Exercise Two: Hyperion’s Prison

Just like the Voodoo Dungeon, I first drew up some concepts and locations by end before fiddling about in Maya to create a 3D model roughly interlinking rooms and demonstrating a sense of scale. God of War is more restricted in terms of design; combat is the most important theme of the game so alot of the areas need to combat arenas.  Between the combat there are some puzzles or short platforming sections.

One of the best bits about the franchise had been the sense of scale in the visuals and environments. With that in mind wanted to have that focus on scale and ways to portray that scale. The objective of the stage is to steal an item on a platform directly above the location of Hyperion’s prison, where the light is brightest and most dangerous.  At the very start of the stage the player is overlooking the prison, they can see the location of the objective far in the distant and they know their goal is to slowly make their way over to it, exposing themselves to more and more danger the closer they get.

The armour isn’t obtained till about halfway through the stage. The decision for this is the player would not fully appreciate it’s abilities without first witness the danger they would be in without it. The first half is getting closer to the objective and seeing the intense power of the light Hyperion emits, turning enemies to dusk upon contact. The player is at just as much risk and must spend that time avoiding deadly exposure. Once they obtain the armour however, after feeling the brutality of Hyperion’s light they will feel powerful and rewarded from being able to survive that intense power for prolonged time.