One of the core pillars in evolving God of War is Kratos' son, Atreus, from both a story and gameplay perspective. Our Engineering Lead, Jeet Shroff discussed the team’s approach to the character.

"At the heart of this adventure, this game is about the relationship that exists between Kratos and his son," said Shroff. "Atreus plays an important role in giving Kratos the motivation he needs to want to change and bury his vengeful past. He looks to the boy as someone he must protect and struggles to bond with him."

"In turn, Atreus aids his father in many ways throughout the journey. To reinforce this theme, we didn’t shy away from limiting their relationship to just the narrative. In gameplay, Atreus plays a key role in autonomously aiding and complementing Kratos while navigating through this foreign land as well as being an extension to his arsenal in combat."

"In addition, the player can use a face button to have Atreus translate runes, solve puzzles and use his full depth in battle from dividing the field to tag teaming and following up on enemies," said Shroff. "Whether the player uses the son strategically or to enhance combos, there are lots of interesting aspects of gameplay that we’ve been striving for with Atreus."

With these goals in mind, our team knew they needed to focus on building a systemic AI for Atreus that would be able to scale and handle the different cases and maintain his believability across both the narrative and gameplay. Shroff commented on the key focal points in building Atreus' AI as well as praising our team’s collaborative work and persistence throughout the process.

"We worked hard on developing his positioning, traversal, progression and combat loops as core systems and not just specific moments of gameplay," he said. "The animation systems also needed to account for the fast paced combat, while keeping things grounded. We had to meticulously plan for all the situations Atreus might be in as he seamlessly transitioned back and forth between narrative and gameplay with the no cut camera (which Dori will go into more detail below)."

"From the outset, we knew this would be a monumental challenge. Having the inclusion of the son in the game made us rethink how we approached every aspect of God of War. The design, tech and animations needed to be in lockstep, and we had to make sure that every team was actively engaged in dealing with the son and coming up with solutions together to bring him to life."

At the origin stage of establishing a new direction for God of War, Creative Director, Cory Barlog, challenged our team with a seemingly impossible technical goal: no camera cuts in the game. Our Director of Photography, Dori Arazi, laid out the motivations.

The animation systems also needed to account for the fast paced combat, while keeping things grounded. We had to meticulously plan for all the situations Atreus might be in as he seamlessly transitioned back and forth between narrative and gameplay with the no cut camera.

"The reason we went for this type of camera boils down to two concepts: we wanted to create a very immersive story with a lot of empathy for the heroes. This required a new approach in how we frame the action for the series. Gameplay in general is a non-interruptive camera experience, but when the camera cuts to a sequence of controlled narrative, you're now breaking that sense of immersion."

"The end result was an amazing combination of creative inspiration, new uses of tried-and-true technology, and physical camerawork that had to be perfect. Dori explained, "We spent a lot of time tweaking the virtual mocap equipment to figure out how to get the right controls on the camera, operate it for a significant amount of time while doing this in real-time and not shooting the camera in post. Our team also did an amazing job in creating a gameplay camera that the player can control that has the same sensitivity and sensibility of a documentary camera."

These notable achievements are just a sample of the incredible technology simmering under the hood and bringing our new God of War to life. Suffice to say, by pushing the evolution of our technology, we've been able to further push the creativity and vision of how we wanted to usher in a Norse era of God of War. These ambitions are what we hope will inspire God of War fans of new and forever to embark on this journey with Kratos and his son, Atreus.