Strength comes in so many forms. Not just the physical strength, but to understand the emotional strength. To have emotional vulnerability, to show that's not a weakness.Collection: Strength
My wife is Swedish, so I'm familiar with the Scandinavian kind of odd humor. It's very dark and very deadpan.Collection: Humor
Any sort of major change we want to make in our life is hard. Change is not easy and true change takes time and takes thousands, millions probably, of failures along that path and that's the interesting thing.Collection: Change
There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.
My thing I always go back to is that sense of finishing 'Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,' and that castle flipping over, and just going, 'Oh my God, that was amazing! I have so much more to play!' It was astounding. I think I've always been chasing that. I think my entire career, I have been like, 'I want that kind of epiphany.'
You have to have this straddling balance of realizing that games are incredibly complex. You can have an idea of where you want to go with something, the structure of something, but the actual moment to moment figuring all this out-it unravels over the course of, in 'God of War''s case, about five years.
When you pitch a half-baked idea it's so easy for someone to pick it apart and hate on it.
Sometimes a crazy idea can make something special.
Superman' was created at a time when we needed some idealistic, perfect person to aspire to, which is why he is so flawless.
Working with George Miller was an education. It was eight college degrees in character development and directing all at once.
As a writer, you understand how hard it is to build up backstory for characters, so you can have impactful moments. You have to build toward something and then pay it off.
Do not make decisions for your kid. It's not going to turn out well.
I wanted to experiment with more deliberate combat but I never wanted to lose that DNA of what 'God of War' is.
A game director, in my mind, is somebody who makes everybody on the team miserable for the duration of the project.
I don't think I've ever worked on anything that wasn't way bigger than we expected. That's all the way back to working on fighting games at Paradox. Everything seems to balloon when more and more people get involved.
I used to animate. I started in animation, and you'd end every day with at least one substantive contribution.
Find your own way into your story. Find your own way into your game.
Whether you have a small team or a large team, you'll always have a percentage of people telling you to do the opposite of what you think you should be doing. Then you'll have a percentage of people telling you to do the opposite of what they're saying. It's a constant sea of doubtful voices. You have to navigate through that.
Every creator has to follow what they believe. That's the message I would love for every single executive to get, to clearly understand, and every single producer out there.
I'm not a competitive player at all, but I don't want competitive games to go away, because for some people that's why they play games, to compete.
God of War' was a 40-60 person team. It was a lot of very different, very passionate, very crazy people.
Staying in a hotel, I get zero interruptions and sleep all the way through the night. It's amazing.
I'm very - I love talking about games, I love talking about movies and TV shows and love what I do at work. But after work, I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm super private. I stay home.
At its root, 'God of War' was always the promise of adventure.
For me, human beings have a very difficult time changing. It's one of the hardest things to do.
Having a kid motivates you to really take stock of yourself and how much of yourself you want to be reflected back in the actions of your kid.
I had this idea that I didn't want to have kids until my career was at the right point, until we have a house, until we have savings of at least this much ... None of that came true. It just happened.
I'm trying to be better for my son. And regretting every moment that I'm not spending with him.
Throughout my life, I've seen that everybody has had something to teach me and, strangely, it's always something relevant to what I'm going through at that point.
Initially I took the job because I thought it would be really easy. I was like, I'll take the paycheck because I want to do my own movie. That didn't work out. In the first two weeks I fell in love with Kratos from an animation perspective; I'd never been able to do anything like this.
That feeling of being rewarded for your curiosity is huge. It's why I play games, this idea of truly existing in a world.
The dynamics of storytelling are very important. To just be serious and morose all the time would be not very enjoyable.
At the end of 'God of War III,' after laying waste to Olympus, Kratos leaves and, for me, goes on this really long wandering pilgrimage.
I can't learn Swedish to save my life. I tried, but I'm not very good at it.
Picking just one game above all is nearly impossible for me, but if I had to, it would be 'Metal Gear Solid.' I remember being completely blown away with the story, the mechanics and the overall presentation on my first playthrough.
The Uncharted' series really pushed me as a developer. They managed to raise the bar with every single release and produce an action- packed thrill ride starring characters I wanted to hang out with, and mechanics I can easily pick up and play.
Resident Evil 4' truly changed the way I look at making games.
The Resident Evil' series. Not only are they great games, but the creators' willingness to reinvent the game every so often is something I think positively affects our industry.
So Kratos is always angry, and he spent a considerable amount of time after 'God of War' trying to be away from people and trying to figure out how to get control of that. So it is this kind of internal struggle for him at all times.
Play the way you want to play. I want to give as much power back over to the player as possible. That's where games are leaning: give me the tools, let me do what I want to do with it. Let me solve the problem the way I want to solve it - experience the combat the way I want to experience it.
And I could see - this franchise is very successful for Sony and I think it's awesome. I was big part of making that a success for them and I think it's great that they should continue doing it, but I don't want to make 'God of War IV' and 'God of War V' and 'God of War: The Expansion Pack' and 'God of War: The Role-Playing Kart Racing Game.'
It is the adage of any creative thing; it looks terrible, it is an ugly baby, until the very last second.
I don't really want to make casual games or games with no sort of story backbone or character backbone.
Drama comes from characters changing. If characters stay the same and nothing changes, there's really nothing to look at.
God of War' is traditionally known for these cinematic, pull back cameras, which I think are fantastic.
The vocabulary of film is camera cuts, it's how they communicate. But games are different. We don't really need to do that. We do it because it's a language that we're familiar with.
There are some who expect every game to make a dramatic change the way that 'Resident Evil 4' did over its predecessors. And for that series I think the change was fantastic and completely necessary. I honestly think it should have happened much sooner than it did. But that kind of change is not necessary for every game.
The Wii is fun, but nothing feels all that accurate or precise. I don't want to play an action game with controls that sloppy.
I would love for 'God of War II' to be considered the swan song of the PS2 but I really don't think this will be the last great game on the system.
Despite what many say or think, the PS2 is here to stay. I know that Microsoft dropped the Xbox like a bad habit but PS2 still has more staying power.