How God of War's World Pulls You In (and keeps you there)
/*Note that this post will contain some light spoilers for God of War (2018)
When God of War 2018 was announced, I was pretty dismissive of the concept. It looked like a fairly generic 3rd person action game, and I just felt like both the industry and I had grown up a lot since the last time God of War was cool.
When the game came out, it set the gaming community ablaze. As it sat at a 97 on Metacritic, I was convinced that maybe there was something worth looking at here. (It's since settled at a 94, but still, a 97 is insane, as much as MetaCritic is a poor measure of quality).
As it turns out, God of War 2018 is really good video game. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it's hard to argue that it isn't one of the best made games, probably ever. Every inch of this product gives the impression of having been painstakingly polished for hundreds of hours by masters of their craft.
There are a lot of things to say about what makes God of War so great, but one of the things that most impressed me about the game is that I felt really enthralled by the game world, which is not something that really tends to happen to me. Something about this magical Norse landscape just wouldn't let go of me, so I thought I would take a look at what exactly the game does to achieve this.
Here are my findings!
A Camera That Doesn't Quit
God of War's camera never cuts away from Kratos. Aside from when the player is accessing the menu, the game can essentially be thought of as happening in one continuous shot. Of course this is fairly well documented at this point, but it absolutely applies to how the player perceives the world around them.
The thing about never cutting is that, it means the player always have perfect clarity as to how the environment connects and flows from area to area, room to room. The camera never jumps around to show you where to go; everything the player sees is driven by their own hands. Even when magically teleporting between worlds, the "loading screen" is an extravagant visual feast of swirling magics and brilliant lights around Kratos- but you never lose sight of how where you're going is connected to where you came from.
This makes the journey feel a little bit more personal and organic, too. No part of the hike is done for you- every stretch of land Kratos covers is one that you had to guide Kratos through yourself. Every detail in the environment is one that you personally observed and conquered. Even things like the wooden triptychs found throughout the world are handled in such a way that, they are just another object in the world. There are no fancy zoom-ins, close ups, or popups- instead the actual information contained within is imparted to you by dialogue via your companions.
Lore at the Perfect Moment
In more recent years, a popular mechanic games often use to help prevent lore dumps, is that of the audio log. Essentially, the player finds a narrative device of some sort, and it just plays while the player is free to do whatever they wish while listening. The issue I've always had with the implementation of these kinds of things is that, once the log starts, I typically want to stop what I'm doing anyways. I don't want to split my attention between listening, and adventuring or beating up bad guys.
Luckily God of War's take on the Audio Log focuses more on finding opportune moments to present it's information. Lore comes largely in the form of conversation between Kratos and his companions, which serves to deepening the player's understanding of the world and it's stories, while simultaneous developing and humanizing the speakers.
More importantly though, is that it always comes during the game's moments of lowest tension. It's always while the player is walking a long path, floating around on their boat- basically any activity that doesn't require the player to pay much attention, and so the player doesn't really have anything better to do than truly listen.
To top it all off, is just how organic these conversations feel. The characters will typically discuss topics related to events and characters that have recently appeared in the game. If a conversation is happening when the player pushes their boat up onto shore, the characters will cut their story short, and pick it back up again next time they are on the water. Add to all this the fact that Kratos is a foreigner in this land and so it makes sense that he would not know it's stories, and you have a system that very naturally feeds you information about the world, in a way that's very easy to digest, and thus care about.
An Environment Worth Looking At
Possibly the most important thing God of War does, is that it's gameplay requires the player to look at the environment. Of course it helps that it's gorgeous and immaculately put together, but more to the point, is that there's stuff there to see. Sometimes it's a rune that you can freeze with your axe, sometimes it's a flying Eye of Odin, or just a simple switch. Who knows what you'll find if you look around long enough, but the fact that this stuff is there means that your eyes will always be glued to your surroundings.
I can't say I've ever really played a game that accomplished this to such a degree before. It's about way more than just, having stuff in the environment to interact with. I think it's down to a couple things that really push it over the edge.
The first is that, objects largely look like they belong. They don't look overly gamey, and they don't tend to be super attention grabbing or out of place. Sure that's a glowing blue rune on the wall over there, but this is also a magical Norse land, glowing runes are kind of their aesthetic. So sure, the runes look awesome, but so do the shrubs and the crates and everything else.
Additionally, these things you're meant to interact with tend to be actually hidden. Of course some are moreso than others, but in a lot of cases, it's an accomplishment to have even noticed there's a thing there. The devs very clearly spent a lot of time studying where the player's gaze will tend to be, and put a lot of these things just outside of that area. So finding stuff actually takes a little bit of effort, and more critically, paying attention. The player has to be actively observing the environment- and that's a good thing.
A UI That Doesn't Encroach
For the most part anyways. We're going to pretend for a moment that those awful, ugly red arrows don't appear all over the place when you're in combat. Instead, notice the fact that navigating God of War's world is a breeze. In fact it's so easy that, they don't even give you the compass until you reach the first open boating area. Instead, they train you early on to get around with basically no guides.
I recall a friend telling me that they were playing the game with the compass turned off, and my only thought was, "y'know, I feel like I wouldn't even miss it, I barely use the thing".
The level design of God of War is just very intuitive, and navigating a given area never feels hard to do. This also goes back a bit to the camera, and how you can observe how everything is connected. The compass can be useful if you are navigating from area to area, but even then, the open lake areas are so littered with landmarks that it never really feels necessary. Rather than tinkering with waypoints, it's pretty easy to just remember "The castle is through the cave between the 2 statues".
In combat, the UI feels very subtle, and you're never really shown anything you don't need to know in that moment. It's there, but it never feels like it's detracting or distracting from the combat.
What's almost more interesting to me though, is how the game's pacing relates to the UI.
The thing about it is, you very rarely have a reason to open the game's menus until after you've completed some significant challenge. Maybe you beat a boss and want to look at your loot. Maybe you completed a puzzle/climbing section and found your way back to the upgrade shop. Whatever it is that prompts it, the majority of your menuing is going to happen during the game's points of lowest action (much like the lore conversations). This means that when you're not in one of those low-intensity moments, you're 100% focused on the world and what's in front of you.
There are a lot of things in God of War that are just very very super praiseworthy, and so I realize this analysis kind of meandered a bit. There are just so many things to say about how well put together this game is, but I tried to keep it mostly on the topic of pulling the player into the game world, and keeping their attention there. It just so happens that this is also a concept that touches on many different aspects of the game's design. I'm sure there are many that I didn't even consider, but the ones that I've touched on are things that I won't soon forget.
So just to recap, here a quick-and-dirty of my take-aways:
It's important for the player to be able to see, by their own actions, how the world connects / how areas flow into each other
Be considerate of how much attention the player can pay to any given thing- let them focus during higher intensity periods, and try not to distract them from what they are already doing.
Lore is a lot more impactful when it is delivered organically, and is contextual to the player's actions.
If the player is meant to look at the environment, give them a reason to look at the environment
In order for an environment to feel natural, it's important for gameplay ingredients to look like they belong there
UI should be used sparingly. It can feel very gamey and distracting, and information overload just diverts attention from the rest of the game
UI should be subject to pacing, just like every other aspect of a game- consider when and why the player may need to interact with the menus