If you played God of War (Polygon’s 2018 Game of the Year), you might have noticed
that Kratos, a once prolific double jumper, can’t even single jump.
I guess fatherhood really does change you.
But, you probably didn’t even miss that jump, because you were enjoying the company
of a different button.
The dodge button.
Dodging in God of War feels fantastic.
It looks cool, it feels cool, but most importantly, it’s indispensable to the game’s combat
design.
Attacking is always fun.
Defending isn’t.
Turtling up behind a shield is an important and sometimes necessary part of combat, but
dodging makes defense active.
When you dash past an attack rather than shield, you can quickly reposition and get back to
doing damage faster— but it’s not as safe.
Wagering that bit of safety for a big payoff is exactly what makes dodging feel good, and
action game developers have recognized this for decades.
Mega Man is a good action game, but it was elevated by the slide mechanic added in Mega
Man III.
It lowered Mega Man’s profile, and let him zip along the ground.
The risk, of course, is that you’d slide right into danger.
In 1993, Mega Man X added a dedicated dash button.
That same year, Richter Belmont learned to do sick backflips in Castlevania— a series
where the normal means of escaping danger was a brisk power walk.
In 1996, Tomb Raider featured some of the earliest 3D dodge rolls, clunky as they were.
A couple years later, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time refined those 3D dodges, letting
players roll in to close distance, backflip away from danger, and hop sideways to get
a better angle of attack.
And three years after that, Max Payne slowed down time, allowing players to keep shooting
while they dodged around, John Woo style.
All of these dodges have one thing in common: they let players take risks to look, and feel
cool — but the specific dodge mechanic that inspired God of War didn’t emerge until
the the mid-aughts.
Monster Hunter is one of the first games that set the standard we know today.
Its dodge roll was integral to positioning, closing distance, and avoiding attacks.
Most importantly, Monster Hunter’s dodges used invulnerability frames, or iframes.
At the beginning of a dodge animation, there’s a fraction of a second where your character
is invincible, and can pass right through an enemy attack.
But only for a few frames!
If the iframes run out, and you’re still in harm’s way, you’ll take damage.
This is where the risk/reward of the dodge really comes into play.
It can move you out of danger, or if you’re good enough, you can stay close to danger,
and keep hitting it with a sword.
Demon’s Souls didn’t come out till 2009, but From Software burned the dodge button
into our muscle memory with the Souls franchise.
In the Souls games, you use chunky dodge rolls to get out of the way of attacks that could
kill you real quick.
Their spiritual successor Bloodborne tweaked the formula a bit, allowing you to Dash or
Roll depending on if you were locked on to an enemy.
These games were popular, and their style rubbed off on some long-running western franchises.
First with Assassin’s Creed, and eventually God of War.
But God of War didn’t just imitate — it adapted and innovated.
For example The game’s attack animations can be canceled into dodges.
Say you’re winding up for a hit, and you realize it’s going to get you in trouble.
In a Souls game, you’d be boned.
But in God of War, you have time to cancel that attack into a safe sidestep.
God of War also has an really good system for differentiating between dashes and dodge
rolls.
A single tap of the button will give you a quick dash.
You’ll cover less distance, but you can resume your attack pretty much instantly.
If you double tap, you’ll do a roll, which means you’ll clear more ground, but you
won’t be able to get up right away.
The really cool thing is that you can trigger the roll at any point in the dash, which gives
you another split second opportunity for tactical decisions.
You can push towards an enemy, decide it’s a bad idea, and roll back in the opposite
direction.
But biggest, most important change is that God of War gives you way more iframes.
This encourages more aggressive combat.
Which makes sense for Kratos - a big mean bastard who does not retreat.
The mechanics of the dodge match who Kratos is- more than any double jump ever could.
I don’t want to say that this is the perfect dodge, but it’s perfect for God of War.