With his bald head and bad attitude, Kratos is larger than life, yet his next adventure will be able to fit inside your pocket.
God Of War®: Chains Of Olympus, due out on the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) early next year, squeezes the latest chapter in this epic series inside the diminutive handheld. We spoke with Cory Barlog, director God Of War®2, about the process of making Kratos portable.
Aren't you a little tired of God Of War®, and Kratos, at this point? You've been working with him for a few years now.
Cory Barlog: I think in about another or year or two, I'll be all God Of War-ed out. I've got another good two years before I say, "OK, I want to do something else. Something involving, you know, the cast of The Facts Of Life." [Laughs]
If anything, Kratos should be getting bigger and moving on to PLAYSTATION®3. It's almost as if he's going in the wrong direction here. Instead of being epic and next-gen, he's getting smaller.
Initially, we were thinking to ourselves, This is a really cool idea, we should do this, but we just couldn't think of anybody who would do it right. And then we played the Daxter™ game that Ready At Dawn had done. And we thought, 'You know what? I think these guys can do it.' From a technology standpoint, these guys know their stuff. So that was a huge thing for us.
We didn't want to compromise anything in bringing Kratos to the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable). We didn't want anyone to think that we were making a PSP® version, meaning beyond whatever limitations of not having second analog stick provided, we didn't want anyone on the dev team to ay, 'You know, this is just the PSP® version, so let's just do this, etc.' These guys are treating it like a full-on console version.
What exactly did you see in Daxter™ that made you think, "Hey, these guys can do this"?
The scope and scale of the game's levels; the technology behind it. They kind of nailed what Jak & Daxter™ is all about. They had a good sense of pacing. I think that what they had done with overall pacing of the game was something I hadn't seen in a lot of PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) games. They really treated it like a console [version]. They didn't just say, "We understand we're making a portable version, so we'll just cut a lot of corners."
Did anything about the PSP® system surprise you?
If anything surprises me, it's how much you actually forget it's a small system. We started passing [development] kits around to a bunch of people, saying "Hey, check this out." Some of the people said, "Ah, I don't really like playing portable games." You know, they're more like, I want my big TV and my couch. Then they'd play it for like 20 minutes and really get into it. Those are big surprises for me, to convert people like that. The best compliment I've gotten so far is that this feels exactly like console version. Not in a derivative way, but in a I-can't-believe-this-feels like this way. That's a huge thing for me. I'm psyched about that.
You've spent a lot of time with Kratos over the past few years.
Yeah. we're like brothers. But he's a brother who would obviously kill me if I ever made him upset.
You know how married people start to finish one another's sentences? Is there anything in Kratos that's "Cory"? And anything in "Cory" that's Kratos?
I think that there are aspects of his character that I take on every once in a while, but only due to the fact that this job is so stressful. I vent sometimes, so we both kind of have that unbridled rage thing. I might break something, but I'm running around cutting people up.
You ever see that YouTube® video of that slightly obese kid dressed as Kratos walking down a hallway with belts? I feel like that guy. I love when he beats the phone. That's the greatest moment in the entire video. They stop, backtrack, do this slow-mo closeup on the phone. I do that every once in awhile; just rip the belt off and start beating a phone. It's therapeutic.
Do you ever have Kratos day at the office? You know where you all show up with no shirts on?
No. That would be more scary than therapeutic. I think people would be traumatized.
The God Of War® games have been 10 to 15 hour endeavors on the PlayStation®2. Are you tempering the length of the game at all on the PSP® system? Are you pacing it differently because you know that people are going to be playing it on buses and in airports?
There definitely is a little thought going into making sure that it does work on a portable system. But we're still creating the epic storyline. There are extras that we want to include to ensure there are pick-up-and-play moments, but at the same time, it's going to operate a lot like the console versions of the game. You are sitting down. You are going to have an adventure. The save points might be a little closer together, to sort of facilitate things like that, but we definitely do not want to turn it into a mission-based structure. It is one big adventure, just as it is in console versions.
Can you tell us anything about the storyline?
Story-wise, the game fills in information for questions that were asked not only in the first God Of War®, but in the second game as well. There are direct scenes in God Of War® 2 that tie into things we are doing in the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) version.
Ever get stumped while working on the game?
Generally, I lose a tremendous amount of sleep because of that. Because ideas never come when I want them to. When I really want to come up with something good, it usually comes at 3 a.m. [laughs] When I don't want it to. And then I can't go back to sleep. Getting through any sort of writer's block is just arguing a lot. There's a lot of trying to deny that it's happening. You know, just hrowing a bunch of crappy ideas on a wall, and realizing, "Hey, I suck." The biggest thing is pressure; coming up with something that people haven't seen before.
You have to feel some sense of relief after the success of God Of War® 2.
I didn't screw it up. I'm very very happy about that. [Laughs]
You seem to have a knack for making game-making.
I hope so. We'll see. The coming years will tell the true story of what I'm capable of. I'm definitely more comfortable with it now. But it's a lot of pressure still. I thought there would be more relief after God Of War® 2 came out, but there's still more. I think a lot of people are still wondering if you can do it on PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) and make it good. I think we're always going to be going beyond our comfort zone with this.
The whole Greek mythology narrative gives the God Of War® games a very sophisticated backbone. Are you well-versed in that stuff? Or, do you have to hire someone to do all the research for you?
I definitely have to get totally immersed. I can't let somebody else take care of it for me. I knew almost nothing about mythology when I started working at Sony®. I'd seen Jason and the Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. And I had read The Odyssey in high school, and really didn't understand it because I was so bored with it. And then I went back and re-read it, and I liked it a lot better when I wasn't in high school. But, yeah, I have done a tremendous amount of research on mythology to undrestand it and find relevant things about it.
The original storyline for God Of War® that wrote included everything I had learned in mythology. I spent three or four months completely immersing myself in every bit of source material. I didn't really realize that for people to enjoy it, it can't be filled with nine thousand characters, each totally interconnected, bizarre stories. Having to filter it down was tough. So, yes, I do it all myself, instead of having somebody else go off and do it for me.
One of the infamous secrets from the first game was the hidden phone number. Are you trying to continue the tradition of having these really unique, cool Easter Eggs in the PSP® version?
I really dig that old-school stuff. In the God of War® 2 strategy guide, at the bottom of every page, there was a Greek letter, and there was a whole code embedded in the strategy guide, which would lead you towards secrets. I love that kind of stuff. When I was kid, playing games, I loved these cool little bonuses, which always made you feel like you were the only one experiencing it. I will always include something like that, and hopefully push it further each time.
A lot of the kids out there will read this and think, Hey, I want to be Cory Barlog when I grow up. Any advice you'd give to those kids?
I dropped out of school, not because, yeah, dropping out of school is awesome. I just felt like I had learned a lot, and I could get a job, and in reality I couldn't afford school anymore. The big thing is, just play games. Play as many games as you can. And get good at analyzing games, breaking them down, and figuring out what makes a game good. And play a lot of bad games. That's a huge thing for me. I play an equal number of games going in that I know are bad, to identify exactly what's bad about it. I find good things in bad games. I think, This is terrible, but there was this one thing that they did that was really good, and if they could have taken this and put this somewhere else, it would have been fantastic.
It really is about being able to speak in a language that is familiar to people who work in games, to be able to talk about them, and break them down. That's what we're most impressed with here. We'll hire people with no experience. One of our designers was somebody who'd dropped out of med school. He decided, "Hey, I want to make games,." And he could break down a game more succinctly that someone who had graduated from a school where they taught game design. So, it really has very little to do with the education, and more to do with your critical analysis and communication skills.
I've heard people make the argument that games like God Of War® and Guitar Hero™ really don't do anything "new," but that they borrow game mechanics from other games and put them in a package we've never seen before. True?
Absolutely. Sometimes we end up doing something that we don't even realize are taken from somewhere else. There are a lot of times when we're inspired by other games, fighting games, the Versus series, and pretty much the entire Capcom library has inspired us. We owe a tremendous amount of thanks to the work that these guys have done.
Except for maybe God Hand™.
You know there were some cool parts of the game.
I can't believe you spent time playing it. That says a lot about who you are.
Look, man, I've spent time playing Barbie™ games at least halfway through. Great ideas are everywhere. It's just that people only recognize the things we've done that were inspired by Devil May Cry™ and Ninja Gaiden™. No one ever says, "Hey, I remember you took that game mechanic from Dora The Explorer™."
Ever see Jaffe around?
We play Pachinko once in awhile. But usually we end up drinking too much and getting into a fist fight. Then Itagaki has to break us up, then we end up getting into a fight with him. Then Miyamoto is like, "Look, dude, I'm leaving this is just out of control…"
Actually, Dave's in San Diego, so he's got his own thing down there. Every once in a while he'll come up and chat and he'll see what the latest is with us.
He never says, "I want to see what you're doing with my baby?"
No. He handed it off to me completely about halfway through God Of War® 2. He said, "I've got this other thing going on, I'm busy, and it looks like you're not screwing up." I pretty much took it from there.
