In the first batch of God of War games, Kratos stuck with one type of weapon: a pair of flaming
swords, attached to his wrists by metal chains, that could be used for brutal combos and flashy
finishing moves - at both short and long range.
And after six blockbuster games, these Blades of Chaos, and all their variants, found themselves
among the most iconic weapons in gaming.
And so, when Sony Santa Monica revealed that it would be dropping these famous blades in
favour of something new for 2018’s God of War - the replacement had a lot to live up to.
But luckily the new weapon confidently fits the bill.
The game’s premiere tool, the Leviathan Axe, is tactical. Versatile. Fun to use. And
satisfying to wield. And so in this episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit, we’re gonna break
it down, and explain why God of War’s Leviathan Axe is a stand out video game weapon.
The Leviathan Axe in Combat
Just taken as a bog-standard melee weapon, the axe is still pretty strong.
It’s got your familiar light and heavy attacks on R1 and R2, but the devs piled on depth
by using all the versatility stuff I talked about in this episode. So you can create combos
by linking together moves - sometimes with pauses between button presses. You can charge
up attacks, by holding down the button. You can unleash special moves, by attacking in
combination with your shield. And there are contextual moves, too, like attacking after
parrying, or evading, or running.
But there’s more to the axe than just lodging it into an enemy’s squishy face. Because
Kratos can also lift the axe up - and chuck it.
This almost turns God of War into a third-person shooter, and perhaps makes it more familiar
to the Uncharted crowd. Especially with the recognisable shooter control scheme, and the
game’s new behind-the-back camera angle, which lets you go from melee combat to ranged
attacks seamlessly.
But, whatever the reason, the throwable axe lets you attack enemies from long range - longer
range, even, than the Blades of Chaos. So you can biff enemies that are throwing projectiles
from the sidelines, or stun a distant enemy that’s running right towards you. You get
more control of the battlefield, and more ways to deal with faraway enemies.
Because it’s not actually a shooter, the axe reticule helpfully snaps to enemies like
a magnet. But you can tweak it slightly to make more precise throws. Head shots do more
damage than body blows, weakspots can be abused, and whipping your axe through an enemy’s
legs can trip them up.
Now Kratos could have had a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, as separate tools. But - as
we’ve talked about before -interesting things occur when the same tool is used for both.
Because once your axe has been chucked away, Kratos now has to rely on his fists.
These aren’t as strong as the axe, but it does make it easier to stun enemies. And while
some foes are more susceptible to the axe, others go down faster when you punch them.
Not to mention the fact that some icy enemies are completely resistant to the Leviathan
Axe’s frosty blade. So deciding when to get rid of your axe is another thing to consider.
But when you’re ready to get the axe back, you can simply hit the triangle button to
have it magically return to your hand - just like a certain Norse god and his hammer.
Making the player manually trigger the recall, instead of having the axe automatically return
like a boomerang, opens the mechanic up for some really interesting tactical decisions
of when you should recall it. You know, perhaps you want to leave the axe in an enemy’s
tummy, to freeze it in place while you deal with other foes. Or leave the axe in a poison-spewing
thingamajig to freeze it - forcing you to fight enemies with your fists.
Maybe you want to throw the axe behind an enemy with a shield, and recall it into his
exposed back. Or you can line up enemies so the axe rips through a bunch of them on the
return - God of War’s designers sneakily tweaked the recall path so it always goes
through enemies if they’re close enough.
Or, best of all, there’s my favourite new game mechanic in some time: the precision
throw combo. If you bean an enemy in their weakspot with the axe, your weapon will flash
in mid-air. Recall the axe at this specific moment and your next throw or melee attack
will explode with frost damage on contact. Mix this with the Talisman of Betrayal, which
lets you slow down time while aiming, and, well, I could do this all day.
There’s just something about hitting a button with perfect timing that feels super satisfying.
It’s why counter attacks are so sexy. It’s why nailing perfect turns in Thumper gives
me palpitations. It’s why the active reload in Gears of War never got old.
Match a tight timing window with a good sound
effect and you’ve won my heart forever.
More Than a Weapon
The really interesting thing about the axe is: it’s not just for combat. Throwing the
axe allows you to reach out and touch lots of things in the world - like hitting it into
turbines to make them spin. Throwing it into buckets to make them drop. Using the axe’s
frosty blade to freeze traps in place. Or smashing collectible ravens from a distance.
The axe is used for exploration and puzzle solving, just as much as it’s used for dicing
up your enemy’s jugulars. The only place it’s missing is in platforming - which is
a shame. Perhaps Santa Monica could have ripped off this idea from Rise of the Tomb Raider
where you can fire arrows into walls to make disposable footholds. That’d work nicely
with the axe.
But still, the way the developers found so many uses for the axe reminds me of Nintendo
games, like Super Mario Odyssey which has Mario’s talking hat play multiple roles
as a weapon, a trampoline, a way to capture enemies, and an all-purpose way to interact
with the world.
As I’ve said before, using a single mechanic for lots of different purposes is a sign of
really strong design. It means that mechanic becomes more familiar to the player. It becomes
this easy, obvious shorthand for how to interact - you know, if in doubt, throw your axe. It
means you can come up with loads of different ideas, without needing loads of different
mechanics. Or buttons. And it can turn the mechanic in question into the centrepiece
of the game.
Though, that’s not really the case in God of War.
The beating heart of this game is Kratos’s son, Atreus. And you can use the boy’s
long-range bow both in combat, and to interact with certain objects like light crystals and
explosive spiky stuff. The focus of the game does end up feeling a bit split between the
axe and Atreus and, I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s messy or confusing, per se - it’s
all very well established - but it’s not quite as streamlined as it could have been.
Basically, if this this really was a Nintendo game then they’d just squish these things
together and Kratos’s son would literally be a talking axe.
Called Choppy.
Obviously.
Making an Impact
While the developers obviously spent a long time thinking about how the axe could
be used, in and out of combat, they also spent a great deal of time
working on how the axe actually felt. Because
whether you’re ramming it into an enemy’s prefrontal cortex or catching it after a lightning
fast recall, the axe feels heavy, hefty, and brutally efficient. So how did Sony Santa
Monica pull this off?
Well, classic God of War games are famously full of “Hit Stop” - which is when the
action in a game pauses or slows down for a split second when an attack lands, to increase
the perceived power of an impact. And the new God of War is no exception, but with some
major tweaks to better suit the axe.
So when Kratos hits an enemy, the axe actually gets stuck inside the foe’s body for a few
frames. The enemy will react, and Kratos’s body will keep going - all while the axe stays
perfectly in place. A few frames later, the axe dislodges and catches up to Kratos’s
arm. This gives the feeling of the axe really chopping into flesh and bone, before finally
slicing through.
Systems design lead Vincent Napoli writes, “We use a combination of animation blending
and a custom inverse kinematics “pinning,” system. When Kratos connects with an enemy
we pin the axe in the location of contact (after some slight correction/prediction)
and both Kratos and the enemy transition into a completely new animation on the moment of
impact with little to no tween time.”
“A lot of time and effort went into making sure these “sticks” were as fast as possible
while still eliciting the feeling of connection. “
So a big part of the presentation is that enemies really react to being hit. Instead
of using a standard flinch effect, or just having the enemy flash white, foes in God
of War have almost slapstick reactions to being sliced or hit with the axe.
Finally, add in some impressive sound effects - including lots of grunting from Kratos - and
controller rumble, and every swing of the axe conveys a great sense of strength and weight.
As for recalling the axe, a huge amount of work went into that, too. For one, the axe
wiggles for a split second before returning, to give the impression that it’s really
stuck into whatever surface you’re pulling it from. Then, as it comes back, the axe flies
in a curve so you can really see it coming - and the speed is ramped up if the axe is
further away, so you’re not waiting forever.
Finally, when the axe lands in Kratos’s hand, it shunts his arm back just a little
bit. “We wanted to make sure that it feels strong, but we were very careful not to make
it feel like Kratos can't handle the Axe or that it's too heavy for him,” Vincent explains.
“We had to strike a very specific balance so that the catch feels casual, like he does
it all the time, but still carry some momentum through so you can feel the Axe's speed”.
The recall also has three different controller vibrations - one on the wiggle, another in
mid-air, and a final jolt in Kratos’s hand. Plus, the spinning sound is literally attached
to the axe so you can clearly hear it coming closer towards you. And finally, the screen
shakes upon impact, to really sell the moment. Make sure you read Vincent’s full blog,
if you want to learn the super nerdy details.
Designing the Leviathan Axe
When you see a smart design like the Leviathan Axe, it’s natural to assume that it came
out fully formed - seamlessly flowing from a designer’s notebook to finished programming
code. But nothing could be further from the truth.
While director Cory Barlog always intended for Kratos to carry an axe, it took a beat
for the designers to figure out that Kratos could throw that axe - with Vincent saying
that the team was planning to have the Leviathan fire out projectiles, before he came up with
the axe throw idea.
That worked well, but presented a problem. Here’s designer Jason McDonald
JASON MCDONALD: “There was always this animation of Kratos throwing the axe that seemed
like it would be cool, but it’d be like ‘well he’s gonna throw his weapon away’.
What use is that gonna be, it’s just gonna be gone, you’d have to go pick it up. Until
one of our designers, Vincent Napoli, came up with the idea, ‘well what if he called
it back?’
So we prototyped that, we had him throw the axe out, call it back, and it immediately
worked very well with the camera perspective, how to deal with enemies, pinpointing targets
on them, tripping them by aiming for the legs. So all the ideas started to spearhead themselves
right after that decision was made'."
After that, the team argued whether the axe should recall automatically or on a button press.
KRATOS: The axe did not return.
Cory Barlog explains on the podcast Game Maker’s Notebook - no relation. I was
here first. I’m not mad. Promise. Uh, here’s Cory -
“The first instinct they had was to put it on a button. So they had built that and
they said, “alright, you throw the axe out and you press triangle button to recall it.
Then, as they started working through the problem they’re like “people like it if
you could just keep hitting the R1 and the axe recalls automatically”. And I was like,
“no, I hate that”. They put it in and I felt like the axe would come back and I
didn’t know why, and I couldn’t have that agency to say, “I wanna leave it out there
and I wanna take care of this enemy. And just leave it”.
Basically, the Leviathan Axe is an example of how great designs can grow naturally, as
designers iterate on ideas, solve problems, have a few arguments, and follow the idea
to its natural conclusion.
That’s how you go from a basic woodcutting instrument to a versatile weapon that doubles
up as a long-range projectile, that you can magically recall back into your hand at the
perfect tactical moment.
Whether or not the Leviathan Axe will be as iconic as the Blades of Chaos will remain
to be seen. But, in my eyes, it’s easily one of the more interesting weapons we’ve
seen in a game in quite some time.
Hey, thanks for watching! It was really fun to go super deep on a single game mechanic
like this. Hopefully I did it justice! I just wanted to say than you to everyone who started following me on
Twitch. So far we’ve played games like Super Meat Boy and Hollow Knight, with a lot more to
come in the future. See you there!