GDC08: God of War developer goes behind-the-scenes


Nathan Phail-Liff held a session at GDC entitled "God of War: Deconstructing an Epic." Through the session, he talked about the development of the game, and gave tips for interested developers on how to make the most out of limited resources.


Click for high-resolution image.

"An extra 10% of effort yields an addition 40% to the final perception of polish." These numbers are hard to verify, simply because these attributes aren't quantifiable in the first place. However, the slides on display show how significantly a product can change over a short period of time. What took 3 days to make can be enhanced with just two more days of work. It can be further enhanced with an additional day. And then a few more hours. See the huge strides made in the slide above.



The team admits that they underestimated the "tech revisions to grow from Daxter to God of War." As impressive as Daxter was, God of War required far more tech, due to its more realistic graphics. Lighting, for example, had to be completely changed in order to meet the demands of the game.



Here's one of the funnier notes of development. Apparently, the Battle of Attica level actually "took up almost 40% of [Ready at Dawn's] production time." This is the level that was included in the demo, and is the level that has been primarily on display. The team wanted to get everything right for the game's introduction before going on to the remainder of the game.



So what's next for Ready at Dawn? It's rather unhelpful and vague: "new original IPs, new platforms, new mistakes!" We'll certainly keep an eye on their next project.

Tags: gdc08fanboy, god-of-war, ready-at-dawn

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Featured Galleries (view all)

BUZZ! Junior: Monsters
BlazBlue
SOCOM Confrontation: Cold Front
Mimana Iyar Chronicles
Gran Turismo 5 (Ferrari & Lamborghini)
NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Legends: Akatsuki Rising
White Knight Chronicles (Gamescom)
R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate
NBA 10 The Inside (PSP)

Team Joystiq

Chris Grant

Editor-in-Chief

RSS Feed

James Ransom-Wiley

Managing Editor

RSS Feed

Ludwig Kietzmann

Senior Editor

RSS Feed

Andrew Yoon

East Coast Editor

RSS Feed

Randy Nelson

West Coast Editor

RSS Feed

Justin McElroy

Reviews Editor

RSS Feed

Alexander Sliwinski

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Ben Gilbert

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

David Hinkle

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Griffin McElroy

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

JC Fletcher

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Kevin Kelly

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Mike Schramm

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Richard Mitchell

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

Xav De Matos

Contributing Editor

RSS Feed

About Joystiq

Joystiq Features