God of War Video Details Progression and Customization

God of War takes a new approach to character customization and progression, revamped systems that [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

God of War takes a new approach to character customization and progression, revamped systems that were detailed in the game's latest video.

Compared to the previous games in the God of War series, the newest game that's releasing on April 20 offers a greater level of customization for Kratos and Atreus. Where cycling out secondary weapons and electing to choose different special moves and abilities is the most that other games would offer, the next God of War features a crafting system with unique armor and more. Speaking about the customization options in the video, game director Cory Barlog named off many different customizable areas that players will have control of.

"All of Atreus' sort of core abilities, all of Kratos' core abilities as well as his reactions, his cooldowns, how fast those go, all of your damage as well as the ability to take damage," Barlog said, listing off the various features in the progression system. "All of those things are factors that you can have control over."

The devs promise that Kratos' core identity will be preserved though, so you won't be looking at an entirely new character when you get behind the Leviathan Axe and start wailing on Norse enemies. There will be a skilltree available for players to put points into different categories that'll affect combat skills and other

"There's a skill tree that you'll be able to use to give yourself more axe abilities, more bare-hand abilities," said Jason McDonald, lead gameplay designer. "Or maybe you want to improve your defensive capabilities and block and parry and slam guys around, you'd want to go into the shield skill tree and add those abilities to the shield."

Players may also find themselves needing to adapt to their obstacles depending on what kinds of skills they choose to invest in. No shoehorning of abilities to make progression possible was mentioned, but Barlog did add that players may find themselves rethinking their choices when fighting certain enemies. Mixing in some RPG elements with the game, Barlog mentioned that players may adopt a "strength build" only to find out that they don't hold up well against the game's stronger enemies that can wipe health bars in a few hits. When encountering situations like this, players might choose to dip into the defensive options a bit more to prepare for future encounters.

God of War launches on April 20, but you can look for our review sooner than that with the review embargoes going up on April 12.

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