Warning: Spoilers for God of War.
The boss fight against “The Stranger” was perhaps the best way to set the stage for 2018’s God of War. Despite being a fraction of Kratos’ size, this unknown man is able to go toe-to-toe with the killing machine. Now, we can see what went into it in a new video.
Denny Yeh, Senior Staff Combat Designer at Santa Monica, went into detail about what exactly made this God of War fight so memorable, complete with prototype build of the fight.

Now, it’s eventually revealed that this stranger was Baldur, son of Odin and brother of Thor. He also literally could not feel any pain and is invulnerable, so that fight all makes sense in the end. But with the epic scale and dynamic camera movements, this fight alone showed God of War was something special. Camera angles may have been the most important factor in making this God of War fight work. By bringing the camera in even closer, the true impact of these hits could be felt. This fight was god vs. god, so every hit needed to be powerful and destructive. For the studio at Santa Monica, three specific questions needed to be addressed, according to the PlayStation Blog:

How much can we push the godly reactions on both Kratos and Baldur before it starts feeling like too much"
How far can we go with environmental destruction" How dense can we make the breakable trees and rocks before they start interfering with gameplay" Do these add enough to the fe...