God of War Laufey

[Maf]

The full 20min demo. 
 

So this game has been in development in some state for 6 years. Alanah Pearce said she worked on it for 4 years, and left the company 2 years ago. So this has been along time coming 

[Maf]

They got the guy from The Boys to voice and mo cap the cube he has to walk around in a big dumb fucking rectangle frame during mo cap haha oh I hate this cube already 

 

EDIT: Oh, I also think Athena will be in this game. It’s an afterlife of all the gods and in GoW3 she pops up and mysteriously tells Kratos she went somewhere else. I expect it’s here 

[mfnick]

6 years and probably still won’t come out until the latter half of next year. 
 

Haha, game dev is fuuuuuuccked. 

[Maryokutai]

It's a surprisingly long cycle, especially considering it's still somewhat iterative and built upon the foundation of the 2018 game, and not a departure as big as that one was at the time. Then again if it comes out next year, people will have gotten three GoW games in nine years, which is still a solid quote for modern AAA.

 

Anyway, I think this looked quite good. I didn't enjoy 2018 too much and never played Ragnarök, but this looks less restrictive in terms of movement, and in that sense seems to take a tiny step back towards the classic games. The 'NPC helping out in combat' concept is a bit growing old at this point, though maybe I just feel like that because Wolverine did the exact same thing as well.

 

Doubt I'll ever play it with those PS5 prices, but in a parallel dimension I could see myself giving it a shot.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think the combat in these newer GoW games are a lot better than the PS2 ones, which were boring and mindless, I couldn't complete 2 because of it. Even though 2018 and Ragnarok have very grounded, parry heavy systems, they're more expressive than the ps2 games

 

I think the helper mechanic is potentially interesting here as you can use the Quaid Cube to bounce enemies in the air and air lasso yourself to them. Its more interactive and interesting than Atreus arrow spam

 

I wonder what the Eye of Agamoto power can be used for, the one where you smack their souls out their bodies. l Don't correct me on this spelling comic nerds, I only know it from Strange in Marvel Rivals

 

I notice that people have stopped calling quippy dialogue "MCU dialogue" and now it's just millennial dialogue. Which makes sense, new Star Trek has this dialogue too, so does Star Wars. We need zoomers to replace our idioms and writing patterns, cause a style shift in games like they're currently doing in horror films 

 

It didn't occur to me until now, but I'm supposing this is still doing the one shot thing. I hope they take some cuts from time to time, it worked well in 2018 but it felt like a straitjacket applied to the narrative in Ragnarok, with its extended ensemble

[Maf]

Reading a bit last night it seems the director of 2018 version Cory Barlog took time off after than game to avoid burnout (I know it’s a creative role but also an office job. Who knew game devs could do that) and is now back for this game. 
 

So even though this took 6 years, it might have been a small scale project for a while where the studio focused on Ragnarok and this moved slowly in the background. Interpreting from what I read, but it could make sense. 
 

I ended up watching this demo a few times last night as I was watching different reactions, the graphics look much better in this game than the previous 2. Maybe this is what we would have had with Ragnarok if it wasn’t designed with the PS4 in mind 

 

The combat looks like it has new options with air combos and the cube is the new helper. But the way the hits land and she is repeating moves already. I don’t expect this to be massively different or deeper or even the game feel to be radically altered. It might just be flashier and less grounded. 
 

Which is fine and all I generally like the fighting in these games. But when she jumped for the first time I was hoping for something really different and I don’t think it will be 

 

Here’s Alanah’s reaction for those interested. She posted it separately 

 

 

One thing that’s sad is when she talks about the abuse she got for Ragnarok. People blamed her for its wokisms when she didn’t even work on it, and couldn’t publicly say what she had worked on.

[one-armed dwarf]

The cube reminded me of the dog in FFXVI. In that you could time the dog input to do more heavy damage, launching enemies and keeping them in the air longer, bouncing them off the ground, but it had to be timed during the end of Clive's own attack animations (like Nero's exceed in dmc). It was a fairly limited though clever way of doing companion-based combos, the dog was basically like Clive's Ebony and Ivory but totally asynchronous from his own animations

 

Quaid Cube could work this way

[Maf]

Funny enough the first thing I thought of when I saw the Cube in combat was the FF16 dog as well. It wasn’t until later someone mentioned Atreus and I remembered these games always had a companion, but yeah for whatever reason the dog came to mind first for me. I think because it’s not shooting projectiles and literally jumping in 

[Nag]

I'll probably bite with this... it's a AAA Sony game after all but looking back on the last two God of War games I've never had any urge to go back and replay them... they're the very definition of one and done. 

[Maf]

I think I stand a good chance of liking this more as part of what let me down with the current games is their version of Kratos. I don’t want sad dad Kratos. I want mad dad, impale you on a mountain, throw you down the gullet of a dragon when you ask for help Kratos. 
 

I have no prior opinion to Faye and I really like the actress so it will help swerve a let down I have with the main games 

[mfnick]

2 hours ago, Maf said:

don’t want sad dad Kratos. I want mad dad, impale you on a mountain, throw you down the gullet of a dragon when you ask for help Kratos. 

Fuck yea! Preach. 

[one-armed dwarf]

One obvious story prediction I have is Faye getting the leviathan axe at some point, and having that scene mirror Kratos getting the blades back in 2018. Cause iirc, it was her axe originally and Kratos got it later, he's only borrowing it really

 

Expecting that the axe will be more of a keep away tool, to complement the getting-stuck-in-ness of the sword, possibly. 

[regemond]

I reckon the cube is a placeholder and they're gonna replace it with an actual character, but I can't get any info out of Rosie on it. She just keeps telling me, like she does with any first party game, to stop asking questions.

[DANGERMAN]

9 hours ago, regemond said:

I reckon the cube is a placeholder and they're gonna replace it with an actual character, but I can't get any info out of Rosie on it. She just keeps telling me, like she does with any first party game, to stop asking questions.

That's a hell of a shout if you're right 

[regemond]

I honestly wouldn't have thought of it without all the discourse I've seen on using one of the guys from The Boys as a cube. It fits with the D&D elements of the series, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see it being right, but it just feels 'off' to me, especially with its weapon hanging on its side.

[Nag]

Releases 16/02/27... so that's already making February busy.

 

Apparently the next Kratos led game ties directly to this also...