A month ago, Santa Monica Studio started a limited podcast miniseries titled Worlds Collide. In it, the creators of PlayStation’s God of War reveal previously untold stories from the team that shares a behind-the-scenes look at the development process of the stunning action game.
The first episode describes “Fitting A Side Quest Anywhere,” which is a fascinating exploration of how developers built a system that enables players to access quests at any point in the game, which involves a lot of collaboration across the level, system, and narrative design.
It’s an intriguing first look at the Santa Monica Studio and all of the steps the development team took in order to complete the project.
The second episode, which released over the weekend, discusses the no-cut camera used in God of War to immerse the player into the world and into the story of Kratos and Atreus. It was another collaboration across the teams of developers. Dori Arazi, the Director of Photography and Cinematic Art Lead; Phil Wilkins, a Senior Staff Programmer; and Erol Oksuz, the Lead Gameplay Camera Designer all feature on the podcast episode. They explain the technology used and the work involved with building a single shot from start to finish.
Each of the podcast episodes are almost an hour long, but the in-depth exploration of the years of work that went into God of War is worth it.
And if that isn’t enough for you, Santa Monica Studio also released a full-length documentary feature titled Raising Kratos that chronicles the five-year effort to reimagine the God of War series by changing the franchise and making video game history.
The documentary follows game director Cory Barlog and the rest of the developers who built the masterpiece that is one of the best action games ever.
You can watch Raising Kratos below.