Inside the Developers Studio: Follow-up; Cory Barlog

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What’s up PlayStation fans??? I know my earlier post was a bit thin…thin like one of the Olsen twins…so I thought I would come back and add some more of what you’re asking for. I love your passion and drive for God of War: Chains of Olympus info, so I’ll do my best to accommodate you with this follow-up. I’m going to share a little bit more about God of War and maybe talk about what’s next on my plate, or I might just announce the rumble feature for the PSP.

Ok, just kidding about the rumble feature for PSP, I made that up.

It’s pretty strange posting something in these new digs though, it’s more formal than my ghetto little blog. I feel like I need to sit up straight when I’m writing this. I’m not going to of course, I just feel like I should. So I guess I will just have the guilt to carry around with me all day. Fortunately I am too shallow to be bummed about that for too long.

All right, enough already, let’s chat a bit about the PSP. I hear that the official news about unlocking the PSP processor speed is out there. Many people are asking if God of War: Chains of Olympus is going to take advantage of this. The short answer is yes we are! Ready at Dawn has been doing some pretty amazing stuff with the PSP since the early days of the platform. Every time I see a new build I am more amazed with what we’re able to pull off with the PSP. I mean, 1080p on the PSP…who would have freaking thought??? Ok so that is wholly untrue, but it does look amazing. I feel confident in saying that we (and when I say we, I mean Ready at Dawn since they are doing the bulk of the work) are nailing the look and feel of God of War for the PSP. If everything goes according to plan then this will be a must-have game in your PSP library.

The combat for God of War: Chains of Olympus is also coming along really nicely. With each new build I get to see more and more of the game taking shape, which from my perspective is great. This game is really a first for me overseeing a game in this fashion. I don’t live with the game every day in the trenches like I did on the first two God of War games. So, all the daily stress that goes with directing this title gets placed squarely on Ru Weerasuriya’s shoulders. To be honest, I don’t like this position nearly as much as directing a game. I prefer being in the trenches and tackling all the problems. Thankfully the folks over at Ready at Dawn are doing a great job and over the next few weeks you will get to see the fruits of their labor. I would say ‘our’ labor, but including myself in that would be like the guy who stands on the side of the road during a marathon and hands out a glass of water and says “run faster”, and then says ‘we’ won the race.

I hope to have more info on the game sometime soon, keep your eyes open at E3. I’ll let you know when we’re finished. I think the first people getting one will be the people who participated in the Island of Rhodes website tease.

I will try and stop by as often as I can and give some more PSP updates for everybody, without giving away too much of course. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, and we’re all looking forward to those reactions from E3.

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125 Comments

  • You had me goin’ there with that PSP rumble thing.

  • nice post. cant wait for this game

  • Yes, I would like to institute a ban on the phrase, “coming along really nicely”.

    Coming – Going somewhere
    Along – With something
    Really – An adverb that is supposedly describing itself. Is the coming real or the Along real?
    Nicely – Another adverb describing itself. Is the coming nice, along nice, or the really nice. Nice btw means ignorance.

    So, the combat is going somewhere with something in a really ignorant way.

    You could say the combat is 75% and looking great. That’s my nitpicking quota.

    Games reads like it kicks butt. I hope to read more soon.

  • Careful Corey the internet has a way of picking bits and pieces of quotes.

  • I don’t think the response to the other article was too outrageous. I’m not sure an “Actor’s Studio” format is ever going to work, unless maybe it’s in Video Format.

    I dunno, I’ve never seen the “Actor’s Studio”, but the short answers to such few questions just felt… eh… like the tip of an iceberg if you will. It stops way early of “keep you wanting more” and enters the territory of “make you wait for it to even start”.

    It’s not a horrible idea, but I’m just not sure it’ll ever work. Best of luck though. My only advice would be more questions with longer answers, that is, if you want to keep away from game updates.

    Thanks for the fan service SCEA!

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    […] and far beyond than anything we’ve previously seen on the handheld. Penning an article on Playstation.Blog, Barlog explains: I hear that the official news about unlocking the PSP processor speed is out […]

  • I’m a big GOW fan and I can’t wait for this new demo to come out. And I just wanted to say that every one at sony is so laid back that I wouldn’t mind knowing them personally. I’ve been a fan since the original playstation days and can’t imagin switching.

  • maybe not now .. but .. give kratos armor .. i get bored after the 1st playthrough because he looks the same.

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  • I just wanted to congratulate you Cory for the amazing success of God Of War, as I’m an animator myself, i just wanted to ask you, what was your inspiration or motivation for starting this game.

    I was a fan of the Legacy of Kain series game before playing GOW and i feel there are lot of similarities of that game with GOW. So just for curiosity sake please let me know what motivated you to make GOW.

  • Hey, Cory,

    Thanks for stopping back by, even though it shouldn’t have been necessary.

    I had an idea that the E3 post would be about, um, E3, but whatever.

    Anyway, God Of War PSP certainly has me pumped, and I can’t wait for the reveal of God of War 3 on the PS3.

    Future advice for a continuation: have Kratos team up with Nariko from Heavenly Sword.

    Those two kids were meant to be together. Soul Mates, I tell you. Add in some two player co-op, and hot damn, me and my fiancee would be in 7th Heaven.

  • Thanks for the info Cory, enjoyed the read. Hopefully I’ll enjoy the game even more when it comes out, and when I get that demo ; ]. Keep up the great work guys.

    -DH

  • nice laid back blog, like the humor/sarcasm :P

  • that was more like it. good job.

  • Nice to see an update thanks for that. Thanks for all the information Cory. Do you know how it is to develop for PSP? Offtopic but why isnt sony releasing some easy to use tools for development on PSP or PS3? I would love to develop minigames for PS3 or PSP and upload them and share them with others. If you make something like a VM inside the PS3 it cant hurt the hardware – maybe turnoff acccess to blu-ray/dvd player. And make the tools free =)

    In short.. thanks for a nice blog – and we want software tools =)

  • It’s delighted to see a blog from the official staff. I think the version of God of War on psp is worth our attention and there is no doubt that it’s gonna be an impressive game. Besides that, i’m wondering that why there are few RPG games from the gaming design staff in u.s? You got to know that there is not every action game on psp can perform as well as the God of War psp version. For me, I can hardly be absorbed in most of the action games pubslihed on psp before. Since if i want to take the game seriously and really want to play an action game,i would rather chosing x360 or even ps2. So if there were an enhancement on the developement of u.s made RPG games,it will certainly add splendor to the divertiy of the gaming experences and i would be willing to play them on my psp happily and seriously.

  • This is it! Good work and thanks a lot! Respect!

  • Awesome. Its great that you guys actually read the replies. Good job Carl I plan on picking this up. Great follow up, I am really impressed. Remember hype = Sales. Hence Halo3 could be poo on a stick, it would still sell because of the hype.

  • *******Patrick Seybold********
    Great job. Now if only you could get Hideo from Konami….. that wouldShow up Major Nelson. That freakin
    [Deleted],[Deleted], and [Deleted]!!!!
    Seriosly.
    [Deleted?] and spam. High five.

    :)

  • This was a fun read, thanks!

  • I see great photoshop skills in the pic… great work…

    *ahem* just a joke…

    Looking forward to get this game when it’s out ;-)

  • I think it will be a good game..UMMM

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  • Hi Cory, longtime reader of your blog, posted occasional comments on there. God of War 2 was fantastic although I’ll be completely honest and admit I haven’t finished it yet. I suppose I’m just getting old and too busy to finish most games. Having two jobs, a 2 year old, and 2 dogs and a cat will do that to you. But anyway, I’ve really enjoyed everything in GOW II so far, and am looking forward to Chains of Olympus. Signed up for the demo when the website was up, so I’ll be looking forward to that whenever it’s ready. Good luck at E3!

  • Thanks Cory!!! Doing this update was really thoughtful from your part and we really appreciate it. Not many devs do this kind of stuff and we are really grateful of the few that do it. Again thanks for the update and I wish the great team at Ready at Dawn (thanks for Daxter guys!) and you great success with Chain of Olympus. The God of War series has been the most memorable and enjoyable series I played in the last generation of systems. Keep up the excellent work!!!

    PS. Sony please don’t limit to 5 words the answers to game related questions in the next interviews.

  • thanks for the post and the info :-)

  • Good man! Wow this is what im talking about, this is the future of developing games. You respond to our moans of lack of info. Good stuff! Winnar!

  • looking forward to E3

  • The irony here is that even though this part 2 of Cory’s interview was much better than the first, these posts seem like filler until E3 hits. After E3, we’ll have some real meat for these mini-interviews. Should be exciting. I can’t wait to see what kind of madness E3 has in store for us. It’d be nice to get some announcements like Sony adding actual codec support to the PSP/PS3, etc.

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  • Nice. This game is aimed to come out for this holiday right?

  • Great follow up. I can’t wait for this game. Good job, and thanks for being a part of a great series. Now announce GoW3 at E3!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Sounds awesome. Now I am really excited about E3.

  • Now THIS is what I’m talking about. Thank you for the info, Cory! Can’t wait to see what lies in store for E3!

  • Love the response time here. It almost feels like someone might actually listen to our crazy rants about the needed improvements. Thank you Cory, it helps to know someones listening. By the by, does anyone know if it’s normal for the PS3 controller to switch off when playing PS2 games?

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  • God of War is the bomb. Can’t wait for the PSP version. How about letting us know if there is a ps3 one in the works. My buddy watched me play GoW2 and couldn’t believe it was a ps2 game. I couldn’t imagine what you guys would do with the ps3.

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  • Damn, thanks Cory, you didn’t have to go out of your way to respond to some rude posters, but I appreciate that you did :) The God of War series is one of the best action adventure series I’ve ever played and I reckon that tradition will be carried on in the PSP iteration.

  • @pico21

    That is normal as it has to disconnect because it is emulating the hardware.

    As for more comments about the game, this is a definite system seller so a bundle with it would be wise. Same for the PS3 so maybe bundled with Grand Theft Auto 4 for the holidays (or anything)? That one would be harder to do since it’s third party, but for a lot of people that is the game that will decide which console to get. It’s one of those ignore everything else and compare price tags kind of games. Even though Sony has a good lineup, it just might not be recognized. All that is negated with a good price cut though. You have to remember that a price cut leads to more money for buying games, accessories, movies, etc (bonus developer support is a plus). It sure worked for the competitors so far as add-ons and games are selling well.

  • 333Mhz!!! Man now I really can’t wait for this game!!

  • thanks cory

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  • Hey Cory,
    Thanks for the update. Can you please explain how 1080p resolution on the PSP is possible with the engine? I’m still skeptical…

  • Wow look at all the spam posts after #70. Can we clean this up a bit admins?

  • Thank you, both Cory and Patrick for this fun and informative blog. As a person who really is much too busy for video games, but loves them nonetheless I must say it’s nice to find a company-direct source of news to sate my appettite for ps3 speculation rather than have to comb through the various media review sites. That being said, as a more mature consumer of video games (and systems), a bit of novelty or a brief tease of things to come hardly seem exciting anymore. What I am interested in, though, is increasing my understanding of the platform that I have invested in (and love!), and finding out whether words like “cell processor” “independent SPEs” “development tools” and “RSX” really add up to a sea-change in the way games are created and delivered, or whether they’re just Sony’s expensive brand names for essentially the same technology and development approach that every other branch of the industry is using. Therefore, I would like to strongly echo the comments of post #10 on this forum, which says:
    “Sony has two choices:

    1) Let their competitors define their hardware for them – poorly and with malice
    2) Wake up and decide what their silence is actually accomplishing and start letting people know what an amazing machine they have developed is capable of.”

    This person speaks with startling insight. Perhaps at E3, some truly revolutionary titles will be unveiled that will abolish any doubt as to the value of the ps3 for delivering an entertainment experience that cannot be matched by other systems. Until that time however, the image that you are projecting of the ps3 (most tangibly in the TV ads) as a lone, monolithic power that effortessly projects fantasy and reality and is so foreign and advanced in it’s lustrous, black, mysterious shell that no one can even understand it ( and much less question its power) seems very out of place in context of the more immediate image that competitors are casting of the ps3 as an overpriced, under-networked machine that has no decent first-party titles and is only meant to play ported games with slightly worse graphics than the Xbox 360.

    Until E3 comes (or actually, until a truly playstation-unique game comes along), restore our faith with technical commentary from developers that really gives us a sense of how the ps3 is DIFFERENT, and why this translates into a better gaming experience.

    Thanks

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