God of War Ragnarok is one of this year’s highly anticipated games. Not much has been revealed yet, but that seems to no longer be the case as Game Informer has announced that Ragnarok is the next game gracing the cover of the magazine. Over the next few weeks, more information about the game will be revealed including the changes coming to the action and exploration loops, some of Kratos’ new tools, a never-before-seen Dwarven realm, the accessibility features coming to the game, and some quality-of-life updates. To start, some of Sony Santa Monica’s developers talked about the studio’s philosophy on combat and some of the new mechanics coming to Ragnarok.
When thinking about how the studio thinks about designing the game’s combat system, Lead Combat Designers Mihir Sheth and Denny Yeh say that the current direction that the game takes is inspired by an old studio motto: Playing with your food. “That’s an internal philosophy that we’ve had since back in the day,” Sheth says. “Kratos plays with his food. We tried to create systems you want to engage with that are fun, very playful, lots of different routes. And when we looked at the combat in the last game, we were like, ‘We can push this further; we can find new toys and ways of playing with enemies and strategies.’ That’s been the guiding principle more than anything else.”
In God of War (2018), the triangle button was used for the axe. “In the last game, if you pressed Triangle, you recalled the axe,” Sheth says. “But if you already had the axe, nothing happened. If you had the Blades of Chaos and you pressed Triangle, you just went back to the axe. We looked at that concept and wondered, ‘What if you could do something a little bit different with that button – a whole new suite of moves.’”
Now, there are attacks tied to the triangle button. Depending on what weapon you use, either the Leviathan Axe or Blades of Chaos, Kratos infuses the weapon ice or fire. The ice attack “Frost Awaken,” and the fire attack “Whiplash,” do extra damage by freezing or incinerating aggressors.
The triangle button isn’t the only thing that has changed. The shield has evolved too. There are different types of shields that tailor to certain playstyles. With the Dauntless Shield, Kratos focuses on twitch reactions. When Kratos parries at the last possible moment, the shield glows a menacing red which means the player can unleash a devastating smash that tosses and stuns enemies.
The Stonewall Shield is for players that like to stand their ground and prefer slower-paced bouts. Kinetic energy gets absorbed as the Stonewall Shield takes hits. Once the shield is fully charged, Kratos will bang the shield into the ground emitting a screen-wide pulse, knocking anything off its feet. However, the Stonewall Shield will become unstable as it takes damage, opening Kratos up to otherwise ineffective block-breaking blitzes.