God of War: Ascension multiplayer developed out of "curiosity" not compulsory means
God of War: Ascension's lead combat designer, Jason McDonald, has said the game's multiplayer component was something that came about out of curiosity, and not from ticking boxes on a development sheet.
Speaking with the PS Blog, McDonald said before working on the mode, the team wanted to make sure that first: it could be done, and secondly: it had to be fun.
"I don’t remember anyone saying ‘it’s multiplayer time, let’s do it!’ It was more that we were curious about it," he said. "We hadn’t tried multiplayer before so we were asking ourselves ‘can it be done? Is there fun to be had?’
"So we tried out a few tests using Kratos, as he was already built. What we found was that people would sit down with two Kratoses and have a lot of fun. They’d sit there for hours. It was un-tuned and very rough, but when we saw people enjoying it we thought it had merit.
"After that it was all about putting the God of War spin on it – making sure the scale reaches what we expect, and not just eight players bundled into a room fighting each other. We had to design modes and rules to make sure it wasn’t repetitive."
God of War: Ascension is out next week on March 12 in North America, and from March 13 in Europe. A new multiplayer trailer was released earlier today, and below there's a new video showing off the "top five epic moments" from the God of War series.
