Dodge of War Inspired by Polygon's recent video on dodging in God of War, I thought it might be cool to add some development process insights on the topic, as well as call out some of the more hidden and nuanced ideas behind the dodge mechanic itself. https://www.polygon.com/videos/2019/1/16/18185656/god-of-war-kratos-dodge-rolls-history Definitely check their video out. Even though they strangely attribute the inspiration for God of War's dodge updates to... monster hunter (???) - it was cool seeing a some commentary on the history of dodging in action games and how God of War compares. Iteration Designing and building the dodge is a perfect example of how the quality of a gameplay mechanic will correlate directly to the amount of time the team had to stumble onto the best solutions (Although, "iterating," is definitely the safer and more producer-calming term to use). More often than not, when it comes to fine tuning gameplay and combat mechanics, you ca
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Controller Rumble Controller Rumble is one of those tricks that literally every game uses. But I think due to its prevalence, when it is done particularly well, it tends to go unnoticed - almost like a secret ingredient. Especially when it comes to combat, a good controller rumble is often the difference between something feeling impactful or not. For example, the controller rumble used in Destiny for gun fire and projectile impacts has always felt extremely satisfying to me. There's something about the frequency and intensity that matches well with the tracer fire, muzzle flash, and impact particles - it feels extremely tight. Another implementation that I recall standing out was the Batmobile in Arkham Knight. I remember there being quite a bit of subtly and nuance to how it was used - slight directionally-appropriate triggering on skid turns, impacts, boosting, etc. For God of War, thanks to the infinite patience and effort of George Mawle and Phil Wilkins ,
Reaction Animations Reaction Animations -- It's probably safe to say that how an enemy responds to being hit is equally as important to making an attack feel satisfying as the attack itself. Reaction animations are also, sadly, one of the more overlooked features in games. Agnostic of genre, reaction animations are also important not just for feel but also serve a very functional purpose, that when lacking, can severely impact the quality of a combat system. Fighting Game Inspiration At least for the titles I've worked on, and from what I can gather referencing and researching other action titles, a lot of hit reactions are inspired by old school fighting games. Because stun time is such an important characteristic to how fighting games played, it's been essential for the genre to refine and polish hit reactions. As far back as Street Fighter II for example, you can see a breakdown of several types of hit reactions that still remain present in modern action g
Recalling the Leviathan Axe ~After spending the last several years working on God of War , I was trying to figure out what to do with a sudden surge of free time. After talking about it with several other designers on the project, I thought it might be nice to just ramble on about some of the stuff I spent the last 5 years of my life working on. So full disclosure: there's a good chance nothing here will be of interest or use to anyone... With that said, the first mechanic I wanted to talk about was something that ended up being a pretty unique and well regarded mechanic - recalling the Leviathan Axe after throwing it. It was also one of the earliest gameplay/combat prototypes that we tackled. Despite knowing all the way back in 2015, maybe even 2014, that we wanted to do this mechanic, we were still putting the finishing touches on it months ago. It really did take several years of tweaking and noodling and messing with it. Special thanks to George Mawle for dealing wi