. God of War is a reflection of what we play.”
You’ll get to see what the new combat is like when the game releases next week.
