This is not a thread to shit on God Of War, so please, no drive-by posts.
The latest God Of War is a good to excellent game and I can't see any gamer seriously giving it any less than a 7. It does too much things very well to score lower. Still, a bunch of game design choices prevented me to enjoy it as much as I could have. This thread is to talk about God Of War's game design and how it could be improved in a sequel.
3 main aspects put me out of the experience:
1) The collectathon aspect.
The flow of the game is constantly interruped by collecting loot on the ground, opening small and big chests, breaking hanging buckets, hidden artefacts and so on. It would be interesting to know how many collectibles and chests there is in the world because it must be huge. There's a chest every 50 meters in this world and most of those treasures were not meaningful rewards, which brings me to my second point.
2) The needless stat system aspect.
All those collectibles are used to upgrade your gear and unlock new abilities but all the RPG elements are mostly superfluous. The main quest is linear and the enemies are always at the same level as the natural evolution of your character in the story. As a result, you never feel stronger. What's the point then? The game could have ditched the stats altogether (or make them way simpler, like in say, BOTW) and nothing of value would have been lost, the collectathon aspect would have been reduced and less time wasted to upgrade your gear just to match the enemy level in the main path.
3) The mass market and old fashioned level design aspect.
The interactive elements of the levels are very obvious, unnatural and in your face. The climbing paths are all well marked with golden signs showing you a clearly linear path where all you can do is push one direction, you can't drop from any heights. The climbing is slow, brain-dead and probably just there to hide load times. Jumping is reduced to a button-prompt, you can't even fall or fail navigation. Exploration is very limited. The lake is just a pretty hub with clearly marked access points to linear paths leading to the main objective of each branch. The exploration just consists of combing all small dead ends hiding mostly a chest. There isn't any interconnection with other areas and the metroidvania aspect of unlocking new abilities to access new areas is just used to reach previously inaccessible chests. An objective marker is also shown on-screen (that you can desactivate) but the game isn't built without it in mind and the map is not detailed enough to help you with navigation.
The level design was also very reminiscent of RE4, which is now 13 years old. The environments, while very pretty, are quite static and non-interactive, except for clearly designated objects. Everything seemed very rigid, with invisible walls, no swimming allowed and no physics or dynamic systems in place. The use of pretty skyboxes and impressive paintings as backgrounds is a technique that isn't working on me anymore, it makes the game world a bit fake and immaterial looking.
Other points that could see improvements:
- The menus and equipment screens were cumbersome and not intuitive for the majority of my time with the game.
- The special abilities were all very similar and activated by the exact same inputs (L1 + R1, L1 + R2 or L1 + O). The actual number of unique possible inputs for combos is not that varied. All special attacks had mostly the same effect to me.
- The bestiary was pretty limited with lots of identical looking enemies with different color schemes. The tactic to defeat bigger enemies was mostly always the same.
- Lots of fights could be cheesed by throwing your axe from a distance and abusing Rage when facing resistant enemies or being overwhelmed.
- The puzzles were mostly very simple and repetitive, particularly the ones involving the blue runes to unlock yet another chest. Most of the required item to "solve" a puzzle were merely 50 meters away from its intended use.
- The journey was a bit too long given the limited diversity of gameplay situations. The fact the main goal of the journey was not that stimulating to me, not helped by the various setbacks (sometimes very stupid) encountered time and time again.
Please discuss (with effort ;))
The latest God Of War is a good to excellent game and I can't see any gamer seriously giving it any less than a 7. It does too much things very well to score lower. Still, a bunch of game design choices prevented me to enjoy it as much as I could have. This thread is to talk about God Of War's game design and how it could be improved in a sequel.
3 main aspects put me out of the experience:
1) The collectathon aspect.
The flow of the game is constantly interruped by collecting loot on the ground, opening small and big chests, breaking hanging buckets, hidden artefacts and so on. It would be interesting to know how many collectibles and chests there is in the world because it must be huge. There's a chest every 50 meters in this world and most of those treasures were not meaningful rewards, which brings me to my second point.
2) The needless stat system aspect.
All those collectibles are used to upgrade your gear and unlock new abilities but all the RPG elements are mostly superfluous. The main quest is linear and the enemies are always at the same level as the natural evolution of your character in the story. As a result, you never feel stronger. What's the point then? The game could have ditched the stats altogether (or make them way simpler, like in say, BOTW) and nothing of value would have been lost, the collectathon aspect would have been reduced and less time wasted to upgrade your gear just to match the enemy level in the main path.
3) The mass market and old fashioned level design aspect.
The interactive elements of the levels are very obvious, unnatural and in your face. The climbing paths are all well marked with golden signs showing you a clearly linear path where all you can do is push one direction, you can't drop from any heights. The climbing is slow, brain-dead and probably just there to hide load times. Jumping is reduced to a button-prompt, you can't even fall or fail navigation. Exploration is very limited. The lake is just a pretty hub with clearly marked access points to linear paths leading to the main objective of each branch. The exploration just consists of combing all small dead ends hiding mostly a chest. There isn't any interconnection with other areas and the metroidvania aspect of unlocking new abilities to access new areas is just used to reach previously inaccessible chests. An objective marker is also shown on-screen (that you can desactivate) but the game isn't built without it in mind and the map is not detailed enough to help you with navigation.
The level design was also very reminiscent of RE4, which is now 13 years old. The environments, while very pretty, are quite static and non-interactive, except for clearly designated objects. Everything seemed very rigid, with invisible walls, no swimming allowed and no physics or dynamic systems in place. The use of pretty skyboxes and impressive paintings as backgrounds is a technique that isn't working on me anymore, it makes the game world a bit fake and immaterial looking.
Other points that could see improvements:
- The menus and equipment screens were cumbersome and not intuitive for the majority of my time with the game.
- The special abilities were all very similar and activated by the exact same inputs (L1 + R1, L1 + R2 or L1 + O). The actual number of unique possible inputs for combos is not that varied. All special attacks had mostly the same effect to me.
- The bestiary was pretty limited with lots of identical looking enemies with different color schemes. The tactic to defeat bigger enemies was mostly always the same.
- Lots of fights could be cheesed by throwing your axe from a distance and abusing Rage when facing resistant enemies or being overwhelmed.
- The puzzles were mostly very simple and repetitive, particularly the ones involving the blue runes to unlock yet another chest. Most of the required item to "solve" a puzzle were merely 50 meters away from its intended use.
- The journey was a bit too long given the limited diversity of gameplay situations. The fact the main goal of the journey was not that stimulating to me, not helped by the various setbacks (sometimes very stupid) encountered time and time again.
Please discuss (with effort ;))
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