Ready at Dawn dishes storyline, mechanics on GoW: Ghost of Sparta

God of War: Ghost of Sparta's creative director Ru Weerasuriya and game director Dana Jan have sat down and explained a bit about what to expect in the game.

When released later in the year, it looks like you're going to see another side to Kratos than just the brutality.

Speaking with 1UP, the Ready at Dawn folks said that it had an idea in place for Kratos after the release of Chains of Olympus, and started work on Ghost of Sparta back in 2008.

"One of the things is we wanted to go back [and look at what people said about Chains of Olympus]," said Jan. "Obviously people wanted to have a bigger experience than the previous game, and it's something that we wanted to do as well.

"We looked at the things that we knew, right after finishing the first one, we wanted to improve upon... We started itemizing those things ... because some of it comes down to obviously, you know, limitations of what can be done with time and hardware and personnel.

"But I think that we came up with a fairly large list of things that we were able to actually expand upon and improve and retool. And I think overall, the game's just going to be bigger, better, more polished, and [with] probably a lot more stuff than I think people are going to expect will be in this game.

"There are characters that appeared in our last game who got treatments in this game that are different from before, and we've found moves and things laying around where it's like, "Oh that's really cool -- why didn't we use that?" ... As far as whole areas or levels, I guess we're not really talking about that right now, but you know, that's obviously a possibility.

"There have definitely been a few opportunities we've had over the course of this project, where both sides came up with ideas that would be interesting to kind of connect the two games together: God of War 3 and this game. And so there are things that you'll find in God of War 3 -- and in this game as well -- that link the two together to keep the mythology going between the two and connect them really well".

While neither would go into specifics on connectivity between
PS3 and PSP, there the teams hasn't settled on anything at the moment.

However, they have settled on bring out some more personal moments for Kratos to give you a break between brutalities.

"There's been an evolution of God of War from 1 to 2 to 3, and it's something where we're pulling the things that we like from each of them, and making sure that the game is relevant and that there's gameplay in there that's new and fresh and keeps the franchise alive instead of stagnating," said Jan.

"So you're definitely going to find the staples in there, but at the same time we've also thrown in some things that people are going to appreciate for their kind of breath of fresh air.

"I won't get specific about it, but I'll say there is a mechanic in the game that we've added that actually is interesting from a moment-to-moment perspective that hasn't been there before, that has some potential for players to possibly feel that way, but I'm not gonna divulge the secrets of what that is.

"You know, there's a lot of questions about who this character is, and a lot of thing things that he's done that aren't played in 1, 2, and 3 that make him who he is in those games. So I always think that it's not just for us to go "Oh that's really cool to try to do," but I think that people who are big fans of God of War will appreciate these moments.

"Because they're really into the character, and this is who the character is, so yeah definitely I think there's going to be a few surprises in there for people".

God of War: Ghost of Sparta was announced this morning, and is slated for release on the back on 2010.

More is expected to be revealed leading up to and at E3.