The People vs Todd Papy

Members of the playstation.com forum community put their burning questions to Todd Papy, Senior Designer on God of War II.

God of War was a huge success... Was it hard to start development for God of War II after that, or was it a natural step up with lots of ideas flowing? (Shakh)

Todd: It was actually a lot of flowing ideas. We brainstormed [after we finished the original] and there were so many things we wanted to get into the first game but just didn't have time to do. So we brought in those elements and started figuring out what we could do and what we couldn't, and how we could push the story and the engine to do everything that we needed.

Recent trailers and gameplay videos for the game put many next generation games to shame in terms of scale. What inspired you to do this on PS2, and were you ever tempted to simply turn the title into a PS3 game to overcome hardware issues? (Splidders)

Well, from a management standpoint, the decision was that we did it on PlayStation 2, so we didn't really think about PS3 at all. We understood from a gameplay standpoint what we could do with PS2, how far we could push it. If we'd have tried to make a launch title for PS3 there'd have to be some ramp-up time to learn what we needed to do and what's possible... we wouldn't have been able to make as good a game as we have in the same time period, factoring in that initial learning curve.

What does being a designer on God of War II actually involve? (lob4star)

Well, I'm a level designer, and we come up with the areas the player's going to be running around, and what they'll be doing. So, any puzzles, combat scenarios that the player's going to run into, [obstacles], and object placement, like doors that you interact with... that kind of stuff.

How do you start designing a game like God of War II? (lob4star)

Well, the biggest thing is that we look at what we didn't do right [the first time]. People look at the first God of War and think it was a great game, but as a developer... we see the errors. Maybe there weren't enough bosses, or maybe some of the puzzles were too hard, things like that. So we go back to the drawing board and say, "well the fans of the game wanted more bosses - let's deliver that."

We also said "let's expand our sub-weapons." In the first game we had one - the Blade of Artemis - and in this we have two. Then there's the magic, and the combo meter, and we've worked on the way that the weapons, the magic and the combo systems work together. We've been able to expand the combat system and expand the story - the whole scale of the game, in fact.

As someone who has never played God of War before, what does the sequel offer to those new to the series? (50p)

Whoever has played the first game, they can pick this up and it'll feel like an old friend. For newcomers, there's a training level - but it's not really built that way. Everything we do, it's in your face, it's over the top, there's an epic scale to it. So you won't feel you're being led through a training level, but you'll be taught everything you need to know to be successful.

What is your favourite new element you've brought to God of War II? (WRDN)

For me, it's the grapple - I love that [Kratos can now use his Blades of Chaos as a grappling hook]. There's one particular section... I think when people see it, they won't be able to believe it's running on PS2... it's a section of gameplay that's just phenomenal.

What are the main differences between the first game and the second? (Koolkid201)

We've brought in lots of new elements, like Pegasus, the grapple sections, the new bosses, and the way the magic and weapons now interact... but at the same time, we can't take it too far away from what God of War is about. There are certain elements that people expect from us, so we've taken the stuff we thought we did right and improved it even more, and anything we did wrong, we removed it.