Interview with God of War 3 Lead Programmer, Vassily Filippov

Redmond: Stig talked a lot about Titan Gameplay and weaving so many of these different elements together, when you’re taking on something of that size when something like scale is such a big part of the project, what are the challenges that you have to sit down and face when you even start putting this game together?

Vassily: Well, we have a new machine to start with. And on the PS3 is the first time where we can actually do it for real. Where not as a set piece but as a leading level where everything performs and you can climb on everything. Other than that the big design challenge is the world is actually going to turn on you and wherever used to be war can become a wall and so-on.

Redmond: In terms of the speed of the game, with all these elements coming into it, what are some things you are doing to make sure that the pace of the game is maintained?

Vassily: Well, we probably wouldn’t lock the frame rate at any particular number. What we are looking at is the whole player experience. It has to go fast enough to not suck and at the same time is has to be visually appealing enough to be God of War 3. It’s always a balance and its not even the same set up for the entire game. Scene by scene we are blowing out the frame rate and the player experience and shooting each scene separately.

Redmond: What’s been the biggest challenge for you and the other programmers on this game?

Vassily: Well, graphically the biggest headache was shadows. Big, big thanks to our graphics engineer who pulled it off and there is still lots of work to do but we have most of the pieces in place now. In terms of design, it’s game play involving the Titans because all of the endless navigation possibilities and you not only have to navigate the hero you also have to teach the AI to do everything that they do normally. And also camera set up is a very different challenge as well because before we could draw a parallel to film on stage and have your rail camera and have your handheld camera and so-on. But now you are doing all that but also on a leading, moving creature where it is totally different and our camera engineer is having lots of nice challenges and doing some neat things.

Redmond: As you are looking at things coming together, what is one thing as a programmer that you can look at and say, that’s really awesome that we pulled that off.

Vassily: Well, it might not sound very exciting but I’m actually very proud of the very first shot of the demo where you come out of the top of the tunnel and see everything and it happens to run at a decent speed. There, pretty much nothing is a set piece or backdrop. As you can see in the progress in the demo, you can get close to almost everything you see in the first shot. You see the little chariot with Helios on it, eventually you get very close and personal with Helios and rip his head off. You saw that Titan at the end of the demo, you get right in his face; you saw the building in distance, eventually you fight right on it, on that balcony. So, pretty much everything is real. To pull it off with enough visual fidelity and enough performance was a very, very, very big challenge.

April: How much of the PS3′s power are you actually going to be using for this game? I know with the PS2 they didn’t really push it to the limits until sort of the end of its era.

Vassily: The question here is that we really aren’t after a particular numerical challenge as in draw the most triangles of everybody or push the most pixels or absolutely maximize every single cycle of the PS3. What we are trying to do is we’re trying to give all the tools to the art and design sometimes at the expense of the fastest engineering solution to enable them to make the best game possible. Sometimes we actually have to sacrifice a tiny bit of performance to make it more convenient for them so they can iterate on something many more times and make it look that much better. That has been our philosophy for the last two games and it still is so while we are trying to maximize performance and output and all of that but in the end it’s all a tool for art and design.