GDC and God of War ramblings

GDC has come and gone this year. And for the 10th billionth time I have not gone. I suppose it's a weak excuse but it just happens to be at a bad time of the year, right before E3. With so much going on for E3 I feel guilty taking time off for GDC. Oh well.

Before GDC we had some amazing people stop by the studio - the Shadow of the Colossus team! I got up to get something to drink and all of a sudden saw 20 Japanese people in the kitchen. I said good morning to one of them in Japanese and all of a sudden they thought I spoke Japanese and started speaking back. My bad. I quickly said I don't speak Japanese (muri!) and went back to my desk. Later on in the day, Cory Barlog brought over the whole team to check out what we are doing with God of War 2. Figuring I would have a little fun with them - I took a script that we have to scale characters in real time (we used it with the Cerberus puppy transforming into the adult in part 1) and applied it to the skeleton creature. I scaled him 15 times bigger over the course of a few frames. Fumito Ueda asked me what I was doing and I told him we were making our own Shadow of the Colossus. Everyone laughed. It was really amazing to meet all of them and I wish I could have had longer to talk. The translator said how everyone was a big fan of God of War and I told him that all of us were big fans of Ico/SotC also and asked if I could take some pics:


Don't hate on american cell phone quality.

Anyways...There was a lot of cool stuff regarding God of War at GDC this year. Part 2 got announced!! If you haven't seen the bootleg video showing the trailer and the crowd reaction, make sure to check it out!



Tim Moss, the lead programmer for God of War, gave a really excellent speech about how the programmers came to grips with what the designers were requesting and how both camps came to work well with one another. For those of you who didn't make it to GDC, it looks like they have made his power point presentation available here (I think it's around 5mb or so).

Looks like David Jaffe and Lorne Lanning got together at GDC to talk a little bit about GOW also. Again for those of you who couldn't make it - looks like IGN transcribed it here.

Finally - if you guys haven't seen this video - you need to download it now. A blind kid goes to Japan to play Mortal Kombat against some of the worlds best fighting game players of all time. I'm talking about Chibita, Nuki, Kenbou, Tokido, KSK, etc. He plays 25 matches and only loses 3. Insanity. I put it up on yousendit for now so first come first serve. Click here to download it.

EDIT: I heard the url died so you guys might be able to try another one here

P.S. If anyone has a copy of Brain Training from GDC and doesn't want it - kick down! ^_^