Game devs share insights on God of War Ragnarok

God of War Ragnarok has been released for both PS5 and PS5, and the game has been getting perfect scores all over the board. To help celebrate the release of this awesome game, PlayStation NZ kindly invited FutureFive NZ and other members of the Kiwi gaming media to a launch event. During this launch event, we got the opportunity to talk to some of the developers of the game. 

The two developers that spoke at the event were the lead combat designer Mihir Sheth and Denny Yeh who is the game's combat lead. Since combat is their area of expertise, I wanted to know if they planned on adding more weapons to the new game. 

Mihir answered my question, although he did not want to delve into any big spoilers while at the event. In terms of weapons, he said the team only wants to give out combat of the highest quality which is one of the reasons the game doesn't have a long list of weapons available to it. 

He also said that God of War 2018 already set a huge bar in terms of its combat system, so they didn't want to fully reinvent a system that was already in place. The most important thing was to deliver a combat system that was of the highest quality.

Another question that was asked was about the pace of the game. In other words, some players prefer the narrative of the game, while others might be more interested in the gameplay. God of War Ragnarok is a game that balances cutscenes, combat, exploring and puzzle-solving. 

Mihir again answered this question and mentioned that a lot of playtesting is involved with the game to make sure everything is paced well and feels balanced. Every department of the game is involved to pace the game and its gameplay. The end goal of the game though is to tell a story about a father and son. 

Denny pitched in his answer and says the success of the God of War franchise is its ability to balance between narrative and gameplay. This is one of the reasons why this series has become so popular over the years. 

A great question fielded by another member of the media how does the development team able to make the game accessible to players that like to play on easier difficulty settings. Unlike a game like Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok has a range of different difficulty settings to cater to more types of gamers. 

Mihir once again said a lot of tuning and testing is done to make sure the game is accessible to non-combat gamers. There's more to the balancing than just adjusting sliders or anything like that. One example is by making the axe probably a bit stronger in the easier difficulty setting to satisfy gamers that prefer shooters.  

Denny reiterated and said it was really important to make sure a large number of people playing the game were satisfied with the combat and its difficulty. They didn't want to make a game that made people unhappy. He also said some people might play the game on story mode the first time around, but will up the difficulty during a second playthrough if they got used to the gameplay. 

Another question that was asked was how the development team was able to make each of the companions in the game feel different from one another. Without spoiling the game for everyone, there is more than one companion you play alongside with in God of War Ragnarok. 

Mihir didn't want to say what other companions there are, but he did mention that Atreus is older now and has changed since he was a kid in the 2018 video game. Atreus is more skilled in combat, and this reflects in the way that he fights in the sequel. Atreus can show off and have more abilities to share compared to the previous game. 

These were just some of the questions that were answered during our roundtable talk with the developers. Be sure to check out our review of God of War Ragnarok by clicking here.