A warning to those who haven't played the game yet: there will be SPOILERS for a certain boss fight to follow. If you'd prefer to experience it on your own first, kindly look away (and go buy our game)! Otherwise, scroll down to begin the journey.
The God of War series has always had some spectacular opening boss fights: The Hydra, The Colossus of Rhodes, Poseidon and his water pony, among others. During these fights, the camera was usually zoomed out very far to show a sense of scale. This was because these fights all had one big thing in common: Kratos was fighting a massive foe. Get it? I said "big thing" because they're massive. More to come, folks!
We knew we needed to do something just as epic in the new God of War, so when it was decided that the opening boss fight of the game was going to be against a smaller humanoid that was only about as tall as Kratos' shoulder, we knew we were in for a big challenge. This is the (greatly condensed) story of how we created the boss fight with "The Stranger," aka Baldur.
The close camera would help to sell the impact of each punch. These were two gods trading blows, so each hit needed to resonate with incredible force. Much of our early development time was spent on the "feel" of the fight. We wanted the player to feel like a god fighting a god, with the environment around you paying the price.
We began with our animator, Fabian Johnston, doing some exploratory animations. These helped set the tone of the entire fight. It was not long before we had them running in the game, with a whole bunch of breakable objects sprinkled about. This first prototype focused on answering a few questions:
As you can see, things were pretty rough at this early stage. However, it was already fun to control Kratos versus Baldur and to experience all the over-the-top reactions while playing. It was especially fun trying to angle the camera to knock Baldur through trees and rocks. This early prototype helped set expectations on how the fight would feel in the end.
We also discovered one big bonus to fighting a smaller character like Baldur: he was more fun to beat up. Hitting Baldur and sending him flying 50 feet was way more satisfying than hitting a giant monster's hand. We played to this strength by making Baldur support almost all of our reaction states, such as being launched into the air or knocked back.
Around this time, our concept artist Stephen Oakley did some pre-visualization artwork of potential combat sequences for the fight, inspired by the early animations Fabian did. These helped spark even more ideas.
By now, we had a large bucket of cool things we wanted to try out for the fight. I created a design document next, planning out the key beats of the fight… not as exciting as Fabian's animations or Stephen's pretty sketches, so I won't post it. But, I did some work too! I promise.
Once we had a rough plan in place for the entire fight, we began implementing a rough skeleton for each phase, starting with the introduction when Baldur first appears at your door.
There's a lot more in the article where they take you through each step of creating this fight. You should check it out.
https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...-the-scenes-of-god-of-wars-first-boss-battle/
The God of War series has always had some spectacular opening boss fights: The Hydra, The Colossus of Rhodes, Poseidon and his water pony, among others. During these fights, the camera was usually zoomed out very far to show a sense of scale. This was because these fights all had one big thing in common: Kratos was fighting a massive foe. Get it? I said "big thing" because they're massive. More to come, folks!
We knew we needed to do something just as epic in the new God of War, so when it was decided that the opening boss fight of the game was going to be against a smaller humanoid that was only about as tall as Kratos' shoulder, we knew we were in for a big challenge. This is the (greatly condensed) story of how we created the boss fight with "The Stranger," aka Baldur.
The close camera would help to sell the impact of each punch. These were two gods trading blows, so each hit needed to resonate with incredible force. Much of our early development time was spent on the "feel" of the fight. We wanted the player to feel like a god fighting a god, with the environment around you paying the price.
We began with our animator, Fabian Johnston, doing some exploratory animations. These helped set the tone of the entire fight. It was not long before we had them running in the game, with a whole bunch of breakable objects sprinkled about. This first prototype focused on answering a few questions:
- How much can we push the godly reactions on both Kratos and Baldur before it starts feeling like too much?
- How far can we go with environmental destruction? How dense can we make the breakable trees and rocks before they start interfering with gameplay? Do these add enough to the feel of the fight to be worth pursuing?
- What size does the arena need to be to accommodate all of our other requirements?
As you can see, things were pretty rough at this early stage. However, it was already fun to control Kratos versus Baldur and to experience all the over-the-top reactions while playing. It was especially fun trying to angle the camera to knock Baldur through trees and rocks. This early prototype helped set expectations on how the fight would feel in the end.
We also discovered one big bonus to fighting a smaller character like Baldur: he was more fun to beat up. Hitting Baldur and sending him flying 50 feet was way more satisfying than hitting a giant monster's hand. We played to this strength by making Baldur support almost all of our reaction states, such as being launched into the air or knocked back.
Around this time, our concept artist Stephen Oakley did some pre-visualization artwork of potential combat sequences for the fight, inspired by the early animations Fabian did. These helped spark even more ideas.
By now, we had a large bucket of cool things we wanted to try out for the fight. I created a design document next, planning out the key beats of the fight… not as exciting as Fabian's animations or Stephen's pretty sketches, so I won't post it. But, I did some work too! I promise.
Once we had a rough plan in place for the entire fight, we began implementing a rough skeleton for each phase, starting with the introduction when Baldur first appears at your door.
There's a lot more in the article where they take you through each step of creating this fight. You should check it out.
https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...-the-scenes-of-god-of-wars-first-boss-battle/
