Kratos finds his humanity in the new ‘God of War’

It was never in question that God of War would return. The franchise is one of Sony’s most successful exclusives of the last decade, and the main trilogy of games were both critically acclaimed and hugely popular. But the ending of God of War III seemed to put a pretty definitive end on the series, while the relatively lackluster prequel God of War: Ascension that came a few years later showed that Sony had pretty much run out of ways to continue telling the story of its anti-hero, Kratos.

That is, unless developer Santa Monica Studios made a break from the series’ past, changed the gameplay, left Greek mythology behind and, most importantly, show us a more human side of Kratos than we’ve ever seen before. Judging from the preview of the forthcoming God of War that kicked off Sony’s E3 event, that’s exactly what’s happened, and it completely reinvigorated my interest in a series that felt like it had nothing left to say.

Just don’t call it a reboot. In a conversation I had with God of War mastermind Cory Barlog, he made it clear that this is indeed the same Kratos whose fate was up in the air at the end of God of War III, but he’s in a radically different place in his life. “As a writer, I think the interesting thing to do is to take the challenge of somebody who has a very difficult past, a very difficult image and put the audience in the position that they’re going to root for them,” Barlog says. “And they’re going to root for them because they’re failing — because they’re getting back up. You’re not inspired because they succeeded, you’re inspired because they succeeded after a thousand failures.”

That sense of redemption permeated the new God of War that Sony showed off this week at E3. Kratos is watching his son, and that makes the former Spartan far more sympathetic. It felt like there was more character development in the God of War preview than there was in the previous trilogy, and it doesn’t just come in cut scenes. It comes in small moments of exploration and discovery between the big battles and more in-depth story moments.

The old, one-dimensional, rage-filled Kratos is an important part of the story. He was once the petulant child of Zeus, and but now he’s a father again, trying to reign in his worst qualities while still being true to himself. “Kratos was the Hulk all the time,” Barlog says. “I think watching The Avengers and hearing [Mark] Ruffalo’s line: ‘The secret is I’m angry all the time’…” After taking a pause, Barlog continues: “That was so powerful because it did make me realize that is Kratos, but he doesn’t have the connection with his Bruce Banner. The kid pulls the humanity out of him.”

The child is truly the anchor of this game, and while Barlog says you don’t play as him, he will be a constant companion for the majority of God of War. For lack of a better word, there’s a “child” button that will bring him more fully into whatever you’re doing at a particular moment. “He’ll open a door, he’ll participate in a cooperative puzzle with you, he’ll go over and attack somebody,” Barlog explains.

But the child’s importance goes far beyond gameplay: He’s what keeps Kratos from being the wrathful God of War. In the gameplay demo, the child disobeys Kratos while trying to hunt a deer, and you can see some of Kratos’s trademark Spartan rage begin to show, but he manages to pull it back and teach instead of scream. He’s still cold and distant, unable to bring himself to comfort the boy after helping him kill that first deer up close with a hunting knife. But, when the boy is unable to make the killing cut himself, Kratos takes his hand and guides the knife in with him. He’s not perfect, but he’s showing more empathy and care in a 10-minute demo than we saw in an entire trilogy.

“That, to me, is parenting… and that’s being a kid,” Barlog says after noting that he put more of himself into this game than any other he’s done thus far. “I failed all the time, my relationship with my parents is so weird, and my relationship with my kid is the same thing. I see in him all the weird facets of myself that I wish I could change, but I can’t. But I can help make his next day better, and that’s where Kratos is at.”

The idea of Kratos trying to help make someone’s next day better is entirely foreign, and that’s what makes the new God of War so enticing. We have no idea what the actual story narrative will be thus far, but there’s a lot to be hopeful for. It doesn’t hurt that the new combat system looks like a blast — you can throw Kratos’ axe, fight with your bare fists, and then magically recall the ax to your hand at any time. And despite the series’ new camera angle that to put you right behind Kratos’ shoulder, the action still feels familiar and fluid.

Between the new camera and fighting styles, the signature massive monsters and the undeniably gorgeous visuals, there’s a lot to be intrigued about here. But what’s most interesting to me is the story and the mystery: What happened to Kratos between his destruction of ancient Greece and its pantheon of Gods and his new life in the north? (Barlog says the game doesn’t fill in all the blanks, but will address what happened after God of War III in some capacity.) Who is this kid, anyway? Is Kratos a friend of the Norse gods, an enemy, or something else entirely? It’s going to be a while before we find out, but for the first time I’m more excited about a God of War story than the action.

‘Resident Evil 7’ in VR is a sweaty, puke-inducing masterpiece

I nearly tossed my cookies in the middle of Sony’s media lounge at E3, while hosting a Facebook Live stream and playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard on PlayStation VR. This wasn’t a case of Nerd Flu or a bout of food poisoning — I finally experienced the notorious curse known as VR sickness. For years I’ve been drifting from headset to headset without a care in the world, content in the knowledge that I didn’t get nauseated while playing games in virtual reality. I’d read about people feeling queasy after playing Elite: Dangerous or Project Cars, but I never fully understood why it was such a big deal. Couldn’t these people just chug some Pepto Bismol and get on with their immersive gaming experiences? Where did all these weak-stomached crybabies come from anyway?

Crybabies, consider this my formal apology, courtesy of PS VR and Resident Evil 7.

I was incredibly excited to play Resident Evil 7 in VR. I’m a long-time franchise fan and I loved the direction that Capcom decided to take with this installment. It’s in first-person, a departure from other games in the series, and at first glance it looks more like PT or Outlast than a traditional Resident Evil title. This is great news for me; I adore psychological thrillers and the recent wave of exploration-based, haunted house horror games has been pure nectar for my adrenal glands. With a team of terror masters behind the Resident Evil 7, I was prepared to be scared. However, I was not prepared to puke.

A third of the way through the demo, with Engadget Social Media Editor Mallory Johns streaming my every move live to the internet, I suddenly felt feverish. In an instant I was burning up, sweat building on my hairline and at the base of my neck. I fanned myself and assumed it was the adrenaline kicking in. After all, I was wandering around a dilapidated, carcass-filled house that was supposed to scare my pants off at any moment. Nerves were normal.

With Mallory feeding me questions from the live stream, I continued to talk and search the house despite a growing discomfort in my chest and stomach. The first wave of nausea crashed over me shortly after I climbed the stairs for the first time, my head tilted upward as I peered around a dark loft space occupied by a group of naked mannequins. I wondered if I was coming down with the flu.

Two minutes later, I was barely paying attention to the game. My stomach churned and my skin steamed. Mallory asked what I was seeing on the screen and I snapped back into presenter mode for moments at a time, but the nausea only increased. Ten minutes into the demo, I had paused to fan myself once and lifted the headset away from my eyes three times. At that point, I knew that if I put the PS VR back on, I was going to puke all over Sony’s media lounge, live on Facebook. I called it quits. Mallory ended the stream as I asked the Capcom employee if people complained of VR sickness a lot. He shrugged.

I was on the brink of vomiting for 10 minutes following the demo. Mallory rushed with me to the bathroom but the fresh air and real world filling my vision gradually dulled the nausea. It was all incredibly strange — I’d never felt anything like it, especially not while playing a game in VR.

We asked around and found that my experience wasn’t unique. Multiple people reported feeling sick while playing Resident Evil 7 on PlayStation VR, including some who said they’d never experienced VR sickness before. A friend sat down to play the demo and as we talked afterward, he paused multiple times to cover his mouth, on the verge of vomiting. A staff member at a neighboring demo station said that people regularly left the Resident Evil booth with VR sickness, including one man who removed the headset to reveal a head drenched in sweat.

This was a shame, largely because the demo was legitimately wonderful otherwise. The house was claustrophobic and mysterious, the graphics were immersive and the story was just starting to reach a fever pitch by the time I had to quit. Despite the overwhelming nausea and clammy sweats, I remain interested in Resident Evil 7 (the full game lands on January 24th, 2017, by the way) — just not in VR.

Maybe I fell ill because I used the right analog stick too much to look around instead of simply turning my head (old habits die hard). Maybe the sickness struck because I hadn’t eaten lunch and my stomach was overflowing with excitement at playing Resident Evil in VR. Maybe I was pregnant. OK, it wasn’t that one — but the thought did cross my mind before I heard the stories from other people who felt pukey after playing the demo.

It’s worth noting that the Resident Evil 7 demo on PS VR runs at 60fps, the minimum specs that Sony will allow on its new headset. In comparison, the Vive, Oculus Rift and Razer’s HDK 2 all require at least 90fps. VR sickness is a tricky beast — it stems from a wide range of factors, including frame rate and latency issues, and disparate games can induce nausea for different reasons. A dropped frame here or there can turn an immersive experience into a roiling vomit catalyst, and subtle lag between a player’s head movements and the on-screen reaction can destroy an otherwise wonderful game. Low frame rate isn’t the only culprit when it comes to VR sickness, but it’s definitely on the list.

Again, I’ve never gotten sick while playing a VR game before, no matter how long I’ve worn the headset or how quickly I’ve turned my head in-game. The nausea that assaulted my body while playing Resident Evil 7 in VR was so sudden and sweaty that it was scary — just not in the way Capcom intended.

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Fear and faith: ‘The Last Guardian’ is an incomplete opus

“Yes, I worry. All I can do at this moment really is pray.”

Fumito Ueda has been working on The Last Guardian for almost 10 years, and in just four months time, it will be released on PlayStation 4. At E3 2016, Ueda showed me the fruits of his labor and shared his fears about the reaction to its eventual release on October 25th.

In The Last Guardian, you play as a young boy who wakes up in an unknown land next to a giant creature named Trico. The animal is mostly catlike in appearance but with mangled, shorn wings and a ratty tail. I played the first 40 minutes of the game, and it’s changed a fair amount from the section we saw last year.

The game starts by establishing its controls with on-screen prompts and begins to tell Trico’s story. Your first task, as in last year’s demo, is to remove the spears preventing Trico from moving. To do this, you need to begin to befriend the creature, feeding it barrels to satiate its hunger and build trust. With spears removed, you then set about freeing Trico from his chains, a feat that requires you to scale his furry, feathered torso and remove a collar from his neck.

Before The Last Guardian, Ueda worked on Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Both were released on PlayStation 2 to critical acclaim, but they hail from a different time. And The Last Guardian does too. Work began on the game in 2007, the same year Uncharted, BioShock and Assassin’s Creed all debuted. Despite the fact that those series have spawned a combined 13 sequels, bringing all manner of advances and additions to their respective formulas, Ueda says his vision for The Last Guardian has not changed. Speaking through a translator, he noted that while “from a technical standpoint, the detail and amount of expression” may have changed due to the long development cycle, the game is “exactly what I had in mind with my vision.”

That vision still eludes me. The gameplay, from both the demo I went through and the various trailers over the years, is roughly divided between puzzle-solving and platforming. You utilize the two characters’ vast difference in stature to your advantage, crawling through gaps and cracks with the boy and reaching high above with Trico. But Ueda’s games have always focused on story as much as gameplay, and The Last Guardian concentrates on telling the animal’s story through its relationship with the boy.

Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus deal with childhood, innocence, growth, nonverbal communication and bonds. The Last Guardian appears to explore similar notes, albeit in a new arrangement. The commonality is no accident, but Ueda says he doesn’t want to tell stories about these themes. Instead, he comes back to them because they allow him to best convey stories. The child, for example, mirrors the mindset of a player as she’s exploring a new world. The lack of dialogue allows for a wide range of interpretation among different gamers. He’s not crafting characters “to make 100,000 people to feel [a certain way]” but rather creating characters that will help 100,000 people feel whatever they want to feel.

Fumito Ueda, the game’s creator and director.

Prior to the demo, and in my subsequent interview with Ueda, I saw the boy as the main character. That was wrong. While he is playable, Trico is our voiceless protagonist (when he opens his mouth, it’s only to emit a birdlike shriek). It’s through the two characters’ relationship that we get to know the creature and learn his story. Ueda spoke passionately about his creation, telling me that even in the team’s darker moments, “we just couldn’t forget about Trico. It’s something that we’ve created and we can’t forget, and we continue to pour our heart and soul into.”

And there must have been some truly dark times over the game’s development cycle. I asked Ueda how he and his team remained motivated, delay after delay. He pinpointed the release of PlayStation 3 versions of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as pivotal in maintaining focus. When they were first released, “we were just on the brink of entering social media,” he explained, but by the time the HD remasters released, “there was a different feedback loop that we hadn’t experienced.” Hearing fans’ responses and seeing their delight in discovering the games “was a great positive factor for us” and spurred the team to continue its work, even when it became apparent that it would have to move development from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4.

I have no doubt that The Last Guardian will engender positive responses from fans. It was a true delight to discover the various mechanics of the game, so much so that I almost feel bad revealing them. There’s the color of Trico’s eyes, which changes with his mood, allowing you to learn what he’s thinking nonverbally. There’s a magical shield with which you can spur Trico to shoot lightning from his tail. There’s the narrator, ostensibly a grown-up version of the boy retelling the tale, who says what he did in order to guide you in the right direction. There’s the gorgeously exaggerated key frame animation of the boy as he creeps around in the darkness. It’s the most impressive tutorial I’ve ever played. By the end of the demo, the bond between the boy and Trico was only just beginning to form, but the bond between Trico and me was already strong.

By the end of the demo, the bond between the boy and Trico was only just beginning to form, but the bond between Trico and me was already strong.

That said, I have some concerns about The Last Guardian being ready by October. The game should be in the “refine for release” phase, but I noticed plenty of graphical glitches, awkward camera angles and even one instance where a jump that should’ve barely lifted me into the air propelled me 10 feet high.

To be clear, none of the issues detracted enough from the experience to make this anything other than the most memorable 30 minutes of my gaming year, but it’s still a worrying sign when we are this close to the release of a title that is so anticipated. Although Ueda and his team at genDESIGN remain the creative force behind the project, since the switch to PlayStation 4, Sony’s Japan Studio has been handling the technical side of the game. Perhaps the full force of that 400-strong team working to the deadline will be enough to give The Last Guardian the polish that fans are expecting.

Although social media has helped Ueda believe in the strength of his vision, its potential for negativity worries him as well. “Today, [social media] is maybe a little too much. Your harshest critics are also your biggest fans.” Combined with the extremely long development cycle, this has made Ueda tense about its October release. “Yes, I worry. All I can do at this moment really is pray,” he told me. Now it’s just a case of faith. “When I put my ideas on paper, I’m coming from my own player perspective. This is the type of game I want to play too. When the game comes out, all you can hope for is there are others who have the same passion and ideas that I have. That’s all I can hope for: That there’s a very wide range of players out there that can feel that.”