When questioned in a rapid fire interview by Game Informer, Creative Director Cory Barlog said that players would spend “25-30% of their time on boats” in the new God of War. Game Informer’s latest God of War coverage expands on the surprising role that boats have in the full game.
The full quote from the unedited answer to the interview was actually “I?m speculating here, but I?m going to say 25 to 30 percent of the game?s surface area, perhaps, is covered by boat. Wow, that?s a good one. I don?t know. We?re gonna go 25 percent.” One quarter of the game being spent on a boat still seems like a lot, so clearly there is a certain amount of care and thought that has been put into giving Kratos his sea legs.
It actually began with swimming. Kratos may have had some limited swimming chops in the previous games, but you won’t find that gameplay feature in this one. “As we started looking at, first, the crazy amount of investment for full 3D swimming to be awesome, and, second, to have a character follow you in in full 3D swimming, the programmers kept giving me that look,” Barlog explained. The team decided to table that challenge and come back to it as a potential problem to solve for future titles. When Barlog started to look at ways to have Kratos and Atreus cross bodies of water, the solution actually created moments of closer connection and reflection between the two characters. “I started investigating this idea of a b...