The first and major thing was that we weren't given a lot of time to think about it. A couple of things were working to prevent us from getting overwhelmed. Can you tell me about the transition to new hardware? The transition from the PlayStation 2 to the studio's first PlayStation 3 game - was it overwhelming at first?
The engine behind the game was from the first God of War titles for PS2, and you guys just kept on iterating it for the sequels. We could not have found any more time or added any more stuff to it. We were adding things up until the very last minute. There weren't any, "Argh, I wish we could'ves". We gave everything we could, and we certainly tried everything we could. Three years of anyone's life on anything, you definitely have butterflies, you know? "How is it going to be received?" You can't help but take some of it a little personally, because it's been three years of your life. SC: There's definitely a lot of anticipation. Are you anticipating how gamers and press will receive the game? We pretty successfully made every project better than the last.Īs we speak, the game has not yet been released. So for a lot of us, beyond the three-year completion of God of War III, it's been a huge, huge release - a sense of fulfillment and gratification to see a three-part trilogy done from start to finish, and to say pretty confidently that we've done everything that we could in each and every project.
Steve Caterson: God of War III was roughly a three-year experience for many of the people on the team, but we've been working on the God of War franchise for seven years. How long have you been working on the game, and how does it feel to complete the trilogy? What goes into making a great game? Is it creative passion or technical polish that drives the Sony Santa Monica team? Caterson discusses these topics and more, in this interview conducted in the immediate run-up to the game's release (which was yesterday in North America.) He also addresses the content concerns the game has been facing ever since the demo at last year's E3 show - which featured the disquieting task of forcing the player, in the role of the bloodthirsty Kratos, into ripping the head off of the god Helios with his bare hands. Of course, the development process has been anything but simple - but here, Sony Santa Monica senior producer Steve Caterson discusses just how the development team tackled the development process, particularly from tools, engine, and workflow perspectives.