God of War inspired Level - Blog post 04
The third area, adding complexity to the level and why I chose to narrow a simple vault.
For this post I am moving onto the next area of the level. The goal of this area is to develop on what the player had learned in the previous encounter, increasing combat complexity while continuing to develop the narrative and exploration of the environment, hammering home the three core pillars of God of War.
This area was a lot of fun for me because it is inspired from a place very close to where I grew up. I have walked my mums dog here many times and wanted to see how I could apply level design principles to turn a real world space into a playable environment. I'm glad there is no evil ruins or reanimating dead here in real life!
After leaving the ruins having fought your first enemy one of the first things I wanted to do was reorientate the player. I did this through positioning the next area directly under the ruins. Because the player had previously seen the final destination, I wanted to use this moment to re engage them with it. I took it out of sight in the previous area so revealing it again here reminds the player where they are and what their overall goal is.
The next level design technique I wanted to incorporate was a very simple yet effective one. In a third person game, the player has control over the camera, which makes it difficult to guarantee that they are looking at a specific thing you want them to see. Rather than taking control of the camera, I have used the environment to naturally influence where the player looks. By narrowing the path into a vault between two rocks, I know where the player and the players camera are so I can frame the narrative beat without taking control away from the player.
As you can see due to the player being guided into that space their camera is directly pointing at the ruins. Here the Witch appears for the first time, after a short dialogue she reanimates some more fallen soldiers and the next combat scenario begins. I wanted to reveal her here to create a flow between combat, exploration and narrative. The player has just completed their first encounter, they get a moment to explore and reorientate, then they encounter the Witch and are then presented with a more complex combat scenario. Later I want to improve this by adding some narrative text like I have done previously and by zooming in the camera slightly onto her, like the God of War games do so well.
Now for the combat scenario. As you have just learnt how this new enemy type works, now is the time to increase the variety of the combat. Rather than increasing difficulty through enemy health or damage, I wanted to introduce complexity through the space itself. Additional enemies means the player needs to decide who to target, a larger space provides more opportunity for movement and verticality changes the way the player interacts with the enemies. As I don't have proper combat working yet I wanted to leave enough space so I could come back and iterate on this specific part.
As for the metrics again I have kept to the same as before, the previous area was 16mx10m, smaller because it was the players introduction to the enemy. This time I have increased the space towards 32m in diameter to accommodate the additional enemies, movement and verticality. These can be tweaked more when I get combat working in a better state.
Going back to the great GDC talk on God of War (2018) level design, Rob Davis talks a lot about having the three pillars of God of War throughout the level, and changing the variety of these pillars as you go. Rather than treating combat, exploration and narrative as separate things, I wanted to vary them throughout the space. The player moves from exploration, into a narrative beat with the Witch, and then into a larger combat encounter before returning to exploration.
I've deliberately left some spaces relatively open at this stage. Rather than filling every area right now, I want to first understand how the core route and pacing feels. This also gives me flexibility to introduce additional encounters, exploration opportunities or narrative moments once the rest of the level has taken shape.
One idea for next time is implementing the three rune chest, something I can blueprint in the future.
I also wanted to use a vista as a reward for leaving the ruins. Beyond simply looking good, the view gives the player an opportunity to understand the wider space as this vista could be a view back to the hub world or previous levels the player has already visited.
Here I've also done something very simple, removing the wall to highlight the vista more.
Simple, but effective.
The main goal of this section was to build on the players previous experience rather than simply introducing more content. I have done this by increasing combat complexity, controlling narrative through using the environment and balancing combat, narrative and exploration. This gives the player more variety on each of the core pillars of God of War whilst moving through this space.
See you in the next one, Howells out!
