DEMO TIME!!!

The day has finally arrived!!! I got word the demos are in the office (yes…later than expected…thank you for pointing that out) so I am going in tomorrow morning and getting everything signed and set up. They should all go out by the end of the week. I am going to send NTSC demos to the PAL peeps and then send a PAL demo out when they get out of manufacturing. So those of you who did not get them from the Gamestops or EB’s will have one…those of you lucky enough to get one will now have two. Not sure what the hell you can do with two but knock yourself out!

Let’s see what else is new? I have a meeting tomorrow to discuss some of the early story ideas and work on fleshing it out a bit more. I still have a long road ahead of me before I am happy with everything, but it is a small step in the right direction.

OH! When I went to have dinner with the designers last week I got a pretty damn sweet surprise. They all chipped in and bought me a Wii!!! Pretty fucking sweet huh? Needless to say I was quite shocked…and though it may sound sappy…very moved by that. A lot of people have been asking me when I will feel like I have accomplished something. Will it be when the game is on store shelves and many are playing it? When the gamespot review goes live? Those will most definitely be great milestones but to be honest it was last week at Banderas, (the restaurant we ate at) when I realized how damned lucky I am to be doing what I do. We worked our asses off and we made a game we are all proud of…and I feel like…in some way I have been fully accepted into this team…into this role. That felt good. I don’t get many experiences like that in my life so I am relishing it a bit I guess.

I went down for a meeting with one of our external developers working on a project with us. It was a good time, got to talk shop with everyone and check out the latest progress on the game. It is looking good. I think it is really going to take a lot out of me to keep focus on two games at once, but in the end it will be pretty rewarding…plus I have total confidence in these guys, they are total pros. It made me miss doing animation though. I was chatting with their lead animator about some stuff and just that brief conversation took me back to the days where I just came in the office and put my headphones on and animated for like 9 hours straight. Those were very uncomplicated days. Though I guess if I honestly look back on it I think I actually made them much more complicated than they needed to be. I know I have a tendency to this…it is something I really need to work on. I stress myself out way too much. But such is the nature of the creative beast.

Anyway…it is late and I have to get up for a meeting tomorrow so I will sign off now. Thank you again to everyone for supporting this game and giving all your feedback. I love it, I really do hope you continue to provide it since you are the people we make the games for.

Here are some pics of the sweet wii…though I must be honest it was not everything I had hoped it would be. It was fun…but the wow factor wore off fairly quick. The one game I wanted to play, Trauma Center, was definitely a bit of a let down. The wiimote was woefully inaccurate and sapped the fun of the game. The Wii sports golf and bowling was cool…the boxing is freaking terrible though. In the end I hope to see some cool games come out of it, though it has me worried that the whole “what new thing can you do with the controller” fad will wear off after awhile and I will have left is a much slimmer wireless gamecube. Though the gamecuvbe gave me some great gaming moments so I am not all that bummed. I am still happier playing Zelda on my Gamecube…maybe I am just a luddite like that. Who knows?
















The unopened box...it was like christmas without the time off that I don't get to take. :)















It's a very petite machine with very petite components. Feels like something mac would make...maybe they will...they will make the ultimate gaming/ipod/phone/coffeemaker/toenail clipper that you absolutely can't live without. Thought it will be even smaller...and directly link to your brain, and steve job's brain. It will be the best...and I will buy one.














Very petite...I kind of like that since there really is no space left in my home theater cabinet. Big ups on that one nintendo!














Had a little drama getting the second wiimote to work. I did not figure you had to go in and set the machine to look for it. Maybe you don't have to, but I did. I changed the battery like 10 times thinking I was just an idiot. Turned I am an idiot, just not about the battery. go figure.

Thanks again guys, this was a really really cool gift!

Cory

UPDATE:

I got through signing and organizing of all the demos today so the mailing should start tomorrow. It took a little longer than I expected but it is all done now. Soon those without demos should be enjoying the sugery sweet goodness of the colossus level! And the game copmes out in 19 more days...kind of sucky it took so long for the demos to get to everyone..sorry about that...but better late than never I guess.

We are doing a Launch event at the Metreon in SF on March 12th..well midnight on march 13th I guess...so if anyone who reads ther blog lives near there you should come out and check it out and say hello. I will be there with a bunch of the team members and some of the celeb voice actors and such. Should be a good time.

late night refreshing!

So here I am recovering from a cold I got in Vegas from drinking waaay too much and sleeping waaay too little. I am sure you will all see the evidence of that in any of the babble filled interviews I did about the game. Anyway I am perched here in front of my computer hitting the refresh button on several gaming websites to see if any reviews have come up. Lame I know…but since this is my first the reviews do mean a whole lot more to me than they ever have. I have become so accustomed to not caring about the reviews of the game I work on that it is a real shock to the system to be unable to sleep until I see the first that pop up.

From what I understand from the marketing folks and the journo’s I met at D.I.C.E. the reviews should start popping up as early as midnight tonight…well this morning….fuck it…now. In the long run I don’t think it will be healthy for me to read the reviews too much, but since this is such a huge freaking deal to me here I am clicking the refresh button again.

I saw the game trailers preview…bummer about them not getting to finish. I think they ran into some of the issues the team fixed after the review code went out. That is the nature of the beast when sending out the disks before we go through the final steps of QA. I can’t wait to hear their responses when they get the final disks though.

I need to go to sleep…I am tired and this medicine I am on is making me drowsy…but I can’t…gotta’ see what the verdict is. So fucked up isn’t it? I am not someone who really needs outside validation to feel confident in the work I have done. I mean, I love the game, and I know we have done something great. But that is just me...and I am biased like a mother fucker. Oh well life’s a bitch I guess…we will just have to see what we will see.

Refreshing pages again…still nothing. The funny thing is I am probably the only sucker up…they are all most likely asleep nursing the aftermath of their D.I.C.E induced hangovers. Pathetic…me…not them.

Holy shit…the ign review is up…I am going to read it.

Holy shit…a 9.7…nice! After reading it I was expecting a sense of relief to just rush over me, but alas it has not. It is a great review and I am so incredibly psyched that they liked it, but I will hold my jumping around and dancing for when the game is actually on the shelevs. I think I need to just step back from everything now…maybe get back to work on the story I am fleshing out now and figure this fucker out. Still many details to work out! I just got a call from Nate, one of the designers, telling me about the review. I think a bunch of us are going to go out and have a nice celebratory dinner and a few drinks…that should be fun. I think I will need to get to sleep soon so I shake this freaking cold.

All right y’all…later!

cory

UPDATE:

here is the 1up review as well...pretty good. Doh...and I saw that Ken Z already beat me to the IGN review posting in his comment earlier. Nice catch man.

best post I have read yet...NEOGAF forum..."A 9.7. Ouch! I guess Cory messed up."

Man...if 9.7 is messing up...then I am ok with messing up now and again. :)

ANOTHER UPDATE:

The gamezone review is here...pretty cool stuff as well. Thanks to Eric for finding this one!!

KEEPING WIHT THE UPDATE THEME...NEW UPDATE:

The gamespy review is up...very cool to see they enjoyed the game. going off to enjoy some dinner with the God of War 2 guys soon...maybe I will write a new post tonight.

Oh my god a new update!!!

What is up God of War fans? Holy shit…over 200 comments. Man if I didn’t know any better than I would think that I am popular or something. Though I really know it is just that I am lazy and I haven’t done an update in awhile. What is new here in the land of Kratos? Let’s see…

The team has been hard at work crushing all the last minute bugs in the game and we have sent a disk off to Format QA…which is the last line of QA before we go to manufacturing. So it is close my friends…very close. The demo disks still have not arrived in office from manufacturing, I am expecting them in by Monday next week but it could go as late as Wednesday.

I busted out my cork board, index cards and post it notes…I have been chiseling away at the story and high level design on my next project. Almost my entire wall is covered with random ideas and plot points, now all I need to do is figure what works and what doesn’t. Looks like not much rest is in store for me as I need to really get a jump on what I am working on next. It’s not so bad though since I do enjoy this part of the development…though I am still going to try and get as much rest as possible.

Speaking of rest, I don’t think I will be getting much over the next few days as I am packing up to head off to the D.I.C.E. conference in Vegas today. I am going to do some press for the game and hopefully catch up with some friends that I haven’t seen in a while. I imagine that much drinking and very little sleeping will happen…but what the hell I have earned it, right?

I think many questions have been asked in the flurry of comments over the last week or so and I will try to get to them when I have a little more free time. I also need to do some maintenance on this blog since my images are all kinds of fucked up right now. Maybe I will do that when I get back from Vegas. VEGAS BABY...VEGAS!!!

All right…later!

My work here...is done.

Well maybe not "here" here...more like there...my work "there" is done...if the meaning of "there" is "God of War 2"...then that is what I mean. Anyway, today is Sunday January 28 and it is safe to say that all of the primary work for God of War 2 has been completed. There are still bugs to be worked out as the game goes through the final bit of Quality Assurance (QA), but for all intents and purposes I am done with everything I can do on the project. My break between projects begins on Monday, though I will probably go into the office to take care of a few last minute things. If definitely doesn’t feel done to me, most likely because it was so abrupt. I was on a very funky sleep schedule for the last week of the project working through the nights several days in a row…but its all gotten done. I have to give many thanks to the sound guys Phil, Todd, Paul, Mike, Paul for putting in some great work unders ome pretty tough conditions. I also need to thank the cinematics sound guys (Mike and Chris) who drove up on a moments notice from San Diego and stayed up all night working on the movie mixes. The game sounds freaking awesome!!

As far as the billion questions Mr. (or Mrs. Anonymous posted)…you wouldn’t happened to be a journalist would you? I will try to answer some of them, but forgive me if I miss a few I am still trying to recover and get back on a regular sleep cycle.

The weapons switching is a single button (R2) and it is fast and easy. There is no animation delay and you can switch from the Blades of Athena in mid move to The Barbarian Hammer, do a big hit, and then switch to any of the four magic’s to hit the creature some more, and if you like (and the creature is still alive) you can switch back tot he Blades of Athena to do the final kill move…all while keeping your combo going. While everyone on the internet loves to say “Hey that is such a (insert game here) rip-off” or “They stole that from (insert game here)”…what they don’t realize is when someone does something cool in a game…everyone notices it. When I play a game and they do something cool I look at how they did it and file that away to use later. That isn’t to say that everything about the games we make is just found or borrowed from some other game, but when something really works well there is no reason not to use it. Some call it stealing; I call it realizing when something works. I’m not sure how much you can compare our weapon switching to DMC, my guess is all the DMC purists will say that DMC’s is better…whatever. The whole point for us was to give the player the freedom to switch whenever they wanted while still maintaining the easy to use accessible controls. So when the game comes out you will have to let me know if we succeeded.

As for the usage of the original magic’s from God of War 1…we were not able to get the full “everything you had from the first game crosses over to the second” functionality we originally set out to do. There just was not enough memory for that, but we did add some cool stuff for the second play-through of the game in the form of Urns that you find that allow you to assign a power or fiunctionality to whatever model you choose. So if you want to use Poseidon's Rage again you can, you just have to find the Urn that gives you that power hidden somehwere in the world of God of War 2.

This is a nicer shot of that Gamestop post the other day. This is going to be the cover for the Hardcore gamer magazine that comes out at the end of the month. They are gonna be giving some info on Atlas, so check it out!

In regards to the demo, it has been out in QA for a while now and is on target to get finished and pressed in the beginning of February. I have the list of people that will be getting demos and they should be the first to go out! So keep an eye out for a posting about that.

The website should be up soon, I looked at the final comps of that on Friday and it looks sweet. I think it could be up in as little as a week or so.

All right I am going to go relax a little bit and maybe play the rest of Gears of War. I am finally got into it a little and am at the Berserker boss. Man…one hit kill boss…that cliffyb is hard to the core. And I am playing on casual mode too. Yeah I know…but I like to get through a game once before I have it kick my ass on difficulty. Anyway…I am going to take some time and post again tomorrow…maybe with some more pics.


cory

The final blurry days...

Here are a couple of cool images I just got from marketing showing some of the gamestop promo stuff that is starting to appear. It is a pretty firm reminder to me that we are almost done with this long, long journey. Well there's that and the fact that we are shipping our disc to FPQA in the next 24 hours...if everything goes right. I got home around 1:45am or so this morning (which is nothing compared to the hours the rest of the team is putting in) after our marathon two day playtest we just finished. It went really well, with great responses and test scores all around. The game seems to be pretty tight...we just made some last minute adjustments to fight difficulty and the overall economy of the games upgrading system. Of course I would love to have another playtest...maybe even two...but that is not in the cards. I am confident that we have got everything shored up though. And the game length has stay right around 15-17 hours...so that is pretty freaking sweet! I slept into day so I could be ready for the all nighter session I have tonight going over the whole game for the final sound mix approval. The really cool thing is all the final movies will be in with their sound mixes as well...so this will be my first playthrough seeing everything as it should be. I was supposed to sleep until 3pm or so but I just couldn't get back to sleep...to anxious. I am sure everything will work out fine, but knowing that after today I will not be able to go in there and make changes is pretty scary. This usually happens to me with whatever I am working...but this time it is on such a large scale that my brain just wont shut up...I am going over every detail constantly to make sure there wasn't something I missed. (I am sure there will be many things I missed)




















What else is new in the world of God of War? The demo's are getting closer, unfortunately I still don't have a rock solid date for them yet..they need to go through QA and then manufacturing so I would rather not just throw a date out without really knowing. But when they are ready I will post something and let everyone know about it.

I think I am going to be starting my hiatus soon...still working out the specifics on it. I will need to get back to work pretty soon so I can't start fleshing out the next project I am going on. I think it is going to be a pretty big one...but nothing is set in stone so I won't talk about it too much now. But I will give you a hint...the duff sisters have agreed to play a major part in it, and it is an MMO, and it has all the teen stars of today in it, with guns, and orcs...cause really...orcs just make a game better...am I right? Actually I really haven't even wrapped my head around the whole thing yet, so there isn't much to talk about anyway. As much as I didn't want to, I think I will end up working on it over the break just so I can get a head start and hit the ground running. I think it would be impossible for me not to be working it out over the break...though I really want to try and step away from all that stuff at LEAST two weeks. Here's to hoping I can do it!

Oh and to the anonymous poster who wrote about the Typhon story...I think you might have written me a message on myspace a couple days ago as well, sorry for not responding...Keep an eye out for the game though, as I think you will be pleasantly surprised when it comes out. :)

'aight...gotta go to work.

It's coming...

I came into the office today to play through what will be our final submission to QA for the demo. I was checking the sound mix and making sure everything is good to go...we are still tracking down a few sound volume issues but for the most part the demo is done and ready to go out. I am really freaking excited to finally get this game into some fresh hands and hear the feedback on it. So to celebrate this monumentus occasion I thought I would post a copy of the demo cover art for your enjoyment. It is a pretty sweet image...one of the concept artists (Andy Park) whipped this image up awhile back and I am a huge fan of it.

We are still on track to get the demo out in the early part of next months so when I get the word that the demos are in I will post something and let you guys know that your discs will be showing up soon!! Sweet...Christmas in February.

Let's see...what else is new? Well we are going to have all of our final movies and sound mixing done this Wednesday and then the full game will be going through its last round of QA stuff...so in only a few short days I will have reached the point where I really can't change much. I think that is going to be hard for me. As much as I need a break and some time off...and to just let this thing go...I know it is going to be hard to know that I can't make any more tweaks or changes. You have to let it go sometime...but since this is my first...it makes it that much harder. Hopefully Old grandma Hardcore will play the game on titan mode and cuss up a storm...thus giving me, and the rest of the team, a true sense of accomplishment! :)

Speaking of Titan mode...no that is not a rumor. We still have four difficulty modes in the game, (3 available right away and one unlocked after beating the game) but we have really tweaked the higher difficulty levels...so much so that God mode no longer felt the "hardest". So now we have "titan" mode...and let me tell you it is freaking hard...doable of course...but hard. The demo only has one difficulty available, but the final game will keep those of you who appreciate the challenge buys for awhile I think.

I think I saw someone ask a question about DEMETER in the comments...unfortunately Demeter is not in the game. I wrote a story originally that had her and her daughter Persephone and several other gods in it, but it never really felt right for what we wanted to do with God of War 2. But there might be something in the game in relation to an earth based magic though...so you had half of the info right. Keep an eye out for more info on that. I think we have a cover story in next months Hardcore Gamer magazine that will talk more about where you get this magic from.

As the project begins to wind down I find myself starting to think about all the games I have missed out on because of the crazy crunch to get this game done. And then I think of the time off I will probably get between this and whatever it is I am going to be doing next. (cough, cough) And to show how truly freaking nerdy I am I actually wrote up a list of all the games (some I have started and some I have not) I want to get to now that I am looking down the barrel of a sweet vacation. I broke it down by system even...man I need to get a life outside of games....though honestly doing this stuff actually makes me happy so I guess I don't need to get a life...I already have one. Just one that most talk show hosts, politicians, nutritionists, and Zealots would not approve of. Who cares...fuck them it my world right? I will just embrace my pseudo Howard Hughes like love for "shut in" gaming goodness and hope that over the break I do this so much that I am bored...and itching to create again. That is really what I need to do...I need to get bored so I can reignite that creative flame (cheesy I know) and prepare for another huge, in your face crazy gaming opus. Perhaps I am giving myself too much credit with the "opus" part but oh well...that is how I roll.

Anyway...here is what I got...feast on my nerdyness:

Xbox360
Oblivion (Need to Finish)
Gears of War (Need to Finish)
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Splinter Cell: Double agent
LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 2
Lost Planet
Just Cause (Need to Finish)
Call of Duty 3
Dead Rising
Tomb Raider: Legend (Need to Finish)
Hitman: Blood Money (Need to Finish)
G.R.A.W. (Need to Finish)
Condemned: Criminal Origins (Need to Finish)
Saints Row (Need to Finish)

PS3
Resistance: Fall of Man (Need to Finish)
Tony Hawk: Project 8

PS2
Bully
MGS3
GTA: San Andreas (Need to Finish)
Final Fantasy XII (My god this is one going to take forever)
DMC3 (Need to Finish)
Silent Hill 3

Gamecube
Zelda: Windwaker (Need to Finish)
Zelda: Twilight Princess

PC
W.O.W. + some Burning Crusade loving
Titan Quest (Need to Finish)

Jesus that is a lot of games I need to play. There really is no possible way I am going to be able to finish them...but I am going to try and polish off some of the big ones that I have been jonesing to play. (Like MGS3) We will see. I will probably be posting a lot more during that time and lurking around the forums to see how the game is being received...god I hope it is good.


OK enough for today...I am going to go check on the build and see if we have everything sewn up and ready to go.

Cory

UPDATE FOR THE METRIC SYSTEM!!!

Ok so here is a little shout out to all my PAL brotha's and sista's....in order to spread the God of War 2 loving evenly around to the masses I have just gotten confirmation that we WILL in fact be doing a PAL demo of the sweetness that is God of War 2...so rest assured my European brethren...you will be rocked by the demo of God of War 2!

All of you who sent in demo requests from far off lands (far off from L.A. that is) will be rolling with a brand new sweet PAL copy of the demo...why...because you freaking rock...and don't let anyone tell you different.

So stick that in your pipe and le' smoke it! YEAH!!! (Currently I am striking the sweet "Zelda" I just opened a chest pose!)

Hopefully that will bring a little belated christmas joy to everyone!

ok...back to work for me.

cory

"No, man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is." -- John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction"

GOW 2...Grandma approved!

So today will just be a mini update as I am worn out and not all that enthusiastic about sitting at the computer for much longer. I am as tired as I look in the IGN video :) It is funny how many people say that to me now…though I looked a hell of a lot worse around alpha and beta. I really need to start sleeping more. Not sure how much of an improvement it is going to be even when I do sleep though…I think I am one of those perpetually tired looking people…like Vince Vaughn and Susan Sarandon. We are members of the “Oh god I am tired” club. It’s a pretty sweet club…we have a secret handshake and everything…though we are usually too tired to do it.

Did some tuning of the final boss this weekend and make some huge leaps forward. We have been struggling with this boss for awhile trying to figure out what to do with him. We have this huge collection of ideas that never really felt right to us…but finally we hit a moment of clarity and really honed in on what the fight should be about. Derek (The combat guy tackling the Herculean task…and no that is not a hint as to who he is...the boss that is not Derek. I suppose he is quite Herculean for a vegetarian.) and I decided to just step back and rethink a few things and really just throw away things that didn’t work. Once we stripped the boss down and got out all the clutter it was like “Oh shit…there it is. I can see it now.” I love those moments. Not only because they mean we are close to being done…but also because they really feel like a nice victory. And right now we really needed that victory with all the last minute chaos going on. But the good news is the End Time is near!! And when it comes I hope that you are all as into the game as we are. Except for bruceleethree on the IGN boards…he is obviously disappointed in what we have done. J Just kidding bruce...I think it is cool that you stood up and said what you said…but hopefully you check the game out when it comes out so you can see what we have done with it.

About the demos…there seems to be a lot of people posting their email addresses saying send the demo here. Just to clear things up…I am not sending out a digital version of the demo. It will be a NTSC disc that will be sent out to the peeps who responded a while back when I posted about it. Sorry to all who are hoping to get one now, but I am already waaay over the number I originally set out for. For the people who are hoping for a PAL demo, I am really, really sorry but with the time frame we have in front of us there just is not enough time to get both a PAL and NTSC demo done. I would love to do that, but I really want to ship this game on time. So many apologies to my non NTSC homies but you can revel in the fact that you most likely use the metric system…which while I do not understand it…I know it is far superior to the Scientific American system. So there you go!

Hmmm…this is turning into a bigger post than expected…oh well I shall continue on. I suddenly got inspired to buy a little present for myself last week. I honestly thought it would take much longer than it did to arrive…but Saturday morning I took delivery of my sweet new Astro City arcade cabinet with Marvel Superheroes.
















This is a really sucky picture of the actual cabinet. My camera phone is wicked ghetto...I thought it might be good but alas it is so very not.

















This is a much better photo of pretty much the same thing...the "suck" has been removed.

I am looking to pick up Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which is the main reason I bought the thing. That freaking game rules. I still suck ass at it, but who knows maybe I will get better from the countless hours that both I and my buddy Ralph Macchio will be spending on it. Who better to learn the ancient arts from than the Karate Kid?

The cabinet is pretty damn sweet, but the one downfall is that it smells like red curry. Not like a little bit either…a freaking lot…which is pretty dope if you loves you some red curry I suppose. While I enjoy the red curry…it is not so great to have the house smell like it. I will have to do some serious disinfecting and scent removal.

Not much else going on really…perhaps that is a little sad now that I think about it. But our game is going final soon so I will have more time to have a life I suppose. I think I will play a few rounds of Marvel before I retire this evening.











Man I so lied...this was way more than a mini update. I must have channeled the power of the double "K".

Cory

The End Begins...

...in 62 days!! Today’s image is our new mascot for the Santa Monica Studios. Sadly, Beta, the “Chuck Norris” of mascot cats has passed on in what is being called a freak accident involving a hedge-trimmer, a 73 Dodge Dart, and a middle-aged Tae Kwon Do expert with an overbite named Floyd. He had an overbite and his name was floyd...it wasn't some guy who had an overbite he had named floyd...that would just be weird. The details are still sketchy at this time, but we have The Scooby team looking into it. Meanwhile life must go on, so we brought in our second in command in the mascot world, “Almost Final” the Dog. You may not know it from looking at this deceptively cute canine, but “Almost Final” trained under world renowned sensei and master blues guitarist Steven Segal in the ways of Aikido. I once saw “Almost Final” Tear a man limb from limb using only a pair of toenail clippers and a sippy cup straw for cutting in line at the Jamba Juice. Never get between “Almost Final” and his morning hit of wheat grass…it is not pretty. As you can see “Almost Final” is a big God of war fan. I think it is the first canine in history to participate in Video game cosplay…but don’t quote me on that…and never make fun of his slightly edgier “crossplay” Sailor Moon outfit.

So here we are just days away from another milestone for God of War 2 and the studio is buzzing with sounds many bugs being closed. I am not sure what exactly it sounds like when a bug is closed…but whatever that sounds it…it is being heard quite a lot.

We are going to be breaking off the demo code pretty soon and tuning the final tuning pass on the demo level so that is pretty damn exciting. It means that those of you who emailed earlier about the demo will soon be holding your sweet copy of the God of War 2 Demo…looking all bad ass and glistening in the sun…the demo…not you. Of course if you choose to oil yourself up before playing the demo that is your business…I am not here to judge. No firm date on when that stuff will go out yet but rest assured that when I know…you will know.

IGN is stopping by for a visit tomorrow to check out the latest stuff so that ought to be fun. I still wish we had more time before we show stuff…but I am going to feel like that all the way up to the street date…and probably many weeks beyond that. Such is the nature of my OCD I guess. Anyway it will still be nice to get some fresh eyes on this thing and see what their reaction is. Let’s hope it is a good reaction J I believe they are going to put it up pretty quickly but not 100% sure as to when so keep an eye out.

I need to get to a character tuning session now so I will end this update here, but I will probably come back to it later in the day to blab on about some more cool stuff that is going on in the wonderful word of carnage and brutality.

Another funny thing of note…some of the titles I use have yielded some funny results on the visitors. I saw that someone entered a google search string of “Don’t date an Beta male” and ended up here…hopefully that person is still checking in on the blog as I will be starting a ten part series on “the beta male and you.”

Word

Cory

Happy freaking New Year!

Wow…lots of stuff to cover today. I will try and answer as many questions as I can as well as update the progress of all things God of War 2. With Beta behind us and the final disk just a short distance away things are quite hectic around the God of War ranch.

First let me comment to all about the release issue. It was no easy decision to push the date back, and we weighed all the options before pushing forward with that plan. I know it sucks…I know this because I play a ton of games and I too hate it when they get pushed back numerous times. But when the game I have been waiting for comes out and it is good, then I am thankful they took the extra time to make it good instead of shoving it out the door just to make a buck. I don’t want to do that as I think it is freaking lame. Of course we are not pushing it back so much that you could call the game "God of War 2: Forever" or anything. Anyway we pushed the date back to March for the sole reason of making sure this game fucking rocks. Hard. I hope when it is released that you all share that same sentiment.

As for the cut scenes…yes…we are having both high resolution cut scenes and in game cut scenes to progress the story along…so no worries there. I know I am biased, but I really think the cut scene work on this game is such an incredible step forward from what we had on the last game, but I will let you all be the judges on that one when the game comes out. Please come back and comment on stuff …good or bad. I love to hear feedback from people.

Let’s see…the demos! Well good news is we are working on the content for that stuff right now…which is looking pretty freaking sweet in my totally biased opinion. We are doing a final asset lock on the 12th of the month and then finishing the final balancing and tweaking and sound mixing and then we are good to freaking go. There is still some time left, but the end is in sight and let me tell you it feels fucking great to see that. We have worked pretty hard for the last two years and I know I am eager to get this thing out in front of people. (And take a vacation) When we finish the final tuning and then manufacturing on the demos I will make a post about when they will be sent out. My free time is not too abundant these days so I can’t really go through the list and let everyone know who is getting a demo…but rest assured that if you sent an email in that you will be getting one. There was a little mess up on my part the first day, but only two people were affected and they sent in like four other emails after so it is totally cool.

We had a playtest over the Christmas break which went pretty well. The game still has some balancing issues that came to light which we are resolving now but overall it went good. We also found a little issue with the clarity of the story that I am working out but nothing too major. Other than that the team is working like mad to get the last minute touches and polish in on the game…we are on our last of the big late night pushes until the 12th. I am sure there will be some more late nights after that though.

Well I want to sit and just write a bunch more about what is going on and such but I think I need to get back to work.

UPDATE:

Here is a link to the God of War 2 Kratos action figure being done by NECA...it is really freaking sweet! These guys rock the house that rocks the house.

WE MADE BETA BITCHES!!!!

Sweeet! God of War 2 is officially beta now. I searched on google images for the word beta and this image came up in the top three…so this is now the god of War 2 Beta mascot…beta the kitten. Don’t be fooled by the innocent exterior this is actually most vicious kitten to ever live. It has already killed 57 people including a local orphan boy that looked at it funny. You don’t mess with beta…ever!

We are burning some discs for everyone to take home over their holiday break and play. So it will be a God of War 2 Christmas for some…hopefully they will all come back with a ton of good notes and we will spend all of January fixing up and polish the game to make is super mint!!! I can’t wait to finish this thing and get more people playing it.

As for the idea that we pushed back so why don’t we add some levels…we pushed back to make sure everything we have now is as tight and clean and fun as it can be. We are using that extra time to make the game solid not to add more stuff to it and release a buggy game. So no luck on that….and for the special edition…I think it would take way more than a few weeks to do that so I don’t see that happening right away.

As for the demo we are still looking to finish that thing up in Jan. as well so I will keep you posted on the status of that and make a big post when the demo’s get shipped out to everyone. It will be friggin’ sweet.

Ok I am out to lunch now.

cory

GOW2...sweet...like Monkey's in Space.

Well here we are on Beta day…things are moving right along but we are still tracking down some progression stoppers on the disc. Hopefully we will be able to iron out these latest bugs and get a disc burned that is super clean. I think we have until Friday to ensure we have a really clean disc, this way we can get a solid playtest over the holidays.

I am really looking forward to the next playtest since we really haven’t had a playthrough that has been bug free enough to have players use the same saves the whole way through. I need to see how players are upgrading and what they are getting at what point in the game to get a good snapshot of the overall item placement and economy. I am feeling pretty good about the pacing right now, but that tends to change from playtest to playtest. But with this one I think we will be much closer to what the “entire” game needs to feel like, then it will just be a matter of polishing and nitpicking several little elements and fights. This is the fun part of the game’s development. The part where everyone on the team gets to playthrough what we have been slaving away on for the last two years and see the fruits of their labor. It is always good to get the notes from the team as well in regards to what they liked, what was too hard or too easy or just plain not fun. January is going to be a tough month, but I know we will pull it together and come out on top with a freaking great game!!!

But right now I know we are all just looking forward to our holiday break. The team is exhausted from this last push. I feel like a freaking zombie most of the time and I definitely need the cool down time to recharge the creative juices…cuz seriously right now I am hanging on by a thread.

Oh the holiday party was really good as well. I drank a little too much and luckily made it home thanks to the super sweet L.A. cab system. It was a rough next day…even though we were able to come in after 1pm.

Got a PS3 recently, but haven’t really been able to check it out much. I hooked it up, but after that I only had the energy to check out the first level of Genji and then go to sleep. The game looks great, but it really doesn’t feel as good as I was hoping. I will have to give it another go over my break…but first I wan to sit and get some time with Gears of War and see what all the hubbub is about.

Well I need to get back to work but first I will try and answer some of the numerous questions you posed in the last post:

Will Icarus wings be in the game?
Hell yeah…that is how we roll…Daedalus style.

Will the Icarus wings be remodeled?
What we now is final and looks freaking sweet. Not sure what you saw but it was most likely older.

When will the full website be up?
No clue on this one. I can find out but things are so busy that I am sure I will forget to ask about that.

Barbarian Hammer…info on the weapon?
This will be a weapon that Kratos will take from the Barbarian King if you can defeat him. I can’t say too much now, but I can tell you it is pretty sweet. Granted I am fairly baised. I can tell you that when you take these weapons from enemies, you keep them for the rest of the game.

Is it true that you are in fact Bionic?
Yes. This si not something I normally talk about but yes I am in fact bionically enhanced to rock the fucking house. While my bionic enhancements were far cheaper than siz million dollars they still cost a pretty penny. I also make that cool nahnahnahnahnah sound when I walk, run, jump, and climb stairs.

Is there going to be a Chimera in the game?
Sadly no…we worked on that one for awhile but in the end we found that we just did not have the time to get many of the characters we originally planned for the game up to the level we wanted them…and when we needed to readdress the scope of the game a while back it really did not seem sensible to have so many enemies.


Ok…so there you have it….a little informal Q&A for y’all to tide you over a few days until the next update when I shout from the mountaintops “WE MADE BETA BITCHES!!!!” I could not answer all the questions since some of the info is still unreleased…so sorry if your question did not get answered.

Aight’…peace out.

GOW2...tightening up the graphics on level 3!

8 days to our beta disk and things are shaping up rather nice. We are still scrambling to get things together and "tightened up" which is causing us to put in some more late nights but the good thing is we have our company Christmas party tonight so the team will get a little break from the grind to toss a few back and eat some good food.

Today Nate and I went through and tuned the last of the fights based on our last playtest noptes and then wnet through and did all the save point names and area announces. That stuff seems simple but man is it hard coming up with short names for locations of the game. I had a handful in mind already but there were a few that threw us. We were doing a lot of the old "shift-F7" in word trying to find clever words for things. But we got it done so I can cross that task off my list. New week I need to go through all hte in game messages and make sure they are all good to go. Not the most exciting part of the job, but it is none the less important.

We had a big breakthrough with our Pegasus stuff this last week as well. Eric and Thomas put some stuff in that really locked the melee combat. I mean it is like a billion times better than it has ever been so I am eternally grateful to them for thier perseverence on that stuff.

Well this is not much of an update but I got to go start getting ready for the party since cocktails start at 6:30 and I am not one to ever be late for cocktails. Though I don't imagine I will be telling anyone to go fuck themselves in the grotto tonight.

I will see what I can do about getting that video up but I can't promise anything as I am sure I will get caught up in so many things and forget to do the legowrk on the video thing...so when I sit down to do my next update I will do so empty handed.

Oh one other thing regarding the whole release date rumor...as far as I know the game releases in North America first and then europe but from what I understand the time in between releases will be REALLY short. Not sure exactly how long but it I don't imagine it being months or anything.

allright...for real this time. I got to get ready because I really don't want to be late for the opening band they have playing tonight...based on my last posts and fascination with swedish rock bands of the 80's sony has gotten the all swedish rock cover band "Fjords!" They play songs from Europe, Ace of Base, Abba, and Hoven Droven! Maybe Dave will get up and bust out a keyboard solo?

word.

cory

It's the fiiiiinal countdowwwn!!!

Ok so today is December 4th and we go beta in 16 days. We still have a lot of work to do, but nothing I don't think we can't complete. It is going to be a rough next few weeks, but there will be a nice mini break for the holidays to recover from the final rush to the "almost" finish line. After the holidays we will be doing the final gameplay tuning and orb/economy balancing as well as finish up any last minute stuff we were unable to get to for beta. We still got a wild ride ahead of us.

But as for now...the game is looking great. We had another full game playthrough last week and the gameplay time was a little higher than last time. In fact the playtesters did not even finish in the alotted time we had for the playtest. The grouping we got this time was more leaning towards the casual players. I thoiught they were going to be a bit more fo the casual hardcore players, but it didn't turn out that way. But there was still a lot I learned from watching them play and work through the various combat scenarios and puzzles. the good thing is we are pretty locked on all the games puzzles...there really isn't much we need to do with them besides finishing up the final implementation and art...which is sweet since there is still many combat scenarious that are in need of some attention to get them to 100%.

Let's see what else is going on...amidst all this chaos of making beta I had to move into a new apartment. I was bidding on a townhouse but the deal just went south and I decided to cancel it and go with the renting for a year or so more. The market out here still sucks anyway so it is for the best. The only problem was I had to find an apartment, pack and move in basically 24 hours. That...freakin....sucked. But in the end it got done and now I don't have to worry about it. Though I am feeling like I rasn myself down so much last wek that I am getting sick this week. I feel the beginings of a cold...that drowsy stuffed up thing. I hate that.

Ok enough about that boring crap...more about God of War 2. Ariel edited together a collection of footage from God of War 2 for the Sony gameshare show in London and we screened it for the team on Friday. She did the thing in a night and it looked freaking great. It really did a lot to fire the team up for this last push. Well at least I hope it fired the team up since it got me psyched. We used a piece of music that was recored over in the chezch republic (or something like that) last month. Very cool live choir and orchestra...really gives a sense of power to the movie.

Saw some more progress ont he GOW Kratos figure last week. They sent the painted version of the sculpt which looks great. We are getting pretty close to finish it up. Hopefully it will be comepletely done by the end of the month so I can show off some pics.

Finally got to play some Gears of War this weekend. Not for long mind you, but at least I got some time with it. Spent about 30 minutes playing and it does look good, but I am not totally sucked in yet. I am sure it will get better, but it feels a bit generic right now. Could just be that I really didn't get to sit and focus on playing it though, or it could be the whole prisoner who has to save the world thing is a bit too Tango and Cash for me. Ok well maybe not Tango and Cash...I was just looking for a way to force a Tango and Cash reference in there because Tango and Cash RULE!!!! I do like the idea that you can choose to skip the tutorial section...that is really sweet. I also really like the one button cover system though...clean and simple. Seems many of the designers hate it because they never know what you are going to do...it made sense to me though. After about 5 minutes I felt fairly comfortable with it. The Grenade throwing thing is a little odd for me though. I keep throwing them short. Anyway...hope to get to play some more. Probably after this game ships. :)

Also...just a reminder for the other who commented...the demos will not be out until the end of January at the very earliest. We are focusing 100% on making the game great right now...so the demo will be the first task when that is done. But I think it will be worth the wait though.

aight...gotta get to work now.

P.S.

Europe rocks...I was in a tribute band before I was in the game biz...this is a recording of one of our more rocking shows. We rocked that county fair like nobodys buisness. Asses were kicked. Thats dave Jaffe on the keyboards kickin the mad solo. hahahahahahaha...

The unbearable lightness of Beta...

I am alive muhuhwahahahahahahaha!! So after a little blogging hiatus due to an increasing amount of work on the game I have decided to stick my head up for a minute to give a little update on the progress of God of War 2.

First…sorry about the lack of clarity on the demo’s…those will not be going out until we finish the demo…which will not be until late January at the earliest. So keep an eye out for a post that will let you know when the demo is done and ready to be shipped out.

And now on to the updates about the game….we had our first full game playtest recently which went pretty well. Our average playtime was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 hours…so that is good. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to polish this thing up, but seeing it in it’s completed from was really good for us. I got to see a lot of the areas that felt good on their own, but in the context of the whole game they felt a little off…so lots of good tuning notes. This was also the first time anyone has played through the game and experienced the entire story, so I got a lot of good notes on clearing up loose ends and reinforcing things that were a little unclear.

Nearly all the game art is in the game in some form or another and is looking fucking fantastic…now the artists are working to finalize and optimize everything. It is a tough time for everybody, but it is also a very exciting time in the development of the game since everything is finally coming together and starting to look like a real game as opposed to the small fragments we have been working with for so long.

We are working pretty long days from now until the end of Beta (end of Dec) so my updates may not be as frequent but I am sure you all will understand.

I got to listen to some of the entries in the God of Noise battle fo the bands thing…pretty cool stuff. I haven’t listened to them all yet, but I think I will have to get on that since the selects need to get made soon.

We are also getting closer to finishing the sculpt for the Kratos action figure…which looks freaking sweet! I can’t wait to see them finished. Not sure when that one will be coming out but imagine it will sometime near the games release.

Also about the guest speaker…he was going to do something last week but due to our schedules getting more hectic it did not happen…I am sure he will do something soon, but I don’t have the time right now to arrange it. So it will just be a random surprise.

All right I need to get back work now.

cory

High fives

So we have done it! The God of War 2 team has made alpha and now, after Sensi Steven Segal went around the office in the "high five" pose (pictured to left) and congratulated everyone, the team is enjoying a few days off to relax and recharge for our push to Beta and finally Gold. It was cool that Steven decided to take a break from his rigorous touring schedule with his band Thunderbox to stop by and give us "High fives". We like "High fives" and especially like reciving them from the ass kicking hand of Steven Segal. We are forever indebted to the 'mojo priest' as he is referred to in some circles of the music world. I believe that Clay Aiken and the last surviving members of Menudo also run in those same circles. I probably shouldn't say anything bad about him as he can kick my ass up and down the street six ways to Sunday.

Anyway, the alpha build went smoothly, much smoother than our alpha build for God of War 1...Though I am not sure if that means anything. I am sitting down today and playing through the game as whole...So that should be fun.

I once again ran around the office with my sweet cam...Though I still didn't get to get as many pictures as I wanted to...That whole alpha thing kept getting into he way. So here is some random images of the team on Alpha day!


This is Jason. (Tech Artist) What can I say about Jason that the Weekly World news has not already said? He is the guy we call when the game breaks and we can't figure it out. He and the other tech artists do their damndest to make sure everything is running smoothly with the tools. I imagine that sometimes that is not always the most fun job. As seen in the picture Jason's passion for peace is only rivaled by his love of unicorns. They are pretty much his favorite animal, mostly because of thier prefferred skill being magic and all. Jason likes Magic. But not that creepy movie about the dummy...that movie scared him as it scared us all.


This is Adam (combat designer) and Joel (AP) discussing why Night Elves suck and the benfits of "Magic Missle". Actually they are probably scrambling to get one of the creatures or bosses to work on the alpha disk.


This one is a little far away...it seems I try to keep my distance from everyone when taking photos because I half expect them to grab the camera like Sean Penn and clock me one in the jaw. So anyway...this is Wade (Effects guy) and Artak (cinematics animator) arguing over who they think will be americas next top model. Well that and making sure our Alpha presentation of cinematics is the best it can be. In the foreground is Tim (animator) who was misatkenly said to be the lead animator on a DMC board in response to my last post about him and Jason playing DMC3. A post that made me laugh since they used the word pwned or pwnage or something like that. I still can't understand why people who like DMC hate God of War so much. I personally am a fan of DMC...though the begining of the first one had some horrible camers in first room of the castle...and that whole slide on the bodies thing ala Legalos in DMC3 is kind of lame. Otherwise it is a cool game...can't we just all get along?


This…is the empty desk of one of our designers Johnny. Johnny was unable to be in the office during the alpha push because he got in an accident...on his 'Big Chief' edition scooter. Yeah I think now is the time to say that we have some bad luck…or dare I even say curses going on with this project. Since we have started several designers have gotten into automobile accidents, which only seems to compound my stress with this project. Johnny has a leg/ankle broken in three places and has to have some crazy surgery. His presence was missed. Sweep the leg Johnny! In the background you can see Jo (designer) feverishly working on some level implementation and psychically sending her thoughts of healing via the power of crystals to Johnny.


This is Michael (Lead Level Designer) Nate (Designer with the pink shirt) and Fabrice (Programmer and all around french guy) troubleshooting some problems with the build.


This is Chris (Environment Artist) and Lois (Environment Artist whose name I most likely got wrong or spelled wonrg...because I suck) working on tightning up the graphics on level 3. Now that right there...that was really funny...but only if you have seen the dope commercials for Westwood college school of game design. This is by far the most realistic depiction of game design I have ever seen. Seriously, it is scary. It was like they put a hidden camera in our office and then just aired the resulting footage. If you go there...you will go far...and have tight graphics on level 3.


This is a shot Mark (Camera guy) scrambling to get the millions of things he has on his list done for the alpha burn later int he day. He along with Paul (designer) are the only ones doing the camera for this game, which is a massive task for them to take on. Big ups to them.


And here is what all of our hard work and sacrifices have yielded...the sweet ass alpha disk you see here. What you see is not only important because of the year and a half of blood sweat and tears this team gave, but it is also the alpha disk of my first game directing experience. Big milestones all around. Here's to me not fucking it up...so far that is.

We still have a lot of work to do in order to get the game into shape for all of you to play...so stay tuned for more updates on the progress. I might even post some videos...if I can figure it out.

ok...I am going to go play the game now.

Oh one last thing...I will be having a guest speaker on the blog in the next few days so keep an eye out for that as well. I think you might have heard of him too...so it should be an interesting post.

Hey Hey Hey...

Is that Alpha I see? SWEEEEEEET! Yup...3 days away...just 3 days away from alpha and a nice, albeit short, break for everyone. You can't see it, but right now I am doing the Rerun dance...and surprisingly I am really good at it. I got the moves.
Things are shaping up nicely I think. There were a bunch of us in yesterday trying to get the last of the content finished for the deadline. So I figured I would go a little nuts with the phone cam this weekend...but most of the pictures I took were crap...which leads me to believe that it must totally eb the camera. Since I really can't be that bad of a photographer. Perhaps I will break down and purchase a "real" digital camera so I can continue to do the photo updates as they are fun for me. I think rerun would agree that the purchase of a digital camera would be a good thing.



It is a little hard to take photos of myself working...so I just took one of Kratos. I know what you are saying...do you ever do any "real" work around there? To be honest...no. I mostly talk...and since I really don't view talking as real work...I classify myself as a sorta worker. On sunday Nate and I were trying to polish up the last of the enemy placements in the game...getting those last minute brilliant ideas in the game. It sounds so much better when I call them last minute brilliant ideas. Let's hope they turn out to be brilliant. Most likely I will be going through and changing every fight post alpha, when I get more people playing the game all the way through.



This is James (animator) and Derek (combat designer) hard at work on a sunday. These are some dedicated guys whom I give mad props to for doing what it takes to make this game great! James is actually showing off his "crane technique" to Derek. Unfortunatly my camera is really slow at the picture taking and I missed James accidentaly doing a Steven Segal on Derek's head.
Actually they are working on the final boss encounter here and from what I have been seeing it is coming along great.



This is our art wall...it is images that fans have drawn and images of that cominc Dax the Destroyer...a charcter who bears a striking resemblence to Kratos. This is where we go when we want to be inspired or remeber why it is we are working so much...we do it for the guy in the lower left of the image...yeah....we do it for him. This one's for you!



This is Tim (animator) and Jason (combat designer) hard at work playing DMC3. After that they were doing little things like finish a boss, fixing creatures, and genrally making sure all the stuff you are all going to play next year is freaking AWESOME!!!! These guys are the magic men...the music makers...the dreamers of dreams. Yeah...going a little overboard on the quotes today...but thats how I roll.



This is another shot of the art wall...with my favorite image of all time...Kratos about to stab Sora from Kingdom Hearts...cause Kratos is crazy like that. He will kill anyone. Someone else sent in an image of Kratos battling Peter Jennings. I framed that one and it now resides in my private collection.

Seriously though...I think fan art is awesome. I used to draw a bunch of stuff and send it in to the magazines hoping they would publish my ode to whatever game I was into at the time. Alas I was a really really bad artist...so I got no love on the fan art. But in the immortal words of my friend Beck...fan art is "where it's at."



This is Eric (combat designer) He doesn't like photos...something that I can relate to...so took a photo of his dope Herculoids collection. Eric really doesn't have anything decorating his desk...and if you knew him you would know that is normal for him. So we were all surprised when his full set of Herculoids toys arrived, granted he did not buy them to decorate his desk...they were a gift. Though it wasn't surprising that the show they were modeled after was seen by like 14 people, Eric is super OG like that.

I had never heard of the Herculoids before...but the rhinocerous and the gorilla rule...so I am a fan now. Eric was in getting all the cool stuff sewn up with the hero. I was able to see and play with some of the new specials and moves for Kratos this weekend. I was worried about being able to get all the things I wanted to get in the game...but I should have know better than to doubt Eric or Bruno. (The animator working on the Hero)



This is Todd...he is a sound guy. He was also in a boy band many years ago that went horribly wrong...he still will break out into a boy band pose every once and awhile as if to punctuate a really important point. Right here he was telling me that everything he is doing is already "alpha!" There is actually some cool soudn stuff going in now...but traditionally most of the sound work doesn't get going until we get into the "Beta" phase of the project. Which is no good for the sound guys as they get slammed with a TON of stuff at the last minute and end up killing themselves trying to get it all in and perfect. This is probably why todd's boy band never really got off the ground.

Well that's all I got today. You should chjeck out the God of War myspace page with our God of Noise contest on it. If you are in a band...or know someone in a band you should defintely check it out as the prize is getting your track on the soundtrack of the game. Should be some pretty good exposure...that is unless I fuck up the game.

Which I don't plan on doing. But who plans on fucking up though right?

ok...time for the leads meeting.

cory

roundhouse kick to the alpha!

ALPHA!!! YEAH!!!! Well...we are not there yet, but this image (to the left) is a depiction of how much ass we are kicking right now. You see we, the team, are chuck norris, and the game...it's the wolf. (Ok so its probabaly a dog, but wolf just sounds cooler) And rigth now the wolf is getting a front kick the chest. Sweet. Not that I advocate violence against animals or anything. But we are kicking the wolfs ass right now.

So I thought I would do something a little different today and give you a little pictoral walkthrough of alpha. Well not exactly a walkthrough, more like a bunch of photos I took with my crappy phone camera that serve as a rough throughline for my blog post today. I am sure it will be fun. Plus it gives me a chance to use my totally overpriced phone with its lame built in camera for a second time since I purchased it last year. The quality is pretty bad on the pics so you will have to use your imagination on this, but I will do my best to narrate this journey. So without further ado...my little bit of insight into our daily...ummm....day.



This is an attempt at taking a cool photograph by putting the PS2 controller in the forground...not a very successful attempt though. It is also an attempt to tart up the crash screen we see a lot...make it prettier. Not sure that worked all that well either.



This is the screen we see a lot during the development process. It's the crash screen or as I like to call it the 'Time to take a break screen.' sometimes it gives you helpful information as to why the game refuses to work. Then other times it just says "????" Those times...are the sweet times.



This is the back of Nate's head. Lately I spend most of my day here at his desk tuning the various levels of the game. So I basically spend the whole day looking at the back of his head. Saying things like "what if we add this guy...and then spawn three more of this guy" or "wouldn't it be cool if we..." Then he sits there cursing me and watching videos on you tube, like that sweet David Hasselhoff video "Jump in my car". He fucking loves that video. I think it is because he identifies so completely with the "Hoff." This is probably because at one point in thier lives they both had cars that talked to them. I'm pretty sure he hears the song in his head even when he is not watching it, which is like all the time. Just kidding...he doesn't curse me.



This is a shot of the studio as everyone is in high gear finishing up the game. I got to see the final boss level in the game the other day, which has nothing to do with this picture but I thought it looked prety freakin sweet so I figured I would bring that up. I wish I could show you a screenshot of that, but alas then you would have nothing to open up on Christmas day. and I don't want to ruin Christmas. Well not exactly Christmas...as we are releasing several months AFTER Christmas...that was just a metaphor.



This is another shot of the various craftsman hard at working making God of War 2. I know what you are saying...those all look like normal people. I though God of war 2 was made by a workshop full of elves in funny little felt costumes with bells on them. But alas that is only our european games that use the elf workshops. though I have always thought that Hot Shots golf was made by elves. Elves with big heads who eneter every room running and sliding like a figure skaters on crack...the faint sounds of applause always follow.



This is Todd...or rather the back of Todds head. You might be noticing a pattern here. You might think that most people are ignoring me...and to be quite honest you may be right. But I would like to think of it as the rest of the team "pacing" thier interaction with me. That just sounds better. But seriously, Todd is another guy I tune the game with. Right here you can see we are tuning a super bad ass section of the game that is so freaking exciting that we had to pause it so we could take a break and recover. And so Todd could watch videos on youtube. He loves the bollywood video with Little Superstar bitchslapping fools. It rules.



This is a shot of the final boss in the game...I got a little excited while taking the photo so you can't make out the details, but trust me...it freaking rocks. It makes me say "Next gen who?" Not that I am not excited to check out some next gen stuff...but I think the stuff we are doing is great...great like whipping out the proverbial "Legendary Creature" card!




Ok enough with the Chuck Norris references...it's old now. Well maybe not totally old for me. It still makes me laugh. But I am simple and easily amused...and I still believe that Chuck Norris's Tears can cure cancer....but he never cries...so the world will never know.

Maybe tomorrow I will take better pictures that even include peoples faces. That would be cool, though it is pretty dependant on people not telling me to go away when I whip out the super bad ass photo phone!!!

'Aight...going to go playthough the game and make some notes.

word.

Let's...do...'dis...

Hello blog. It’s been awhile since we last spoke. Things have been hectic as usual; we are less than two weeks away from our alpha date. This would definitely qualify as one of the tougher times on the project to date. We have to have everything that is going to be in the game done to about 50-70% completion. Sounds fairly simple, but it is soooo not. The good thing is we are in a better position at this point (in relation to alpha date) that we were on God of War 1…so we got that going for us. But unfortunately that news does little to ease the pain of the long hours. Actually I may be over dramatizing it a bit…the hours are long but not terrible. It is more the amount of time we have been putting in the hours that wears you down. In the end though it will all be better for the game so it is worth it.

We had a nice early night week last week. Everyone got to go home at a decent hour and recharge for this last push to alpha. This really helped, but it also gives you that taste of normalcy, which really makes it hard to go back to the late nights.

SO let’s see…what is the haps. I got everyone’s emails for the demo and I have a running list. Not sure about all the non-US peeps, but I will see what I can do. I am all about sending them, just got to check with the “man” and make sure I can do that. Anyway…new with the game…we are working on a few bosses simultaneously and getting those into tip top shape. The one cool thing about the last few weeks to alpha is that every single day I am seeing something new get in the game in a close to final form. That is truly what keeps me going through all of this.

I have been doing some fight tuning with Nate the last few days, though I haven’t been able to do as much as I would like due to the numerous interruptions for meetings and last minute documentation and such. But we were working on a fight that would take place late in the game yesterday so I started bringing over people to test it out and make sure it wasn’t too hard. After the first few people we started getting a large group of people stopping by and trying the fight out. Now at this stage it is hard to get the exact tuning of a fight since we don’t have the final tuning on the blades, weapons or magic…but right now I am just trying to get the right vibe for each fight. The vibe for this specific fight was to make it hard, but also to engage you enough to want to go back and beat it if you died. Now it was crude, with several annoying little bugs, but in the end I think we achieved that. It was also great to have a group of people, who have been slaving away on this game for the last year and a half, sitting around and laughing and challenging g each other to finish the fight. It is moments like those that say something about the work we are all doing…that even though we should be tired of this game…we are not. I just hope this will translate to all of you as well.

Another cool thing to see was the further implementation of one of the weapons. Eric (Combat guy) had some great ideas for control mapping on the weapon and I finally got to see how other people would use it while they play. I think this new addition will really add a lot to the weapon.

I have been working with Charlie, our Visual development director, on the box art for the game the last few days. I think we have found a really good direction to go in so now he is going to go in and take the thumbnails to a more finished look.

I have also been working with Ariel (Editor and AP) to fine tune our cinematics and trim out all the unnecessary fat. This is hard. Because when you write the script for the story you think you are only putting in what is absolutely necessary to tell the story properly. So going in and trying to find ways to trim the movies down, after having already trimmed them down like 20 times before, is tough. That is the beauty of having an outside opinion of a good editor. They can look at the material that you are so close to and give you an objective opinion on what is really there and what is needed to convey the point. Though she is not totally an outside opinion since she also did some work on the script with me and the other writers…but hey beggars can’t be choosers right?

I met with Jo (level designer) and Michael (Lead Level Designer) about some last minute tweaks to some puzzles in one of our levels. It was good to finally see these puzzles get worked out. We had designed the areas such a long time ago, at a point where we were creatively drained, so there were a few puzzles that we just said “Ahh…we will figure this out later.” In hindsight I realize it was not the best of ideas, but both of them came through in a pinch and put together a couple of pretty cool puzzles. I also got to see Jeremy’s (Level designer) implementation of a puzzle in his level. It is something that Michael pitched to me a week or two ago and it sounded pretty cool, but with these things it is so hard to tell if something is really going to be fun from just a pitch. Finally getting to see it and play it proved that it is going to be fun. We just need to work out a few details about it and then it is ‘in there like swimwear.’

I saw the first rough sculpt of the action figure and it is coming along really nicely. I can’t wait to see the final product…and for all of you to see it as well. I think you will be pretty psyched…if you like that sort of thing. If you don’t, well we have God of War handguns as well…maybe that’s your thing? Or how about our God of War Flamethrowers? The kids seem to love this one.

Well it is Saturday at 9:20am and I got to start getting ready to head into the office.

Dude...you got a little Arzt on you.

Sep. 21st 2006.

Man, where the fuck has all the time gone? Only a few more weeks until this baby is alpha and I am just sitting here at my desk going over the millions of things we have done and trying to make sure I haven’t missed anything. That…and wishing I had more time to put in a few more cool things. But to be honest I think I was able to get everything I wanted in the game. Even with the stuff that I have cut through out the development I still look at what we do have and realize that this really is the best of the ideas. At one point we were going to do an Atlantis level, which actually had some cool ideas in it but in the end it just really cluttered things up. Who knows…maybe if we do get to do another game the level, or some of the ideas from it, will appear?

The Video Games Live show is tonight at the Hollywood Bowl…and I really wanted to go. I was set to go for a few weeks, but we have a drop on Friday for our Monday Tuesday playtests so I gotta be here tonight. Damn. I missed that show last year because I was prepping the game…so that bummed me out. And now this year I was gonna’ get to do the red carpet/meet and greet thing they do before the event…which would have been freakin sweet. Lots of people there who were instrumental in some of my favorite games. Would have been nice to hang out and chat with them…but alas this is the reality of game making. Not much time for the ‘fun’…waaaay too much work to do. But when the game is done there is a little time for fun…so I guess I got that going for me.

We are working out the details of our demo right now…what it will be and when we will get it out there. I will try and keep you all posted on that.

Yesterday was pretty exciting…I did a redesign on our Final boss encounter to spice it up a bit more and really make it hit hard. I think it is definitely in a much better place now. Still got a few more things I want to do to it, but it feels like it is going to be far more epic than its original incarnation. Nothing like switching it up in the eleventh hour of the eleventh hour…hmmm…that really doesn’t even make sense.

Well I have a playthrough of all the playtest content this morning…hopefully all that goes well and it…well…works. If things look pretty good today then we are in good waters…maybe I might even get to duck out and go to the show tonight. But if they doon’t go well this morning then it will be a rough road to Monday. Keepin my fingers crossed for the goods to come through this morning.

The producer just dropped off some marketing samples of the Audio CD covers and packaging materials. Sweet stuff. I like that we are going to release an actual CD of the soundtrack instead of just going solely with downloadable. Even though I Download a ton of stuff from itunes it is still cool to have an actual physical product every now and then.

Ok…I’m out. I am still working out how we are going to do this whole demos for the OG blog readers thing. Maybe just have everyone who wants in on the demo send me you name and address and credit card number (just kidding) to this email address. I will keep a running tab of this and when the demo’s are ready I will have ‘em sent out. Now I am not sure how many I can send out so if I get a thousand emails I might not be able to send a demo to everyone. Who am I kidding…there aren’t a thousand people who read this blog. Anyway…I know the handful of true OG readers so I won’t leave you all high and dry. But like I said we still don’t know when the demo is going to be available so you will have to keep checking back here for the 411.

So send the deets to this email: m0nk3yfr3sh@hotmail.com

yeah...before you say...that is a fucking dorky email. Like one step away from 1amDarthV8d3r or trans4mrzR00L or some shit like that. I am a dork. I know this.

speaking of OG...I wonder how the hell Grandma hardcore is doin. I think I will go check her site out and see what she is playing.