God of War: Ragnarök has more than twice as many animations as its predecessor

God of War: Ragnarök is a reality and many will find substantial changes in both gameplay and animation. PlayStation has given us the opportunity to chat with Bruno Velázquez, animation director of the game to unveil some of the work done in Santa Monica Studio.

The challenges to achieving new moves in God of War: Ragnarök

In order to evolve Kratos' mobility, they had to resort to past titles, since in the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 games, the protagonist used more of his Blades of Chaos when climbing or climbing places. In the case of Atreus, they relied on the fact that he is now a teenager who can fend for himself and doesn't necessarily have to climb on his father's back to reach higher places. The latter freed the protagonist to be more mobile, without having to worry about his son.

The community demanded greater mobility

When asked if the demands of players affected the evolution of the game's controls, Velázquez confirmed that they added more variety in the ways in which Kratos defeats his enemies. From there, the different eliminations with the axe or the Blades of Chaos were added.

The most difficult motion to animate

The movements where Kratos usually attacks a larger enemy is where the creativity of the designers came to the fore, as it is not easy to emulate those movements with motion capture technologies.

What the community says about animation recycling

Bruno told us what players say about the recycling of animations, to which he finished by saying "sometimes we need to use animations from the past, so we can add many more" and that's when he confirmed that GOWR has more than twice as many animations as in God of War.

The best-animated kingdom

When we questioned him about which level had the best animations, the manager recommended that we pay attention to a level that is "like a jungle" because of the creatures in the background.

From the air

When asked about his favorite move, the animator told us that attacking from the air is one of the ones he likes the most, because Kratos also has different types of attacks depending on the weapon.

God of War: Ragnarök is available from November 9, 2022 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, if you are interested in more information about the game, we suggest you visit our tag about the game.