One of the nice things about the game industry is that it doesn't take 10 years for a developer to earn respect. Great games don't happen accidentally -- there's simply too much involved behind the scenes. If a developer's good, it's good, and it gets the credit. So when Daxter hit PSP last March and cemented itself as the system's best platformer, startup Ready At Dawn instantly earned a loyal fanbase.
Of course, SCEA Santa Monica is no stranger to this kind of attention surge, having been in the same position a year prior. In March 2005, the original God of War shipped and catapulted the team from a group few had heard of to a triple-A developer, pretty much overnight.
So it's only natural to see the two come together for the first PSP God of War title, Chains of Olympus. Developed primarily by Ready At Dawn -- with Santa Monica peering over its shoulders -- the game looks to be one of the first truly major releases for PSP.
On the gameplay side, there are two big things you need to know:
#1 - You're in service to the Gods: Rather than present the game as a prequel or a bridge between God of War 1 and 2, the developers have latched on to a specific part of Kratos' timeline to tell the story this time out -- specifically, the 10 years in which Kratos wasn't fighting against the Gods so much as fighting for them.
"A lot of what we're telling with the later stories is Kratos when he's just really realized he's a puppet of the Gods, really realizing that he's getting screwed over, and [the PSP game will] flesh out when he did have maybe a little bit of faith and when that faith started to crumble a little bit -- when he started to see some cracks in the stories they were telling him," says Chains of Olympus creative director Cory Barlog.
SCREENS: Kratos will face off against the Persian Army early on in the game. [Click the image above to check out all God of War: Chains of Olympus screens.]
As has become standard for the God of War series, this means players will find all kinds of ties between the story and previous God of War tales, from subtle references to out and out reveals.
#2 - This is God of War as you remember it: Or, at least that's the goal. The primary message Sony is trying to get across for the game is that it's going to be just as epic a game on PSP as it has been on PS2. The developers aren't focused on a secondary character or a simplified concept because it's a portable game.
That means you can expect many of the God of War conventions like epic boss fights, multiple weapons and magic attacks, dramatic music, over-the-top combat (with newly added combos), story-driven gameplay, action-oriented puzzles, etc.
Many of the series' gameplay mechanics will return as well. Though we're light on specifics at this point, the developers are putting in effort to prevent Kratos from feeling like he's missing anything despite the character gaining certain abilities over the course of the first two games in the series (which come after this one in the timeline).
Just Getting Started
As is usually the case, bullet points only tell a small part of a game's overall story, so for those of you interested in the extended version -- complete with every last info-nugget we were able to squeeze out of Sony -- we pulled together a massive interview with Barlog and Chains of Olympus game director Ru Weerasuriya, which starts on page two.
HUGE Interview with Balrog, new screens and artwork inside feel free to hotlink it here.
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3159438
that looks amazing. The control scheme sound good, not to complicaded.
