Introduction

The God of War trilogy puts the player “in the sandals” of Kratos in his quest for revenge. This anger-fueled journey is also mirrored by how the combat plays and feels - players are constantly encouraged to take action and be aggressive.

This is specially present in enemy encounters.

In this article, I will analyze aspects in enemy encounters that reinforce the game’s aggressive, offensive-driven combat design philosophy.

I will use God of War III as an example (even though the other two games follow pretty much the same patterns).

Combat Manager

The first aspect has to do with how enemy encounters are handled. As most games of the genre, there seems to be an overarching combat manager coordinating enemy actions.

Timing

In terms of timing, in the beginning of enemy encounters, the player is encouraged to take the lead of the battle and attack first since very rarely enemies start attacking.

• This is very clear on tutorials - whenever instructions are displayed on the HUD, with enemies taking 2-4 seconds to engage.

https://youtu.be/Gw5ledkPpqA

But even outside tutorials, the player has enough time/opportunity to analyze the encounter’s enemy composition and initiate combat before enemies take any action. On the video below:

1. In the first example, enemies are far from the player and even after getting close they take a while to start attacking.
2. In the second example, even while in front of them, enemies wait a few seconds before taking an action.
3. Finally in the last example, as the Cyclops Enforcer is spawning, the player is able to immediately land a few hits (15!) and only after must react to the enemy’s strike.

https://youtu.be/rSclVb-JyQ4

After this initial window of opportunity, an AI Ticketing System seems to kick in to handle the cadence of enemy attacks, with them attacking at regular intervals.

The timing of these AI actions also calls for a player response. If the player goes overly defensive, enemies just keep attacking them.