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God of War III: Hands-on with the Opening Moments
We pick up right from the beginning and play through another epic intro.
by Chris Roper
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March 1, 2010 - Kratos' finale (for now) is nearly upon us with the release of God of War III only weeks away. Outside of a few great trailers and the E3 demo, there haven't been many details made available about what will be in store for the Spartan warrior in the first PlayStation 3 title from Sony's Santa Monica studio. That changed a bit last week as I was able to play through the opening moments of the game, and what an opening it is.

I'm not going to walk through its content point-for-point as there should be some surprises left in store for you, but it's impossible to talk about it without spoiling anything. If you want to go in to the experience completely fresh, then avert your eyes.


Click the image to see the latest God of War III trailer.
God of War III opens up right where God of War II ended with Kratos riding on Gaia ascending Mount Olympus along with a Titan army to take down the gods. The sense of scale in this scene is incredible. As Gaia moves, the trees and foliage around you sway appropriately and the ground shifts beneath your feet. In the background, you can see other Titans climbing the mountain, fighting off Olympian forces.

The game often shifts between cinematic views of the bigger picture and your own, relatively small-scale efforts on Gaia. One really cool thing to note is that outside of some nice Flash-esque cinematics that you'll see to tell the backstory, there are zero CG cutscenes in God of War III. Some sequences were too intense for the engine to handle in real time so the frames were exported and played back as a video to keep everything smooth, but there's no post-processing or image fakery going on. The result is that for the untrained eye, the cuts between the two are seamless.

There have been some rather lofty claims tossed around about God of War III's graphics, and I'm happy to say that they're all true. This game looks stunning, not only due to the unheard of sense of scale, but largely because the texture detail is sharp as a razor and the lighting is film-like. Kratos is probably the single best-looking character ever seen in a videogame. While he looks great from afar, when the camera pans in up close and you can see just how detailed the texture work on him is, you will be floored. What used to be a blanketed white canvas to portray the ash affixed to his body now actually looks real with tons of detail and subtlety. Really, it has to be seen to be believed.


This is the definition of scale.
While the sense of scale and visual prowess are the two aspects that served to be most impressive, I really liked two things that happen in these opening moments. First, Sony Santa Monica starts things out big and you wind up killing a god within the first 15 minutes or so. It's a good fight that ends with one of the most brutal beatings I've ever seen in a game. That leads me to the second thing that I took notice of, which is that the studio is no longer afraid to really play with the camera. When Kratos finishes off the god (whose identity I won't spoil here), the camera cuts to a view from the unfortunate deity's eyes a few times, meaning you see Kratos from a first-person perspective punching and kicking the god into submission. And when you get the prompt to press down on L3 and R3 simultaneously for the finale, you'll almost assuredly be squirming uncomfortably in your seat.

I don't really want to give out too many other details as it'll take away from an opening that you should really experience for the first time on your own, but know that God of War III follows nicely in the footsteps of the previous releases with a huge, epic, awesome opening. Kratos' final push for revenge ships on March 16th, and the demo is available now on the PlayStation Network for those of you who haven't played it yet.