The opening track to God of War begins with dark, pounding percussion and a deep, male choir chanting a series of ominous notes. It’s a repeating motif that perfectly speaks to the Kratos we’ve known for decades, a brutal god-slaying monster. But there’s another motif that accompanies it, a more uplifting series of horns and strings that seem almost hopeful. It hints at a calmer Kratos, though still prudent and stoic–it’s the side of him that we see executed so superbly in this new game in his interactions with his son, Atreus. But the hook of the deep ominous chants remains, like the Ghost of Sparta that still haunts Kratos, and it’s a sound that will continue to haunt you throughout God of War.
The idea of somehow instantly hooking an audience with a note or sound that stays with them long afterward has always stuck with Bear McCreary, and was a key factor in creating the soaring and emotional score for God Of War. It was a concept passed down by his mentor of almost ten years, Elmer Bernstein, the legendary composer of The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and Ghostbusters, among others. „I always strive to find a sound or instrument that can hook the audience instantly and in this, God of War is arguably an embarrassment of riches. Between the Nordic instruments, choirs, vocal soloists, percussion and the huge orchestra, there are many different sounds fighting for your attention. However, I must say that I think the 3-note low male choir phrase that begins the main theme are probably ‚the thing‘ that will hook people the fastest. When I first played the theme for Santa Monica Studio and Cory (Barlog, creative director), they remarked instantly on that sound. Something about it evokes Kratos instantly. I felt very fortunate to have stumbled on to such an effective idea, so early in the creative process.“
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But that early acknowledgment is no surprise considering the experience behind the composer who wrote it. McCreary’s career has already reached legendary status with his immediately recognizable work on The Walking Dead (including THAT theme music) and Battlestar Galactica. He won an Emmy Award for his work on Da Vinci’s Demons and the Cloverfield movie franchise is now safely in his hands. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Black Sails, Outlander and Black Mirror all combine to make McCreary not only one of the most prolific composers working today, but one that has creeped into your subconscious without your knowledge. For a composer, that’s a success.
Carving out an identity in music is not an easy task, so McCreary puts the tools into each job by looking at storytelling and character. „I always strive to find a musical approach that inherently draws inspiration from the story it is supporting. In the case of God of War, I strove to use Nordic folk instrumentation, languages, voices and musical modes to help transport the audience. I was inspired to write for instruments such as the Nyckelharpa and Hardanger Fiddle, because the process of exploring their strengths and weaknesses inevitably led me to discover new forms of musical expression.“
Making your own way in the world but knowing the importance of a parental bond is one of the key themes of this new rebirth of God Of War. After being first contacted by Santa Monica Studio in 2014, McCreary’s work on the game evolved over a period of years and throughout that time, he had a very personal influence to draw from which paralleled the journey of Kratos. „I had just become a father when I first was hired and my parental experience in the intervening four years has changed my life forever. This life experience was a huge influence on my work for God of War, perhaps in ways buried too deep in my subconscious for me to even be aware of. Practically every musical decision I made for the score was influenced by the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. Parental themes are rarely explored in video games, which helps set this story apart.“
From the blind, one-dimensional rage that inhabited the young ghost of Sparta back in the PlayStation 2 days, 2018 has turned him on his head to develop layers of personality, empathy and depth in a character that had arguably reached his natural conclusion on the PlayStation 3. For McCreary, this revolutionary new direction played into the title track he wrote (and performed at E3 2016) and helped give him a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve with the overall score. „When I wrote that theme I was trying to communicate vital and often conflicting, information about Kratos. He is still the same character from the classic games. He retains that rage and power, simmering beneath his stern exterior. That’s where the bombastic brass, pounding percussion and deep, male vocals helped. But more importantly, I wanted to communicate that he is older, wiser and calmer now. There are more layers to his storyline. Put simply, he is just a more mature character now. So to communicate that, I included his theme harmonic and melodic components that are quite beautiful, occasionally even soaring. The combination of visceral, powerful instrumentation with lyrical, soaring melodies and chord progressions is something I hope resonates with audiences.“
In addition to the pounding bombast and deep choir voices that are typically associated with God Of War, McCreary also wrote numerous somber pieces that look to the past of the franchise while also giving Kratos and his son moments of wistful and perhaps mournful connection. Tracks like ‚Echoes Of An Old Life‘, ‚The Healing‘ and ‚Memories Of Mother‘ have a quiet introspection to them that would have seemed ludicrous for this character when he was spending his time cutting off heads and enjoying quicktime-event sex scenes back in 2007.
There’s a distinct sense of growth and self-reflection here, both with McCreary’s work and the God Of War franchise itself. A lot of that has come about simply because of the four year lifespan of the music. „The score has evolved immeasurably,“ says McCreary, „and in some ways that evolution represents a move back towards a sound that is more consistent with the older games of the franchise. My first stab at a theme for God of War was a lonely, melancholy tune for female voices and Nyckelharpa. I was inspired by the new story arc for Kratos, and his relationship with his son. It was heartbreaking!“
„Ultimately, we realized it was simply too sad and subdued to function as the primary theme for Kratos, and for the game, so I put it away. That original theme I composed still ended up in the game, however, becoming the primary theme for Kratos and his Atreus, representing their family storyline specifically. The theme is featured prominently on the soundtrack album in the cue ‚Memories of Mother‘ and ultimately heard in the game almost as much as the main theme.“
Travelling to Iceland to record choir voices, McCreary felt an incredible sense of belonging to the Nordic influence of the game. He spent time walking around local glaciers and waterfalls to feel the mythological history of the area. Using Swedish and Norwegian instruments that date back to the 14th century helped push the score to a place that McCreary felt it couldn’t have reached otherwise.
If that wasn’t enough, the collaboration with Faroese throat singer and musician Eivør Pálsdóttir lent a further level of authenticity on many of the tracks and opened new avenues of collaboration for the composer. „Eivør was a fantastic creative partner, and she brought a whole new level of personality to the music. I was thrilled with the vast dynamic and emotional range her singing voice provided. High, ethereal angelic tones to deep, guttural, percussive bursts. I learned a lot about collaboration on this project. A game score this immense is vastly more complex from a logistical standpoint than a typical film score. Teams of music editors, producers and engineers worked on this score for nearly a year after primary recording was completed in order to integrate it into the game in an impactful way.“
McCreary still enjoys this process in his own work to some extent. „I enjoy listening to my previous work, though I don’t do it very often. I like to take a moment to recognize how much I’ve grown as a composer. I’m always looking forward but it’s fun to sometimes listen back to older scores and recognize a job well done. The score to Capcom’s Dark Void is still one of my greatest melodic achievements, and I am flooded with emotion when I hear it again.“
The transformation of Kratos from angry, one-trick god to stern yet responsible father coupled with a parental bond being the key story theme for an entire game is remarkable. In tandem, Bear McCreary’s personal connection to this journey over almost half a decade of his career has delivered a collection of emotionally thunderous music which soars through the rebirth of this franchise with confidence and grandeur without forgetting to hook the audience from the beginning. With three simple notes.
We’re giving away 1,000 Closed Beta codes for Defiance 2050 on PS4 (North America only). In Defiance 2050’s version of San Francisco, players are transported to a dynamic open world where they can explore and fight in skirmishes and story-driven missions on an epic scale.
Entry is open to North America only on PS4. For worldwide codes on Xbox One, go here.
Closed Beta starts now and ends Monday, April 30 at 10:00 AM PDT.
Enter below (you’ll receive an email within 30 minutes):
More about the game:
In Defiance 2050’s version of San Francisco, players are transported to a dynamic open world where they can explore and fight in skirmishes and story-driven missions on an epic scale. Players will engage in massive cooperative battles with their friends, utilize hundreds of distinct weapons and skills, and take on huge alien threats as they explore transformed futuristic environments. Defiance 2050 recreates the original game from the ground up to be representative of the current generation of consoles. From updated textures to improved resolutions and framerates, Defiance 2050 is a marked improvement over the original Defiance. Defiance 2050 is more than just a simple graphical remaster, as the game’s systems have gotten major improvements to create the definitive version of the game. Today’s consoles and PCs enable the dev team to implement features and upgrades that fans of the game have been clamoring for, while advancements in hardware allow for action on an even larger scale than before, with more players able to take to the battlefield in white-knuckled combat.
We’re giving away 1,000 Closed Beta codes for Defiance 2050 on Xbox One (worldwide). In Defiance 2050’s version of San Francisco, players are transported to a dynamic open world where they can explore and fight in skirmishes and story-driven missions on an epic scale.
Entry is open worldwide on Xbox One. For North America codes on PS4, go here.
Closed Beta starts now and ends Monday, April 30 at 10:00 AM PDT.
Enter below (you’ll receive an email within 30 minutes):
More about the game:
In Defiance 2050’s version of San Francisco, players are transported to a dynamic open world where they can explore and fight in skirmishes and story-driven missions on an epic scale. Players will engage in massive cooperative battles with their friends, utilize hundreds of distinct weapons and skills, and take on huge alien threats as they explore transformed futuristic environments. Defiance 2050 recreates the original game from the ground up to be representative of the current generation of consoles. From updated textures to improved resolutions and framerates, Defiance 2050 is a marked improvement over the original Defiance. Defiance 2050 is more than just a simple graphical remaster, as the game’s systems have gotten major improvements to create the definitive version of the game. Today’s consoles and PCs enable the dev team to implement features and upgrades that fans of the game have been clamoring for, while advancements in hardware allow for action on an even larger scale than before, with more players able to take to the battlefield in white-knuckled combat.
The common refrain, „Bring Halo to PC!“ is over a decade old now, and fans still clamber for any news or hint of new Halo title on PC. This is why players still flock to unofficial and sometimes unauthorized community projects like the ElDewrito mod for Halo Online, which Microsoft recently started cracking down on. However, in the aftermath of that news, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has highlighted the possibility of „a classic Halo experience“ coming to PC.
In developer 343 Industries‘ response to the ElDewrito situation, it gave the barest of hints that another Halo title may finally come to PC, years after Halo 2 launched on Windows Vista. „As we look ahead, we’re very excited about the prospects of an official classic Halo experience making its way to PC and we hope to be able to partner with the ElDewrito team and broader mod and content creation community,“ 343i stated.
This point is important „As we look ahead, we’re very excited about the prospects of an official classic Halo experience making its way to PC and we hope to be able to partner with the ElDewrito team and broader mod and content creation community“ https://t.co/KVJbH5PfJI
Spencer himself then tweeted out this quote, adding, „This point is important.“ Of course, there are a few ways to take this. First, he could be simply saying that it’s worth noting that the developer will continue to work with passionate community modders in the future. However, he could also be drawing attention to the „prospects“ of Halo on PC in the future.
Only two mainline Halo games have ever been released to wide audiences on PC, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. Halo 5’s Forge mode was also made available to PC players. As a result of Microsoft’s Play Anywhere initiative, Halo 6 will almost certainly come to Windows 10 in addition to Xbox One. However, most of the series is still unavailable to PC players. It’s impossible to know whether 343 Industries is considering a port of an entire game or just a multiplayer experience in the vein of Halo: Online; however, there’s a chance we see some sort of Halo news at E3 this year (even if Halo 6 won’t be there).
PC gamers will find no shortage of free games to play this weekend. But next weekend is looking good on the free gaming front as well, thanks to Ubisoft’s announcement that For Honor will be free to play on PS4, Xbox One, and PC May 3-6.
PS4 and PC owners will be able to pre-load For Honor on May 1 so they can hop right in the moment the moment it goes free. Per Ubisoft, here’s the time frame for For Honor’s free play weekend:
Xbox One: May 3, 2018 at 1am PDT – May 7, 2018 at 12am PDT
PS4: May 3, 2018 at 1am PDT – May 7, 2018 at 12am PDT
PC: May 3, 2018 at 10am PDT – May 6, 2018 at 1pm PDT
This includes all PvP, PvE, and story modes from the full game, plus new training trials and an arena. Any progress you make in For Honor during its free weekend will carry over to the paid game, should you decide to purchase it. If you buy it between May 3-15, you’ll also save between 67-75%, depending on the version and platform.
For Honor is a melee combat game set in a medieval-style fantasy world. You can choose between 18 warriors and three classes: knights, vikings, and samurai.
„After slaying countless foes, it’s clear the impact For Honor’s combat has had; its fundamental tenets of discipline and restraint are bestowed upon you permanently, forever changing the way you perceive a melee-combat encounter in a game. In its highest moments, For Honor is difficult to put down. Its slow combat pace and narrative shortcomings might turn off those unwilling to take the time to dive deep into what it has to offer. However, make no mistake–those who do will be rewarded with some of the most satisfying multiplayer melee fighting conceived in recent years.“
Imagine the bleakness of the man versus giant creatures gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus as a definitively Nordic tale, and you have a general idea of what Jotun is. Sprinkle in a little bit of Dark Souls’ difficulty and a malevolent sense of challenge, and you’re closer to hitting the bullseye. Now imagine all of that hand-drawn in a style somewhere between Dragon’s Lair and Princess Mononoke, and you’ve got Jotun.
Boiling the game down to its disparate parts does the game a mild disservice, though. In execution, Jotun is a perfect storybook, a game that seems ripped from the imagination of a Viking child being told tales of warriors of old facing down their gods. It’s a wonderfully wild, vibrant bedtime story told with fire and verve, even when the game is at its most stark and lonely.
Jotun tells the tale of Thora, a Viking shield maiden who falls from her boat during a voyage and drowns. Because passage to Valhalla is only granted to those who fall in battle, Thora is given the chance to earn her way into the golden halls by finding and killing the Jotun, the Titans of Norse mythology. Along the way, the gods assist her, granting her new power when she finds their shrines and pays her respects. Otherwise, all she has is an iron axe and an iron will. We learn between stages where Thora’s determination comes from in a fantastic, steely narration performed in Icelandic. Each new piece of her story would be worth it on its own, revealing years of underestimation, neglect, and later, a sibling jealousy that turns tragic. Even if the gameplay wasn’t as good as it was, being able to help Thora achieve glory would be more than worth the effort.
Behold, the tree of life.
Gameplay is 16-bit levels of simple, and yes, that is a compliment. You have a light attack with Thora’s axe, a hard-hitting heavy attack with a major delay, and a dodge. Thora can find massive shrines to the Gods in each stage, and by praying there, she earns new magical powers specific to each one–Thor allows her to use Mjolnir for a short time, Frigg allows her to heal at will, Loki creates a decoy that eventually explodes after a time–but all six of the powers have limited uses, and none are what you would call a guaranteed solution to any sticky situation. Primarily, timing, cunning, and luck will get Thora to Valhalla.
For most of the game, that cunning involves mastery of the environment. Jotun’s six stages, which can be tackled in any order, are impeccably designed. They are deceptively linear, laid out in such a way that gives the impression of vast, stunning tableaus in places dwarfed in size by your typical Diablo III dungeon. The illusion works. Grand, breathtaking vistas are the norm in Jotun, and they often serve as a wicked distraction from the dangers mere inches away. They’re also often rather desolate places, dark locales that no mortal has tread upon in ages. The game isn’t swarming with enemies, except for one particular stage that sends a veritable legion of dwarves your way. This bolsters the comparisons to Shadow of the Colossus, where the loneliness of what Thora has to do makes the sheer distance between each new obstacle feel like a greater journey. The real problem with that desolation is that more than a few times, you’ll need to backtrack through some of these areas to find much needed power ups, or because you’ve missed a crucial switch in order to get to said power ups, or because you’ve ended up in an area and the game’s obtuse pause screen map didn’t help you.
And this is why pruning your garden once a week is just so important.
The main events of the game, however, are the Jotun themselves as bosses. The Jotun are simply awe-inspiring enemy design, taking the rather threadbare descriptions from Norse lore, and extrapolating them to the nth degree, with each one several times Thora’s size onscreen.
The best is still the first: A nature giant that feels like Ursula from The Little Mermaid made entirely out of living trees and vines. Still, each of the bosses are just wonderfully realized, and you get maybe a good minute to marvel at them before the pain starts. A terrifying shield-swinging giant can summon a legion of dwarves out of the ground to rush at Thora with a scream. Halfway through the frost giant’s fight, the playing field turns into a sheet of slippery ice; when it’s down to a quarter bar of life, a white-out blizzard starts. A blacksmith giant has you fighting in a neverending firestorm. What the Jotun typically lack in speed, they make up for in power, where being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a fight will mean your end in two hits. The Jotuns’ patterns and weak points aren’t hard to suss out whatsoever, it’s simply a matter of using your limited arsenal to deal with them, and often with the horde of peripheral obstacles/enemies each Jotun will throw at you during, and quite often it will still not be enough. The game gives Thora infinite tries, and will start her right at the boss with each of her powers replenished each time she dies. Persistence and learning from the numerous failures will lead to success, but the game will not coddle, and every victory will be well-earned beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The PS4 and Xbox One ports of Jotun are very much on par with the PC version. The only major difference is the addition of Valhalla Mode, a boss rush that opens up after you beat the campaign. Aside from expanded health bars, an extra element of danger has been added to each boss battle taken from the campaign, forcing you to alter your attack strategy. The first stage’s plant boss now has poisonous spores surrounding her weak points, making it a game of hit and run rather than patient strikes. Alternately, a sword-wielding forge boss has a much shorter window in which to strike. Valhalla Mode is a small addition, but a welcome one.
One solemn face and 200 angry dwarves.
The Switch version of the game stands tall next to its more powerful console brothers, with not a single frame out of place, and no slowdown, even in the game’s busiest and most expansive areas. In handheld mode, the moments where the camera zooms out to give players a full view of their surroundings, or to behold the game’s numerous, massive bosses can sometimes make poor Thora a tiny red needle in a haystack. These moments are scarce, though, and it’s a small price to pay for the game’s epic scope.
The Switch port does, however, have one problem that’s much less tolerable: A much longer load time stretching between 15-30 seconds when entering a new area or respawning after a death. The initial load for a stage is acceptable, and transitions to new areas within a stage are much quicker, but for a game whose greatest challenges come from trial-and-error bosses that can sometimes kill with a single hit, the wait time to have another crack and be maddening. It’s a single flaw, but it’s a crucial one that can add insult to game’s legion of fatal injuries.
Jotun is a short game, and good players can probably plow through it in about 3 or 4 hours, but even with the ending behind me, I find myself dying to witness some images again and wanting to try different strategies. I want to hear Thora tell her tale again. Any good bedtime story that makes you want to hear it again right after it’s over is one for the ages.
Editor’s note: Portions of this article were featured in our PC, PS4, and Xbox One Jotun review.
Microsoft today reported earnings for the quarter ended March 31, and the company’s Xbox division posted strong numbers. The Xbox business saw revenue rise 18 percent to $2.25 billion, led by gains in software and services, not hardware. Software and services posted gains of 24 percent, and importantly, Microsoft said this was driven „mainly from third-party title strength.“ It’s notable because it shows Microsoft can have a successful quarter, even when it relies on games made by other companies. Microsoft’s Sea of Thieves was released on March 20, so it is counted within the quarter, but only for a few days. Still, it’s interesting that it’s not mentioned in Microsoft’s report today, as Sea of Thieves quickly became Microsoft’s fastest-selling new IP on Xbox One.
The company’s fortunes may improve further still when some of its own big games come out later this year like State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3, as well as whatever might get announced at E3 in June.
State of Decay 2 launches in May
Additionally, Microsoft announced that the number of „active“ Xbox Live users rose 13 percent to 59 million for the quarter. Microsoft said Xbox Live posted „continued growth“ across Xbox One, Windows 10, and mobile when it comes to Xbox Live.
Microsoft’s Xbox business unit is part of the company’s More Personal Computing division, which also includes Windows Commercial and Windows OEM and Surface. The More Personal Computing division posted a revenue gain of 13 percent. Microsoft overall–comprising all divisions–posted revenue of $26.8 billion (up 16 percent) and a profit of $7.4 billion (up 35 percent), so it was good times all around for Microsoft this quarter.
We’re giving away a God of War Limited Edition 1TB PS4 Pro, grey DualShock 4 Controller, and copy of the game!
This special bundle features a fully customized Leviathan Grey 1TB PS4 Pro console inspired by Kratos’ Axe, a matching DualShock 4 wireless controller with insignia, and a copy of God of War Day One Edition.
Entry is open to United States residents only, since the prize is shipping from the US. Competition ends Monday, May 7 at 11:00 AM PDT. One (1) winner will be chosen.
Enter below (the additional entries are OPTIONAL to increase your chances of winning):
The first clip of Luke Cage Season 2 has arrived and it’s probably not what you were expecting from Netflix’s strongman superhero. Instead of fighting evil, saving New York City, or teaming up with his fellow Defenders, he’s playing sports. Well, technically, he’s cheating at sports.
Timed to release with the NFL draft, the clip finds Luke (Mike Colter) taking on his own version of the NFL combine exercise. Of course, given his abilities, he blows every record out of the water. While this technically should be against the rules–he’s a literal superhero–it’s hard not to cheer Luke on. After all, maybe the New York Jets could use a bulletproof man to help them run the ball when football season kicks off.
Don’t expect him to make the team, though. After all, it would be pretty bizarre if Season 2 simply followed Luke as he began a career in the NFL–especially when there’s still so much evil out there to defeat. That said, the appearances in the clip by New York Jets head coach Todd Bowles, as well as ESPN reporters Jemelle Hill and Michael Smith, are a nice touch.
You won’t have to wait too long to see how Luke’s NFL dreams shake out–as well as what kind of chaos the previously revealed villains Bushmaster and Nightshade plan on unleashing. Luke Cage’s second season premieres on Netflix on June 22.
Bandai Namco revealed its upcoming Dragon Ball FighterZ DLC character Fused Zamasu earlier this week, and now we’re getting a look at some of his fierce moves in a new gameplay trailer. Check out Fused Zamasu in action in the video above. There’s still no official release date on when Zamasu will hit the game, just that he will be available soon on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Fused Zamasu is the result of the fusion of Zamasu and his counterpart Goku Black, and he’s one of the major antagonists in the Dragon Ball Super series. He was first announced in a recent issue of V-Jump magazine (via Gematsu), which also revealed that some his special attacks give him the ability to fly freely through the air. You can see some of his aerial moves in the new gameplay trailer.
Fused Zamasu is the third DLC character to be come to the Dragon Ball FighterZ, following the release of Broly and Bardock in March. Broly is slow but overwhelmingly powerful, while Bardock favors rush attacks and close-range fighting. All of the characters (and future ones) are included in the game’s $35 US / £22 / $40.95 AU season pass. We don’t know how much Fused Zamasu will cost on his own, but the other DLC characters could be purchased for $5 US / £4 / $7.55 AU each. For more on Broly and Bardock, check out each character’s epic Dramatic Finishes, as well as their Supers and victory quotes.
There are at least five more DLC characters planned for Dragon Ball FighterZ. Bandai Namco has yet to officially announce who they’ll be, but we’ve put together a list of 15 DLC characters we’d love to see in the game. If you’d like to get a look at all the characters in the game so far, including the new additions, check out our full character roster.
The Simpsons continues to set records. Fox’s hit animated show has now passed Gunsmoke for the most number of episodes for a prime time scripted TV series. Sunday’s episode was the show’s 636th, surpassing Gunsmoke, which had 635 episodes during its 20-year run.
Executive producer and showrunner Al Jean told the NY Post about the milestone, „We never dreamed we’d get this far.“
Gunsmoke aired from 1955 to 1975, while The Simpsons has been on TV for almost 29 years now, having debuted in December 1989.
The Simpsons has generated some controversy of late regarding the character Apu and his portrayal on the show in the wake of a documentary that criticized the character. In response to this, Apu voice actor Hank Azaria has said he is willing to step aside.
The Simpsons is currently in its 29th season and has already been renewed for Season 30. When The Simpsons was renewed, Fox released a statement (via Variety) quoting Homer Simpson as saying, „Take that, Gunsmoke! You lost a race you didn’t even know you were running!“
A new update is update has been released for Monster Hunter World on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It addresses some of the action game’s lingering bugs related to quests and weapon stats, among other things. This is patch 3.02 on PS4 and 3.0.0.2 on Xbox One.
Specifically, the patch fixes a bug related to the Kulve Taroth Siege quest line the mission would not play out as intended in some cases. If you ran into this issue, you can go back to Astera and speak to the Admiral; this should trigger the Kulve Taroth Siege as intended.
Today’s Monster Hunter World patch also fixes a problem with the Wyvern Ignition sword’s „Impact“ attack’s value dropped to 240 instead of 510. Finally, the update addresses bugs related to First Wyverian such as weapon usage, how many monsters you’ve killed, and more.
In other Monster Hunter World news, Capcom has announced the second round of its Street Fighter crossover event. This time, players will be able to embark on a Challenge Quest to acquire a set of Sakura armor, and as before, it will only be available in the game for a limited time. You can get all of the important information about the event here in GameSpot’s previous coverage.
Monster Hunter: World Patch Notes:
Kulve Taroth Quest Line:
Fixed a bug where the Kulve Taroth Siege quest line would not progress correctly under certain conditions (specifically: if you speak to the Admiral out in the field when participating in another player’s instance of the „A Wound and a Thirst“ or similar quests, after having collected Kulve Taroth traces but BEFORE having spoken to him separately in Astera). Players who have encountered this bug already can return to Astera and speak with the Admiral, triggering the council scene, after which the Kulve Taroth Siege will become available.
Great Sword Wyvern Ignition „Impact“:
Fixed a bug where the great sword Wyvern Ignition „Impact“ saw its fire elemental attack value unintentionally reduced to 240. The value has been reset to 510. The armor skill „Free Element/Ammo Up“ is still a requirement for unlocking the fire elemental attack of this weapon.
First Wyverian Statistics:
Fixed some bugs in the data collection for the statistical summaries given to you by speaking to the First Wyverian (weapon usage, number of monsters slain, etc.). Data will be progressively reset starting on April 26. For the duration, the First Wyverian will not give out any statistical information, but this should not affect gameplay in any other way. Please note that the statistical data may be low in accuracy for a short time after the process has finished.
Strange Brigade developer Rebellion has unveiled an official release date for its co-op shooter. The game, which allows up to four players to tackle its campaign in co-op, will release August 28 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with Collector’s and Digital Deluxe versions also available.
Strange Brigade puts you in the middle of an exotic and mysterious corner of 1930s Egypt. The Strange Brigade team discovers an army of mummies hell-bent on terror, and you have the power to stop them. Rebellion says the game will throw treacherous traps, puzzles, and hordes of monsters your way. The third-person shooter arms each of the four characters with their own weapons, tactics, and supernatural powers. Check out the game’s latest story trailer above.
You can now pre-order Strange Brigade for $50, with all pre-orders including a free Secret Service Weapons Pack that comes with the „butter-smooth“ Wilkers & White P19 pistol, the „piercingly precise“ Stoudenmire 960 submachine gun, and the „punch-packing“ Gehrig-Delgane S1 rifle. The Deluxe Edition, for $80, is also available for pre-order and includes the game and the Season Pass for future DLC. Rebellion is promising future content will include new campaign missions, characters, weapons, items, and more.
The Collector’s Edition of Strange Brigade also comes with lots of other goodies. We don’t have details yet on how to order it or how much it’ll cost, but here’s everything on offer:
Strange Brigade boxed edition (PS4 and Xbox One only)
Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon players now have a chance to add another free pair of Legendaries to their teams. Beginning this weekend, The Pokemon Company is giving away Entei and Raikou as part of its ongoing Year of Legendary Pokemon celebration, but they’ll only be available for a very limited time. [Update: It’s now April 25, the end of the promotion for those in Europe. Those in the US still have a few more days to get a code.]
To claim the Legendaries, fans in the US will need to travel to a specific retailer and pick up a download code for the Pokemon. This time, the free code will be available at the electronics section of participating Target stores across the country from April 22-29. Players in Europe, meanwhile, can download the Legendaries via an online Mystery Gift from the games‘ main menu until April 25.
The code is redeemable in any seventh generation Pokemon title, although the Legendary you receive depends on which game you’re playing. Those with Sun or Ultra Sun will get the Fire-type Entei, while Moon and Ultra Moon players will receive the Electric-type Raikou.
If you redeem the code in either of the Ultra games, the Pokemon will come equipped with a rare Gold Bottle Cap, which can be exchanged to max out a Pokemon’s IVs in Hyper Training. The Legendaries also know different moves depending on the version. You can see their movesets in each game below.
Pokemon Ultra Sun
Entei — Level 100
Sacred Fire
Stone Edge
Iron Head
Flame Charge
Pokemon Sun
Entei — Level 60
Stomp
Bite
Swagger
Lava Plume
Pokemon Ultra Moon
Raikou — Level 100
Thunderbolt
Volt Switch
Extrasensory
Calm Mind
Pokemon Moon
Raikou — Level 60
Reflect
Crunch
Thunder Fang
Discharge
To redeem the download code, first select Mystery Gift from the games‘ main menu, then choose the option to receive your gift via a code/password. Input the code you picked up and your Legendary Pokemon will be downloaded. You will then have to retrieve it from the deliveryman, who will be waiting inside any of the games‘ Pokemon Centers. You’ll need to have an empty slot in your party to claim the Legendary.
Sony’s new God of War is finally out now on PlayStation 4. Early reviews came online last week–and critics across the board seemed to love the game. The action-adventure game is a reboot of sorts for Sony’s long-running franchise. It mixes things up significantly with major changes to combat and a story that shows a softer side of Kratos who now has a son (and a beard). Ahead of launch, GameSpot spoke with game director Cory Barlog and lead level designer Rob Davis about the new God of War, and they told us about why they changed the combat, the difficulty of making Kratos relatable, and how the game almost didn’t have Atreus in it. In a Very Important And Completely Serious Development, we also asked about why Kratos smashes health orbs with his feet instead of picking them up.
So how are you guys feeling right now after so many years of working on it? Just being right on the edge of launch? [We interviewed Barlog and Davis last week, just hours before the review embargo lifted]
Barlog: It is absolutely like the night before Christmas. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m excited. I remain so proud of what we’ve done, so proud of the team and sort of the shift our entire studio has made. I feel strongly that this is the best thing that we’ve ever done. But, I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m still afraid of the review embargo lifting, I mean, it’s a very exposed time as a creative, right? It’s like are they going to swipe right or swipe left? I feel that’s literally what our feeling is, we’re standing up in front of the class naked and we’re being judged. But, I wouldn’t want to do that with any other team. I feel incredibly confident because of the team that we have. [Suffice it to say, Barlog is happy with the reviews.]
How do you think about that dynamic between sticking to your guns and being confident in what you’ve made, versus responding to players if they want something to be changed? How reactionary do you expect to be once this game comes out?
Barlog: It’s kind of that weird double-edged sword, right? There is certain stuff that we learn, especially even when you’re just doing play tests, to know what is subjective, what is objective, right? That sense of there are certain decisions that we’re going to make simply because, creatively, we believe this is a great decision. The realization of that decision is sometimes, like, ‚Oh, we should have gone a little bit to the left, not a little bit to the right.‘ Those are great pieces of feedback, this is why we play test constantly, because then we wanna be able to make all those choices and mistakes before we get it out to the public.
But, there is that final arbiter of once it goes out to everybody; that’s when things that we could have been blind to become a big deal. For me, I’m cognizant of it but the creative guns that we’ve stuck to, we’re not going to alter any of that. The things during playtesting like people wanted the classic controls, they wanna be able to map things with Square and Triangle. For us, that was just not a good way to play, but we listened to people and said, ‚You know what? Let’s put it in.‘ It’s not a terrible thing, the UI to be able to have the immersive mode, which is what I wanted initially, now it’s like, no UI whatsoever.
But now, giving the players a choice it’s like, you can control all of it. You can put on and off whatever you want in this experience. That kind of stuff I think is fantastic, that is what communication of the community is for.
Yeah. Now, I’ve played it about an hour, so far, and I’ve gotten past that first boss fight, which I thought was fantastic.
Barlog: Oh, good. Good, good, good.
The opening of the game … in the past you’ve gone with these huge, bombastic scenes with Kratos fighting a larger-than-life character. But this time it’s different. Why?
„I wanted people to be surprised, and pleasantly surprised“ — Barlog on God of War’s opening sequence.
Barlog: [We wanted to] circumvent the expectation. So, [it was] very deliberate in the beginning that I was talking to people and saying, ‚I don’t want scale to be the crutch‘ and it’s like, ‚Oh, look we’ve put a big guy there and you take it for granted.‘ Any sort of resonance would be interactive, I want it to feel like you don’t expect what’s gonna happen, to happen. So, that feeling of when the Superman new experience begins and two strong characters duke it out, it feels more real, if that makes sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
Barlog: We always have the Indiana Jones, James Bond opener, but I still wanted that, the soul of that. I wanted people to be surprised, and pleasantly surprised, right? Like you were saying, I think the circumventing of their expectations, which, by Ascension we kind of were not able to do that. Ascension has an amazing opener, but it was like, ‚Oh, well we’ve seen big openers before. That’s really cool but I sort of expected it. I’m expecting you to do that, so it didn’t really surprise me.‘
The opening battle plays out in multiple stages. Can talk about that design decision to make the combat flow that way?
Rob Davis: I mean a part of it is teaching the player without realizing that they’re being taught something, right? And part of it is giving you practice, as well. So, any time you can get the player to learn stuff in a way that’s actually fun, rather than just pushing them through more of a boring tutorial, that’s always gonna resonate in your brain a lot longer and you’re gonna be excited to use it again.
So, design and functionality-wise, I think the combat and boss team did such a good job, because you come out of that experience really knowing a lot about Kratos‘ combat and how to block, how to use rage, how to throw the ax. You get a lot of practice time with all those things, but as a player, you come out of it thinking, ‚Whoa, that was a real God of War-style big whole opening.‘ And, what you don’t realize, is that we’ve played a little bit of a magic trick on you to learn all this stuff.
Barlog: And also the sense that when you walk away from it, there’s a stronger emotional connection to it, as well. Keeping things reduced allowed us to actually have that what’s at stake, right? Atreus actually being a trigger, so that, as you’re going through it, you see that, ‚Oh wow, even in this blurry haze, Kratos was rough with his kid, but he’s also super protective that when any sort of protection of a threat against him comes, that’s when he rages out,‘ right?
That actually is shorter, that boss fight, than it was originally designed. So, we cut about 30 to 35% out of it, simply because pacing-wise, we were like, ‚Alright, well we want that turnover, we want that what’s gonna happen next and that feeling of, Wow, this thing is massive. So, that became a little too massive, which is great, I think part of the magic of working with this team, is everybody’s just so creative throwing all these great ideas in there that we end up in that ideal situation, which is, you know it’s done when there’s nothing left to remove, right? There’ll be so much cool stuff in there, you just keep removing something and making it tighter and tighter and now and it’s like, ‚Look, I can’t take anything else away otherwise it’ll collapse.‘ Perfect, we’ve got it.
I’m curious why you wanted to change the combat so significantly in this game.
Barlog: I think because we had made seven games with that combat system, and I kept looking around at how incredibly talented our systems and how my team was and going, ‚Alright, I need them to take on the challenge that we had on God of War 1.‘ That challenge of nobody really knows what the system was…was just kind of a–I don’t wanna say a mess, because that would make it seem like it was derogatory–just more like they hadn’t found their sea legs in combat and working with [the team] we kind of fleshed out what is sort of the core Kratos, right? The L1 special, Square, Square, Triangle–I animated Square, Square, Triangle the first week I was there. So, and then that L1 and Square spinning special, that was the second week I was there.
I didn’t wanna change it for the sake of changing it, I wanted to reflect how all of us have grown up and how all of us … What we play is different, because God of War is a reflection of what we play, right?
You know, Resident Evil 4 came out in the middle of [God of War 2], right? And that game affected me so dramatically. And then, Resident Evil 7 comes out, and it show creators with, I think, a very strong vision and a really good team, can make these bold decisions, and actually have the audience follow them. Even if there was distance in the beginning, right? It’s the, every time James Bond changes, right, they’re like, ‚Oh, Daniel Craig, who is this guy?‘
Every time Facebook changes their layout.
Barlog: Exactly.
Every time Twitter changes their layout.
Barlog: It is that natural resistance.
Yeah.
Davis: There’s an old game design saying that the camera is genre, right? So, put the camera on top, make it more of like a mobile or a Diablo game, right?
Barlog: I love that; that’s great.
Davis: You know, maybe more of a navigation game or something like that. Once you put the camera, like as deep as [the developers did], you’re now in like more of an intimate, visceral perspective, right? Then, you’ve gotta start looking through everything in the lens of what does it mean to have it up close and we started talking about, ‚Well, there’s a lot more observation in this game.‘ So for the exploration and stuff, and you’ll see them all as you keep playing. A lot of it comes from the perspective of, what does it feel like to have cursor on the screen and a camera that is really focused behind the player. So, wherever possible, we try to design with that in mind, and there’s so much you can do with it. That sort of keeps it feeling familiar.
Davis: And, I think that’s what Resident Evil 4 had when you could drop the pendants down, you would think to yourself, ‚I really wanna get this, because I don’t wanna waste at all.‘ So, their combination of poised camera exploration and scavenging was critical. In our case, it’s all about recalling that axe.
Barlog: We fought a lot in the beginning over the camera distance. I wanted it close and the systems and combat team wanted it more farther away, something you would see in Arkham or the Assassin’s Creed games and that back and forth battle finally led to [lead gameplay designer Jason McDonald] telling us to go away, spending a weekend playing around with it and said, ‚I’ll tell you what my recommendation is, just leave me alone because I’m so annoyed with you right now.‘ And, I didn’t leave him alone, I annoyed him even more over the weekend.
„We fought a lot in the beginning“ — Barlog on changing the camera
But, on Monday, he kind of sat everybody down with a presentation and just said, ‚First of all, you’re gonna laugh, because I ended up closer than any of us wanted.‘ He was like, ‚You want it here, I want it here, I ended up here,‘ and he’s like, ‚Let me tell you why I think I can make this work.‘ And, I started weeping inside, I was like, ‚You’re so great, I love this.‘ But, I win and then, everybody wins, tell everybody.
But, it was so well thought out. And there’s a time when you can say, ‚I want this,‘ and the [developers are] like, ‚Fine, I’ll just figure it out.‘ And, there’s a time when they have an ah-ha and they go, „Oh, I really want to do this.“ The best stuff we ever do is when people say, ‚I really wanna so this and I’m gonna take it two steps further.‘ And, that is the magic of working with Sony altogether, Santa Monica was great.
Davis: Think it was the right way to go, because you throw the axe a lot in this game and there’s a lot you can do with the axe. And, I don’t think players would enjoy it quite so much if it was looming all the way out and all the way back in.
In the limited amount of time that I’ve played so far, just the ax has that feeling of weight to it so when it gets recalled … And, the camera being where it is, it feels like that’s where you are, you’re feeling the entire thing.
Barlog: That level of creativity and agency for the player, was something that we had talked about early on, but they didn’t really know how we were gonna achieve it. On the previous God of War games we kind of had very fixed things that you would do, and you had some creativity, but the creativity was boxed in, right? And, that’s not to say anything was bad about them, it was just how we chose to do it.
In this one, we really wanted to open it up in a sense that all of us could play the game very differently but we’re using the same tools. And, the expansion comes from one of the upgrade choices that you’re making, what are the moments and moment choices that you’re making that make watching you play and watching you play so dramatically different. You can see when one of our really good combat-related testers would record some of the videos that we have teased, right? Because, he’s just amazing, he uses every move, he just looks great doing it, and then you would see another person who just picked up the controller, and you’re like, ‚Wow, that’s a completely different game, right?‘ Because they’re making different choices, so I think that, to me, is one of the biggest victories we’ve had in this game, that sense that there truly is a creative choice you’re making.
Also, how do you make a God of War relatable? In the bit that I’ve played so far, you can tell that he’s firm but understanding with Atreus, but I’m just curious about the motivation for making him a person with feelings.
Barlog: I think so many people have leveled the criticism of, ‚He’s just one note,‘ but I knew, alright, look I want to try this apple, this idea of, again, circumventing the expectations of what you have for this. When I was at Lucasfilm, I read some of the scripts that they had done for a TV show they were gonna do, and a very well known Star Wars character, whom I did not like, was written in a way that I felt sympathetic to him, and I was very taken aback by it. One, because it was a written form of it and it was so powerful and I was like, I had really decided who this character was going into it, but then reading it and seeing how he was jilted and how he was manipulated and how sort of exposed his heart, if you will, to this other character and she stomped on it, multiple times, right? Kratos is a little bit of that sense of everybody thinks they know who he is, right? But, nobody is just one thing, right? And, it’s not really good to be one thing.
And, I thought, alright, creatively, the best challenge I could ever take on is to actually make people reach the end of this game and go, ‚I either feel bad, I feel connected, or I felt like that moment was specifically related to me, or I have gone through that same thing.‘ If I could achieve that, with a character that everybody thought, ‚Whatever, he’s just a guy that, in a cinematic, goes to kill people,‘ now that’s an amazing thing.
And, I had just had my son, at the start of this game and I was kind of looking at it like ‚Oh, wow, how much of myself do I wanna show here,‘ right? How much of my faults, right, do I want the mask and cover up and how many of the dumb things that I’ve done in my life do I wanna prevent him from doing? And, it’s like, wow, that’s Kratos, that’s Kratos to a T, he has made the worst decision in his life, but be able to actually, earnestly, be a parent, right?
Say that he was a soldier off to war, come home every once in a while, then go back off to war, he wasn’t really there because he was fairly ambitious in his military campaign. Now, it’s kind of like, put him in a situation where he has no choice but to deal with it, right? And, in this game, he’d been trying to avoid it, even though he wants to figure this out, he’d been avoiding it for so long, the beginning of this game is all about forcing him into that situation. Honestly, for me, that’s the most perfect dramatic ground to play in.
So, I’m incredibly excited to see where the story goes in that department, so please don’t tell me anything else.
Barlog: I’m not gonna tell you anything, no spoilers.
Davis: To be honest, I was gonna say, but I think I’ll leave it alone.
Barlog: I mean, the challenge also being thrown to every department, right, was this is thematically where we want to go. I wanna see us challenge ourselves in every part of the game, so that as you’re doing exploration, as you’re doing puzzles, it is all about the collaboration between the two and it’s all about trying to develop their characters even in the lull moments. But, to their credit, the level design people have done amazing things that integrated not only the axe, but also this continually growing father and son relationship.
Davis: You might think, ‚Oh, well Kratos is like the biggest badass there is,‘ so there’s all these setups we can do with Kratos, but actually like having Atreus be an expert in Norse language and mythology is awesome because you can do a whole other set of design based on what Atreus is an expert in, that Kratos is sort of not, right? And then you get a bit of an odd couple relationship, right? You know, Buzz Lightyear’s good at one thing, Woody’s good at another thing, right? So, that’s the foundation of a sort of odd couple.
And then, you got the fact that they’re both in a strange land, so then you can do a third setup where neither of them really understand what’s going on and then you get cool storytelling, level design, and puzzles and exploration intersecting because they’re discussing the thing they have to work out together. They end up kind of with things Kratos is really an expert in, things the son is kind of an expert in, and things neither of them are an expert in. And then, when you can write to that, goal to that, design to that, that’s where I think you have a new peanut butter and chocolate between Kratos and Atreus, but it didn’t exist before.
I read that you were pressured to maybe cut Atreus from the game or at least significantly scale back his role. Could the game have worked without him?
Barlog: It could have, it would have been very different; the early phase when they told me, ‚Man, this might be too hard, too expensive, we’re already looking at so many challenges, it’s maybe too much.‘ When I went back and said, ‚Alright, fine, if it was not with Atreus, what would it be?‘ And, it would have been a very, very different game, right? The comparison I made was, ‚Alright, it’s gonna be All Is Lost with Robert Redford, it’s gonna be one character who talks to himself occasionally, but generally, it will be very silent,‘ and everyone will talk in old Norse, so that you won’t understand anything anybody’s saying. And, I think that threat was enough for them to go, ‚Okay, we’ll take on Atreus.‘ So, it was kind of the creative director, passive aggressive, ‚Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll take all the toys away.‘
I know a while ago, you were announced as working on a Mad Max game with George Miller. Is there anything you learned on that project that you took to God of War?
Barlog: Yeah, so nobody ever got to see the things that really excited me and George about that. Some of it definitely inspired what we were doing here, there was such a different thing. But, I think none of them really one to one had a knowledge of transfer over, but it’s the developing the relationships on the road, the ideas and characters, figuring each other out as you go, was something that I started to explore in our draft of Max.
And then, it’s just unfortunate the way that sometimes games go that they ended up going in a different direction, and George and I ended up not working on that one with them, but the learnings I got from that definitely made it possible, I think, to do this. Like I think if I had attempted this game, I’m not even certain if I would have attempted it, had I not worked with George. That is the impact he has.
I feel like prior to working with him, it would be like reading a book without your glasses and you have terrible vision, so you see the words, but they’re blurry. Working with him, and starting to understand why drama occurs, why conflict feeds into the development of all the characters, that kind of put glasses on me to help me understand like, ‚Wow, I really don’t understand drama,‘ right? And, even now, I feel like I’m on the road and I’m on a journey that I’m about a quarter of the way through. So, I have a huge learning ahead of me but I started off on that, because I was pushed, I think, by working with so many amazing new ideas, he is surrounded by incredibly talented people who literally just throw gems out like nobody’s business. And, I’m just like, ‚Seriously? Are you not picking any of this stuff up, anybody? I’m gonna horde all of it, right?‘ So, yeah, it was amazing.
Why does Kratos smash everything to pick it up? Why doesn’t he reach down and pick things up? Why does he have to crush it under his foot?
Barlog: [Turns to Davis] You wanna talk about that one?
I’m just curious.
Davis: I think, if I recall correctly, the animation went in of Kratos punching the chest and internally, we actually call it a punch chest. And, then Cory said, ‚This game will never ship with Kratos punching that chest. I hate the punches, I hate the punches.‘ And, then something happened over time when he just warmed up to it, and it’s so fun and snappy and it’s so quick to do, and you know, it’s that image of old Kratos that I think, once we saw everything in there, originally, it felt like Kratos was trying too hard to be brooding and what Kratos … But, once you get everything back together, it was actually cool. It was cool to see Kratos doing a bit of his old stuff, especially when you’re early in the game.
And the stomp?
Barlog: The systems guys were really hoping at some point I would change my mind, and not have you pick up loot, they were just like, ‚I don’t wanna go around and pick up loot.‘ I’m like, ‚Seriously? The orbs were the past, and that’s cool, but in this one, there’s something satisfying about collecting your rewards from a heard earned fight,‘ right? And, the compromise that I made with them is that they said, ‚Well, look, picking up health is super annoying.‘ They gave me a great example, put me in a fight that was really hard and I kept getting hit when I was … And, I was like, ‚Alright, I get it, that’s good point. What are we gonna do?‘ And they’re like, coincidentally, they load something up really quick and they’re like, they did a stomp with a crystal and I was like, ‚Okay, I get it, I can dig it.‘
But, yeah, the punch chest was one of those things where it was so well known for Kratos that I wanted to make sure we didn’t overdo that and then end up having him just hit everything because he was just known for that, but like Rob said, I think it fit in the tapestry because he didn’t do it for everything. It became the one focal point and then the stomp just became, to me, a great gameplay decision, that they had a great [idea] and said, ‚Look, we need speed and pace so that while you’re in a fight, you can quickly go over, eat your health, and then get back into the fight.‘
God of War on PS4 introduces a surprising number of changes to the series. The latest game does away with the linear structure and progression from past games. Now you can explore an open-ended environment, earn XP to unlock abilities from a skill tree, and even acquire armor sets that improve your stats. In addition, you can collect accessories known as Talismans and Enchantments that further improve your equipment’s stats and give you special perks.
There are a lot of systems in place this time around, and it can get overwhelming trying to manage it all at first, especially if you assumed this game was going to be just like its predecessors. To help you get a better understanding of God of War’s upgrade progression, we’ve compiled details on its major systems and mechanics. For more guides, check out our feature detailing 11 tips you should know before starting. And be sure to read our God of War review.
God of War slowly introduces you to its mechanics, encouraging you to explore and pick up resources scattered about the world–but for reasons not quite stated. As you progress, it’s revealed that the resources you pick up can be used at shops to purchase and upgrade Kratos‘ equipment. There are a variety of different avenues to upgrade and strengthen Kratos and Atreus. In the sections below you can find detailed explanations of each.
Armor Sets
Take time to think about what statistics you value the most.
Armor plays a big part in God of War, not only for increasing your stats to improve your chances of survival, but for specializing in traits that you value in combat. For example, if you like using Runic Attacks, you should equip armor that increases Runic Attack damage. Take time to think about what statistics you value the most, and stick with them, as the sooner you can funnel your resources into crafting and upgrading the armor that best supports that, the better.
The same philosophy applies to Atreus. At the blacksmith shop, you can buy him armor sets that enhance his characteristics in different ways. For instance, one set increases his arrow damage, while another improves the damage he does when strangling enemies. Atreus can be incredibly effective in battle, so it’s important to think about which armor best suits how you want to use him.
Enchantments
Enchantments are special items you can slot into your armor that further enhance their stats. Each piece of armor can hold at least one Enchantment, as long as it has an available socket. If an armor piece doesn’t have any, you can unlock sockets by upgrading them at the blacksmith shop. Throughout your journey, you’ll get your hands on a ton of Enchantments, so always make sure to check your inventory to see if there are any that you should replace from your current loadout.
Make sure to check your inventory to see if there are any that you should replace from your current loadout.
Oftentimes an Enchantment has a special perk that gives you attack buffs and resistances that are either inherent or activate randomly during battle. While it’s useful to be aware of Enchantment perks, you’ll generally want to focus on equipping ones that best increase your stats, as they give you the most significant boosts compared to other items in the game.
It’s important to note that whenever you purchase a new armor set, make sure to re-equip all of the Enchantments from your old armor onto your new one. Unless you’re a fan of playing at a disadvantage, don’t make this mistake.
Axe Pommels
Prioritize Axe Pommels that offer the best perks.
Axe Pommels further increase the Leviathan Axe’s power. Similar to Enchantments, they offer perks that activate either randomly or after you perform a specific action in battle. For example, the Deadly Grip of Fury has a perk that grants you a Rage Burst after a successful axe kill. Since you can only equip a single Axe Pommel, you want to lean towards the ones with the best perks, as they often don’t offer the most substantial stat boosts. But the choice is up to you; you’re not punished for focusing on stats over perks.
Talismans
Talismans are special accessories you can equip that allow you to perform a special ability in battle. They come in two varieties: active and passive. Active Talismans can be triggered manually by pressing a special button combination. Passive Talismans are activated by performing a specific action in battle, like dodging an attack at the last second.
You generally want to focus on equipping a Talisman that best suits your needs in battle.
While Talismans also offer boosts to your stats, you’ll generally want to focus on equipping one that best suits your needs in battle. For example, if you’d like to have a little insurance when nearing death, the Talisman of Concentrated Vitality allows you to manually give yourself a health boost mid-battle by pressing L1 and the circle button. It’s best to be practical when it comes to choosing a Talisman. Their stats boosts may provide an initiative to equip one over the other, but it’s their perks that are most important, as they can directly impact and change the tide of battle.
Combat Upgrades
God of War’s combat is fairly limited at first, but once you start acquiring more Skills and Runic Attacks, battles start becoming more complex. Enemies only get tougher as the game goes on, so it helps that there are ways to defend yourself. Below we run through the two avenues you have to increase the power of your fighting prowess.
Skills
Choose your skills wisely.
The first way to increase your strength in combat is by unlocking combat abilities in the Skill tree with the XP you earn in battle. Skills are special moves you can perform, like combos, charging attacks, and active attack buffs. Both Kratos and Atreus have their own skills you can upgrade, which are all available for you to unlock right at the start. You eventually unlock more skills from the tree after acquiring or purchasing key items that boost the level of your weapons.
You don’t earn a lot of XP early on, so it’s important to start thinking about which skills best suit your playstyle. But don’t fret, you’re not forced to unlock certain skills over others the whole way through; you’ll eventually nab enough XP to unlock every ability on the skill tree. Until then, choose your skills wisely.
Runic Attacks
While you might be inclined to utilize the default attacks and combos available to you to dispatch foes, don’t forget to use your Runic Attacks. These powerful special moves can be equipped to your weapons and are triggered by holding L1 and pressing R1 or R2. There are two types of Runic Attacks: Light and Heavy. The game features a variety of different Runic Attacks to equip, each sporting their own unique effects, attributes, and cooldowns.
Don’t underestimate the power of Runic Attacks.
It’s possible to upgrade Runic Attacks with XP to enhance their power. You might feel inclined to upgrade combat skills over them, but don’t underestimate how they can aid you in battle. A well-placed Runic Attack can give you the upper hand when your chances of survival seem low. Upgrading them improves their damage, stun, and overall capability. Do not forget to use and upgrade your Runic attacks. They’re well worth it.
Huddled together in a crater, they gather around their last hope against the cold–an aging steam generator. Fueled by coal, it can kick out just enough heat to give the last bastion of humanity a faint glimmer of hope. A moment like this illustrates the essence of Frostpunk, a survival-style city-builder where you must lead a lonely band of survivors not against encroaching armies, but against a frigid storm that’s wiped out most of the human race.
As temperatures plunge well below freezing, it’s your job to guide the remaining populace towards establishing a successful, self-sufficient camp. You’ll need hunters and hothouses, mines and saw mills. And you have to keep all of these machines running in temperatures that would make even the hardiest penguins shiver.
The essentials are pretty simple, though. People need houses and jobs. Because this is a survival situation, everyone works on a near-constant basis. The day starts at 5:00 AM, and people have a few hours to finish any construction projects before they head to their primary job for 12 hours. Then they head back home, finish a few small tasks, and go to bed.
This cycle is hugely important because you’ll need to always make sure you have enough fuel to keep the generator running through the night. A major part of this is planning out when and where people need to be to complete their tasks. If you survive, you’ll build outwards in concentric rings, ensuring that, as you expand, your core can keep up with the heating demands and provide enough warmth for your citizens to combat the pervasive chill.
This all works seamlessly, too. There’s a natural pattern to it all, and you’ll be given little challenges throughout the day to help give you a bit more structure. Often, these are emergent consequences of past decisions. If you were able to keep people alive through the night, but not warm enough, then they could get sick–posing a new set of challenges to prioritize for the day after. If any one element of the city is neglected a bit too long, then you’ll start getting more strident demands from your people, which often become more intricate, two-to-three-day goals. The structure for it all is elegant and precise–you always have just enough work, and you’re never left without near and moderate-term goals to help give you direction.
Your mission is also strained by all manner of unavoidable disasters. Everything from sudden cold snaps and necessary amputations to mining disasters and refugee crises crop up, requiring your intervention. This forms what could be called the crux of the game–balancing hope and discontent. Compassionate actions give your people hope. They remind the huddled masses that we (in the general sense) haven’t lost touch with humanity. Dispassionate or draconian acts, however, drain the collective will. Unlike most moral choices in games, neither are unilaterally better.
Compassionate actions are typically better long-term goals for short-term hits. For instance, taking on gravely injured or terminally ill refugees will help hold your people together–reminding them that if they are ever left out or lost, they will be found and cared for. At the same time, medical care in the post-apocalypse is damned near impossible, and if you don’t have the facilities to care for the people, you’ll soon end up with a pile of bodies spreading disease throughout the colony. Manage to fix up the wounded, though, and you’ll have an able-bodied workforce embued with the unbreakable spirit of hope.
These are the kinds of choices Frostpunk lives on, and what separates it from every other comparable game. Frostpunk gets a lot of mileage from it, too. It’s hard to cling to the moral high ground–even if you succeed–when you’re reminded of the sacrifices you’ve made along the way. That gives your decisions weight in a way that SimCity and many of its ilk simply can’t. Here, the effects of disasters are tangible, and the game rightly blames you for your personal failures.
One of your citizens approaches you: „Children should be put to work. We’re all in this together, and we need help right now.“ Then, you’re shuffled over to a rough-hewn book of laws for your band. There you can, with a click, start putting the kids to work. Or you could build child shelters to house the kids and keep them healthy and safe from the cold. The citizens didn’t present you with that second option–and why would they, they can only see what’s immediately in front of them?
Frostpunk itself, in the tutorial, notes that the people you serve are always looking for a solution, but not necessarily the best one. What’s ultimately best depends on the emergent challenges you face. Do you have a mysterious illness spreading wildly through the camp? Are you struggling to find coal, forcing you to char firewood and construction materials to keep the generator going? These questions are constant and agonizing throughout. Frostpunk drips cynicism and bleakness. And yet it is that hopelessness, that fundamental need of human beings to persist in spite of everything that Frostpunk seeks to embody most. You become the bulwark against fear–even as you look across the land and internalize just how hard this fight will be.
That’s powerful precisely because it hurts. Every time you make a tough call, doubts linger. If you had been better, if you had chosen differently, maybe you’d have been able to save everyone. Adding to the distress, Frostpunk’s Hope meter shows you the consequences of your decisions right as they happen. Send children into the mines and you can watch the camp’s faith evaporate as a whole chunk of meter gets lopped off.
This system–balancing the will of the people against their own needs–works so well precisely because every mechanism in the game is built to support that core idea. Your job is to manage the emotional fortitude of the people as much as it is about anything else. In time, you’ll be able to form scouting parties, outposts, and build a sprawling network of makeshift towns and settlements that stand together. But again, that arc intersects with countless brutal decisions. Should you send a scout to help survivors fight off bears? What about risk turning off an electrical super-weapon that fries everything it touches–but with the potential of a new safe haven from the world outside? The story of your civilization, of your masses hoping, is forged in the choices you make along the way. And they become a part of the narrative you build.
Frostpunk is among the best overall takes on the survival city builder to date. Its theming and consistency create a powerful narrative through line that binds your actions around the struggle to hold onto humanity in uncertain times. Hope is a qualified good, but you may not always be strong enough (or clever enough) to shelter that flame from the cold.
Sharing much of the style of Punchdrunk’s 2011 play Sleep No More, The Invisible Hours is more immersive theater than it is interactive fiction. You exist as a ghost in each scene, and you can follow any of the characters at any time, rewinding, fast-forwarding, and pausing as you please. But you don’t act on anything; you just observe, gathering pieces of a larger story along the way. That story draws heavily from classic mystery novels, and even though its twist isn’t as original as it initially might seem, it’s intriguing to watch things unfold from every perspective and learn more about its shady characters.
Set in an alternate version of the late 1800s, The Invisible Hours takes place at inventor Nikola Tesla’s mansion, where an assortment of guests–including a very arrogant Thomas Edison–have gathered at his behest. When the first chapter begins, Tesla is already dead, lying in a pool of his own blood in the entryway. If you pause as soon as the chapter opens and wander Tesla’s island, you can find five of the guests in their rooms and one outside in a gazebo–and no indication of who the murderer is, of course. In true Agatha Christie fashion, among the guests is a detective who supposedly can help the process along.
That detective, Gustaf Gustav, is the first character you meet and the only person at Tesla’s isolated mansion who arrived after the murder. You start out on the docks of the rocky island just as Gustaf’s boat approaches, though you can go anywhere at any time rather than sticking by his side. But following Gustaf through a scene gives you the most straightforward perspective, since he’s the only one of the seven suspects who almost certainly didn’t do it and is simply looking for the killer. Effectively making him the protagonist for your first playthrough of each of the four chapters is the easiest way to get your bearings, and it’s a strong anchor for the rest of the story.
That said, The Invisible Hours works regardless of the order in which you experience different events. The game is structured so that one revelation or detail won’t ruin any other scenes in the same chapter, so you can follow whoever interests you the most and go from there. You can listen to a character discuss a murder trial and then find a newspaper clipping about it with new details, or you can find the news story first–each instance works in isolation with the bigger picture. For the most part, there’s something going on at any point in time. There are stretches where characters, when left alone, aren’t doing much–looking out windows into the storm, reading books, or sitting and staring into the distance–but there’s always a lead to chase somewhere, if not more than one.
The characters and their sordid backstories turn out to be far more interesting than the murder itself. The real mystery is not who killed Tesla but why Tesla invited these people to his mansion in the first place, and as the story progresses, those reasons become more and more clear. The depth of each side story makes rewinding and revisiting scenes rewarding, rather than the chore it could have been. The game also tracks who you’ve seen and at what time during each chapter, so it’s easy to find exactly whose perspective you’re missing and track them down–and find out what they were doing when you weren’t looking.
Because it shares a lot of the same DNA as classic mystery novels, The Invisible Hours can initially come off a little campy. A few over-the-top characters–especially Edison–and some convenient explanations for their behavior feel like dinner theater fare at times, but there are significant reasons for those apparent missteps to appear the way they do. The Invisible Hours‘ performances are reflective of that, and the more you learn about each character, the more you can appreciate the acting that goes into all of them. The stage actress in particular is impressive, with shifting body language and changes in her speech revealing the different sides to her.
The Invisible Hours works regardless of the order in which you experience different events.
In the same vein, every plot hole I thought I’d found turned out to be solid once I saw it from every angle. That put me in the position of the characters in mystery novels that frustrate me the most: the ones who jump to conclusions, make assumptions, and cause more problems than they solve. It was a reminder that my job wasn’t to figure out whodunnit, and I appreciated The Invisible Hours most when I stopped trying to solve the mystery and instead just watched as it unfolded. Once I did find out who the killer was, I wasn’t even concerned with it anymore, for better or worse (though a hard-to-find secret ending makes the killer’s reveal more interesting than it is on its own).
The Invisible Hours shifts depending on how you approach its story; scenes take on different meanings as you see them from different perspectives, and as a result, finding every detail in the bigger picture is rewarding. It strikes the same tone as an Agatha Christie novel and at times feels campy for it, but the characters are interesting and well-acted, making each trip through the same few minutes worth it just to see a different character’s side of things.
As games continue to grow in scope and complexity, there is something to be said about the light-hearted, compact RPG stylings of The Swords of Ditto. It mixes childlike cartoon visuals and a delightful soundtrack with light puzzles and simple-yet-challenging combat. And while it doesn’t offer anything particularly groundbreaking to seasoned RPG or roguelite fans and backs you into a wall in some confusing ways, the intuitive nature of its systems, along with the inclusion of local two player co-op, makes The Swords of Ditto a fun leap down the rabbit hole into saving a strange and ever-changing cursed town.
The main loop of each playthrough is simple: Wake up, gather a sword from its resting place in the town of Ditto–either from statue or in the graveyard–to become the hero, then seek out the Toys of Legend to destroy the Anchors that the villain Mormo uses to strengthen her grasp on the world, making her easier to defeat in the final confrontation. If you die before then, Mormo wins and Ditto lives under her rule for another 100 years before the new Sword of Ditto is awakened, and the cycle continues. If you succeed, Ditto lives in peace for 100 years until Mormo returns, and it all happens all over again. Getting the hang of this can all feel a little overwhelming at first, but any confusion quickly slips away as the game’s rhythm settles in, and it doesn’t take long to feel comfortable with what’s expected of you.
Co-op play is local only, but the drop-in, drop-out system makes it very easy to have another player come and go at any moment. It also changes up the dynamics of play fairly significantly. Enemies are stronger, as you’d expect, meaning some enemies require a more tactical approach to take down. Items are shared between players, which can put a sudden strain on health items if you’re both struggling to deal with the added difficulty. Thankfully this is alleviated somewhat by an increased item drop rate, so health items can be replenished nearly as quickly as you go through them.
The entirety of the explorable areas are made up of individual sections that are pieced together at random for each playthrough. When out exploring the world, there’s plenty to find and keep you busy. In Zelda-like fashion, you can slice up grass to score more coins or health items. One standout touch: If the weather is dry, you can torch a field of grass and watch it all go up in super-satisfying fashion. Random shops, caves and houses filled with cute and interesting characters dot the world, and while some only share a few repeated lines of dialogue, others offer quests for items or keys to unlock dungeons in other parts of the map. Almost everywhere you look there’s something else to see and do, and it’s this sense of discovery that’s felt when finding these hidden gems that makes The Swords of Ditto so rewarding.
Combat is mechanically straightforward; you can perform a simple melee attack with your sword as well as a roll dodge, and you have four interchangeable gear slots for items or weapons that are accessed using the d-pad. You can also buff your character by applying stickers that you find around the world or purchase within certain shops. It’s all fairly rudimentary, but despite the combat’s relative simplicity the enemies are a huge challenge, and this is where it gets gratifying.
Each foe has its own unique way of attacking or defending, and learning this for each enemy will make you much more effective at taking them down. The three-headed fireball will, if it touches you, turn your sword attacks into healing slashes for a few seconds, forcing you to retreat before the effect wears off. The green slime-ball monster falls harmlessly apart when physically attacked–it’ll only taking damage when it’s set on fire. It takes some time to learn all of this, but when you do, combat feels much more satisfying. You become more capable of clearing large groups of monsters than if you’d just kept slashing away, and having to think each encounter through makes it all the more enjoyable.
While it needs a little refinement, The Swords of Ditto is sure to delight, whether played on your own or with a friend.
Dungeon puzzles are also relatively simple yet engaging. Some involve coloured switches that rearrange the room entirely, altering your path and the enemies within. Some rooms simply involve killing all the enemies to make a key or a chest appear, while others are increasingly more elaborate and labyrinthian. It’s not unusual to come across a room that demands you place a multiple runes in slots that only appear when a certain switch is triggered, all separated by large chasms, locked doors, and rows of floor spikes. Later rooms will combine all of these variables into one, adding a light complexity that manages to keep things breezy and enjoyable.
Alongside the puzzles, each dungeon submits to the Isle of Trials rules–a set of modifiers that changes the rules of how each dungeon works. Early dungeons will only have one or two of these applied, but later playthroughs will throw upwards of four, and they could be anything from negating poison to activating auto-health-regen while prohibiting the use of consumables. These modifiers keep the game and the dungeons feeling fresh, especially in subsequent attempts, offering new challenges that unpredictably swing things either for or against you.
It’s not a game without issue, though. Even while playing on PS4 Pro, The Swords of Ditto can be prone to quite a bit of slow down and stutter, mostly when there are lots of items strewn about. I also had a couple of triggering issues that would block my progress, meaning I had to quit to the menu and reload the game to reset the room. But the biggest problem is the time limit that’s enforced for each playthrough. You are only given a handful of in-game days–which changes depending on difficulty–to explore, gather resources, and complete quests before being forced into confrontation with Mormo at the end of the final day. Not only that, it feels like the days are too short, making some of the more elaborate discoveries difficult to fully engage with in a single playthrough.
While you can unlock the ability to rewind time by collecting enough of a particular type of item and taking them to a shrine, you have to collect yet a second currency to purchase them on top of that. Given that some of the items required for these longer quests are lost with a new character, It feels like you should have this ability to purchase rewinds from the start. This would have given me more confidence to explore more of the game, instead of keeping one eye on the days remaining and the other on whatever tasks are left to complete.
The Swords of Ditto is nothing short of a light-hearted good time. Despite a few bumps getting in the way of progress and some misgivings about the forced time limit per playthrough, it’s still a joy to slash through enemies and collect items while humming the game’s ear-tickling soundtrack. Meeting oddball characters and watching the world react to past playthroughs is a wonderful exercise, and pushing through the game’s barriers to exploration feels rewarding every time. While it needs a little refinement, The Swords of Ditto is sure to delight, whether played on your own or with a friend.
Sony is developing a whole slate of movies based around characters from Marvel’s Spider-Man comic books, the first of which is Venom. The film stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a journalist who is taken over by a vengeful alien symbiote, and the full trailer has been released.
While February’s first teaser just set the tone for the movie, this new trailer gives us more plot details and plenty of action. We see Brock investigating a sinister scientist, played by Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed, who is performing secret experiments with a strange black alien matter. Brock becomes infected with the goo, which takes over his body and personality and gives him some amazing new powers. Check the trailer out above.
Venom releases on October 5, 2018, and also stars Michelle Williams (The Greatest Showman), Jenny Slate (The Lego Batman Movie), and Woody Harrelson (Solo: A Star Wars Story). Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer is directing.
Athough Spider-Man features in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony still owns the movie rights to the character. There was initially some confusion about whether Venom will be part of the MCU, and whether Spider-Man could appear in any of the spin-offs. Both Marvel boss Kevin Feige and Spidey actor Tom Holland have stated that the two universes are entirely separate. However, last year, former Sony boss and Spider-Man: Homecoming producer Amy Pascal suggested otherwise, before subsequently switching to Feige’s position.
Venom will be followed by another Spidey spin-off, Silver & Black, which will focus on Silver Sable and the Black Cat. The film was originally set for release in February 2019, but earlier this year director Gina Prince-Bythewood confirmed that the movie had been delayed because she was „still working on the script.“
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar is still the most successful movie of all time, but by the time the first of four planned sequels arrives, it will have been 11 years since it was in theaters. The landscape of blockbuster cinema has changed a lot of since then–back in 2009, Star Wars was yet to return and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has barely started. Cameron has now spoken about how Avatar 2 will fare with a modern audience in love with superheroes.
In an interview to promote the docuseries AMC Visionaries, Cameron stated that he was hoping that „Avenger fatigue“ sets in. „I’m hoping we’ll start getting Avenger fatigue here pretty soon,“ he said, via IndieWire. „Not that I don’t love the movies. It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hyper-gonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!“
This isn’t the first time that Cameron has spoken about the possibility that Avatar’s huge audience might not be there for the follow-ups. In November, he admitted that if Avatar 2 and 3, which are being shot back-to-back, didn’t make enough money, then parts 4 and 5 wouldn’t happen.
The director also provided some new details about what to expect from the new movies. „I’ve found myself as a father of five starting to think about what would an Avatar story be like if it was a family drama,“ he said. „What if it was The Godfather? It’s a generational family saga. That’s very different than the first film.
„There’s still the same setting and the same respect for the shock of the new. We still want to show you things that you haven’t even seen or imagined, but the story is very different. It’s a continuation of the same characters… but what happens when warriors who are willing to go on suicide charges and leap off cliffs, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids? It becomes a very different story.“
The first cast image from the Avatar sequel was revealed in September. Avatar 2 is set to hit theaters on December 18, 2020, with the third part arriving on December 17, 2021. If all goes to plan, we’ll see Avatar 4 and 5 on December 20, 2024 and December 19, 2025 respectively.
Es gibt einen Moment am Anfang von Assassin’s Creed Origins, in dem Bayek seinem Freund und ebenfalls Beschützer von Siwa Hepzefa zur Hilfe eilt, als dieser von einer Gruppe Soldaten überfallen wird. Nachdem sie ihre Feinde ausgeschaltet haben, umarmen Bayek und Hepzefa einander, feiern ihren Sieg, steigen auf ihre Kamele und reiten los nach Siwa. Es handelt sich um einen relativ kurzen Moment in Bayeks epischer Reise und doch hat er mir die Tränen in die Augen getrieben.
Als Ägypter, der in den Vereinigten Staaten geboren wurde und auch dort aufgewachsen ist, bin ich es gewöhnt, ein Außenseiter zu sein, der einzige im Raum. Hin und wieder fühlt sich meine Identität wie eine Kuriosität an und ich werde zu dem Ägypter, den jeder kennt. In meiner Jugend wirkte die Darstellung von Ägyptern in westlichen Medien für mich immer wie eine Karikatur. „Ägypten“ wird oft reduziert auf Pyramiden, Mumien und Kamele. Ägypter sind selten Hauptdarsteller und werden meistens zu Rollen von Nebendarstellern oder Bösewichten degradiert, selbst in Geschichten, die in unserem eigenen Land spielen. Deshalb weinte ich, als ich zum ersten Mal Bayek und Hepzefa gemeinsam auf dem Bildschirm gesehen habe. Zum ersten Mal sah ich nicht nur einen, sondern sogar zwei Ägypter gleichzeitig auf dem Bildschirm. Ihre Hautfarbe wurde respektiert, sie waren nicht nur Besucher in Ägypten und sie waren auch keine Bösewichte. Sie waren zwei ägyptische Helden, die ihr Zuhause verteidigten. Was mir besonders viel bedeutete, war die Art und Weise, wie die Szene im Spiel dargestellt wurde. Es wurde keine große Sache daraus gemacht. Indem die Geschichte Bayeks und Hepzefas Sieg und sogar ihre ganze Existenz als normal darstellte, schaffte sie die Vorraussetzungen für ein Spiel, das Ägypter respektvoll und nuanciert behandelt.
Es war ein befreiender Moment, als würde meine Identität plötzlich angenommen und gefeiert werden. Über die folgenden 100 Stunden mit Assassin’s Creed Origins und seinen drei Erweiterungen war ich hocherfreut, ein Spiel zu entdecken, dass nicht nur in Ägypten spielte, sondern auch mit dem Kopf voran in die Kultur, Religion und die Lebensweise der Ägypter auf eine Weise eintauchte, die diese Welt authentisch wirken ließ. Kulturelle Repräsentation auf diesem Niveau ist schwer zu erreichen. Um herauszufinden, wie Origins eine so realistische Darstellung gelang, habe ich mich direkt mit dem Entwicklerteam unterhalten, das mir erklärte, wie es diese Welt zum Leben erschaffen hat.
Um eine authentische Version vom antiken Ägypten zu erschaffen brauchte es eine ganzheitliche Herangehensweise. „Die Welt und die Epoche beeinflussen alles andere“, erklärt Creative Director Jean Guesdon. „Alle unsere Teams haben viel über diese historische Zeitspanne gelernt. Ob im Audio, der Animation, dem Narrative oder dem Level Design: alle Teams müssen den historischen Kontext so gut wie möglich verstehen, damit jeder etwas beitragen kann. Mithilfe von kleinen Details fühlt es sich echt an.“
Indem die Entwickler sichergingen, dass alle Entwicklerteams mit ägyptischer Geschichte vertraut sind, konnten sie die Kultur in mehr als nur die Umgebung integrieren. „Ein wichtiger Punkt für uns war das neue Quest-System“, erzählt Guesdon. „Die Scriptautoren haben tatsächlich eng mit den regionalen Teams zusammengearbeitet. Die regionalen Teams kontrollierten gleichzeitig die Welt und die Quests in dieser Welt. Die Scriptwriter und das Narrative-Team wurden in diese Regionen eingebaut. Wir wollen uns entfernen von den zufälligen Missionen der vorherigen Spiele und lieber bedeutungsvolle Geschichten ansteuern. Wir wollten Spielern die Gelegenheit geben, Leute zu treffen und so ein besseres Verständnis des Schauplatzes zu bekommen.“
Dieser neue Fokus auf persönlicherem Storytelling ermöglichte den Scriptwritern, die ägyptische Kultur in die Basis von fast jedem Quest einzubauen. “Die Quests und die NSC (Nicht-Spieler-Charakteren) haben ihre eigenen, persönlichen Geschichten, um eine Verbindung zwischen den Spielern und dem antiken Ägypten aufzubauen. Es ist nicht nur eine Sandbox, durch die man reist. Das meiste lernt man über diese Epoche durch die Menschen, die man trifft. Genau wie im echten Leben.“, sagt Guedson. „Wenn ich reise werden die Erinnerungen, die ich von einem bestimmten Ort habe stark von den Leuten, die ich getroffen habe beeinflusst.“
Spieler entdecken die Welt in erster Linie durch Bayek selbst. Die meiste Zeit des Spiels ist Bayek kein Assassine. Er muss sich nicht im Schatten verstecken oder sich unter die Menge mischen. Bayek ist ein Medjay, ein Beschützer Ägyptens und seines Volkes. Deshalb setze ich nie Bayeks Kapuze auf: er ist ein sympathischer, fürsorglicher Mann, der seine Pflicht, dem ägyptischen Volk offen zu helfen, annimmt. Außerdem wollte ich nicht die eine Videospielfigur vermummen, die so aussieht wie ich. Obwohl Bayeks Reise voller Rache, politischem Aufruhr und Bürgerkrieg ist, wirkt es dank seiner Persönlichkeit und liebevollen Natur nie unpassend, wenn er sich die Zeit nimmt, mit den Kindern der Gegend zu spielen.
Bayek alleine kann die Kultur einer gesamten Zivilisation nicht verkörpern, aber da kommen die gut durchdachten Nebenquests von Assassin’s Creed Origins ins Spiel. Sie bieten Möglichkeiten für den Spieler, mehr über die Zivilisation des antiken Ägyptens zu lernen, durch innige Momente mit anderen Charakteren. Bayeks eigener Sohn Khemu ist ein perfektes Beispiel. Der Quest „Bayeks Versprechen“ fordert den Spieler auf, 12 verschiedene Steinkreise in der ganzen Welt zu finden. Wenn einer dieser Kreise gefunden wird, wird ein Flashback ausgelöst von einem Gespräch zwischen Bayek und Khemu, die gemeinsam die Sterne betrachten. In diesen Gesprächen werden Themen angesprochen, wie Liebe, Familie und Verlust und jedes hat eine Verbindung zu einer bestimmten, ägyptischen Gottheit, die in einer Sternenkonstellation repräsentiert ist. Bayeks väterlicher Rat fühlt sich zu jeder Epoche relevant an, aber im Kontext des ägyptischen Pantheons bekommt man einen zusätzlichen Einblick in die Kultur und den religiösen Glauben der Familie.
Ein weiteres Beispiel eines persönlichen Moments, der den Spieler mit der ägyptischen Kultur verbindet, ist ein Ritual, das man Bayek mehrmals ausführen sieht. Während Bayek methodisch jedes seiner Ziele auslöscht wischt er ihr Blut mit einer Feder ab. Das Rituial wird nach fast jedem Mord ausgeführt, aber man erfährt den Kontext in der ägyptischen Gesellschaft nur durch einen freiwilligen Nebenquest. In „Die Braut“ trifft Bayek auf eine Frau, die an einer Klippe steht und um ihren verstorbenen Mann trauert. Während sie in Erwägung zieht, Selbstmord zu begehen erzählt sie Bayek, dass sie und ihr Mann oft auf der Klippe saßen und Reiher beobachteten. In einem Versuch, die Frau zu trösten, gibt Bayek ihr eine Reiherfeder. Wenn sie ihn fragt, warum er ihr diese Feder gibt, erwidert er: „Das ist ein Ritual aus Siwa. Federn bedeuten uns viel. Nach dem Tod wägt Anubis unsere Herzen gegen Maats weiße Feder ab. Deines. Meines. Das unserer Lieben.“. Während man die Frau erfolgreich von der Klippe herunterführt wird der tatsächliche Sinn hinter dem Ritual, das Bayek (und viel später Altair) nach jedem Mord vollzieht, offenbart. Das Wiegen der Herzen ist ein wichtiges Konzept des Lebens nach dem Tod im antiken Ägypten und wurde dank eines kurzen und doch kraftvollen Moments mit einem Charakter tief in die Geschichte von Assassin’s Creed Origins eingeflochten.
Die Wichtigkeit von Religion und Riten im Alltag wird immer wieder betont. In einem der eher herzreißenden Hauptquests wird ein junges Mädchen namens Shadya von einem von Bayeks Zielen, bekannt als das Krokodil ermordet. Ab diesem Punkt in der Geschichte wird ein freiwilliger Nebenquest namens „Shadyas Ruhe“ freigeschaltet, in dem die Auswirkungen von Shadyas Tod auf ihre Eltern Hotephres und Khenut gezeigt werden. Es ist eine Situation, die jene von Bayek und Aya wiederspiegelt: zwei Eltern, die den Tod ihres jungen Kindes ertragen müssen. Hotephres und Khenut jedoch schlagen nicht den Weg der Rache ein, sondern drücken ihren Kummer auf eine eher niedergeschlagene Art und Weise aus. Durch ihre Trauer auseinandergetrieben, sucht Hotephres Trost in der Flasche und in den Armen einer anderen Frau. Khenut hingegen hat die Trauer in einen regelrecht katatonischen Zustand versetzt. Erst als Beyek dabei hilft, ein Bestattungsritual aus Siwan auszuführen, können die beiden wirklich mit dem Heilungsprozess beginnen. Dieser düstere Quest akzeptiert Schmerz und Elend auf eine Weise, die in jeder Zeit und jeder Kultur glaubwürdig ist. Trotzdem lernen wir durch Bayeks Sicht die Bedeutung von richtigen Bestattungsriten im antiken Ägypten.
Während viele Quest durch innige Beziehungen die ägyptische Kultur erklären, dienen einige Quests der Veranschaulichung von größeren, gesellschaftlichen Problemen im ptolemäischen Ägypten. Als Bayek in „Die Krankheit“ auf eine Gruppe Bauern trifft, die Leichen verbrennen, ist er schockiert über ihre blasphemische Methode, Tote zu beseitigen. Wir lernen, dass Einäscherung eine ungeeignete Handhabung von Toten in Ägypten ist während Bayek erfährt, dass die Leichen Krankheiten verbreiten könnten und verbrannt werden müssen, um die überlebenden Bauern zu schützen. Nach längerer Nachforschung erkennt Bayek, dass die toten Bauern durch eine verdorbene Nahrungsquelle vergiftet wurden. Als Bayek den Schuldigen findet, deckt er auf, dass ein Händler die armen, unter der Steuerlast leidenden ägyptischen Bauern vergiftet hat, um nach ihrem Tod ihr Land an reichere Griechen abzugeben. Es ist ein relativ kurzer Quest, aber er hilft, die Beziehung zwischen Griechen und Ägyptern zu erklären und zu zeigen, dass Ägypter im ptolemäischen Ägypten in ihrem eigenen Land oft wie Bürger zweiter Klasse behandelt wurden.
Dies sind nur kleine Beispiele, wie Assassin’s Creed Origins die Kultur des antiken Ägyptens in fast jeden Quest einwebt und damit komplexe Charaktere mit unvergesslichen und persönlichen Geschichten präsentiert. Irgendwo braucht ein Bauer Hilfe beim Düngen seines Feldes, bevor er einem behilflich sein kann. Ein Mann bittet um Unterstützung beim Einsammeln von Leichen nach einem Nilpferdangriff. Ein alter Gladiator muss lernen, seinen Ruhestand zu akzeptieren. Der Kern von Assassin’s Creed Origins fühlt sich authentisch an, weil seine Menschen glaubwürdig sind: sie haben realistische Emotionen, Motivationen und Reaktionen. Sie müssen sich um die Ernte kümmern, um Liebende trauern und Natron sammeln. Sie brauchen Bayek nicht, um ihr Leben zu führen und die Welt wirkt so viel reicher, weil nicht dafür verantwortlich ist, ihre Existenz zu rechtfertigen.
Wenn ich über meine Zeit in Ägypten zurückdenke, denke ich nicht an Pyramiden und Kamelritte. Ich erinnere mich an Schmuckhersteller, die silberne Armreifen verkauften, an den Geruch des Karrens, der Ful Medamas servierte und an das Geräusch von Kindern, die Fußball spielten. Ägypten begrenzt sich nicht auf seine Monumente, es wird ausgemacht von seinen Menschen und ihrer Kultur. Das Ergebnis einer ganzheitlichen Vorgehensweise, um ägyptische Kultur zu verstehen und einzubauen ist, dass die Welt von Assassin’s creed Origins nicht nur echt aussieht, sondern sich auch echt anfühlt.
Für mich ist Assassin’s Creed Origins mehr als nur ein Spiel. Es repräsentiert und bestätigt meine Identität und macht ihr Platz in einem Medium, das ich liebe.
(Anmerk. v. Chris Geißler: An dieser Stelle darf ich mich erneut bei meiner Kollegin Valerie Buys bedanken, die mich bei der Übersetzung dieser Nachricht während meines Urlaubs unterstützt hat.)
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