God Of War: Ascension - Multiplayer Details and Beta Release

Hey there guys! God of War Game Director, Todd Papy, posted again on the Official Playstaion Blog just a couple of weeks back. This time around he emphasized the highly anticipated multiplayer mode of GOW Ascension which is going to be a first for series.

Knowing Santa Monica's track record it is really hard not to get excited. This excitement must come as a heavy burden to Santa Monica Studios who know well enough the high expectations fans have from them. If this multiplayer mode is even slightly sub-par, the backlash from fans could be horrible. I guess this is why I feel a bit reassured from Todd's description of the mode as "a multiplayer experience we are confident will be worthy of the title, God of War."

The main point that Todd wanted to get across was that they will be launching the beta for the multiplayer. As Todd explains, "I'm excited to announce today that we will be launching a global multiplayer beta in the near future, available exclusively first to PlayStation Plus subscribers (there may a few other secret inroads). It's critical to our team that we receive as much community feedback to tune and prime our multiplayer mode for one of the best experiences possible, come launch this March."

Being a Playstation Plus member has never been better. The good thing though is that they are not limiting the Beta to just Plus members but till now nothing has been mentioned about the other ways gamers can get their hands on the beta.

Other than this fact Todd Papy continued to give more details regarding what to expect from the multiplayer component and I quote "Where and how you begin as a Warrior in God of War: Ascension multiplayer is a mystery you'll discover at launch, there is a story to "you," notwithstanding, your first decision will be to pledge your allegiance to one of 4 familiar Gods: Zeus, Hades, Ares and Poseidon."

"Each God will offer a unique combat play-style and devastating abilities in battle. You'll unlock special magic abilities, new and upgraded armors and weapons, mystical relics and other treasures as you earn XP to level up your Warrior. While each will have an incredible array of combat maneuvers, the "attack-style" of the God you align with is critical to your Warriors 'path'."

"Our Warrior customization and XP system is going to keep you serving your God for centuries to come. It is your goal to become a true God of War, a Champion of the Gods. When you head into battle with friends and foes, you will have teammates aligned to all of the Gods, not only balancing out the strengths of each team, but creating a mythical and diverse combat war in every match."

A few months back Todd Papy gave off a few precious details regarding the multiplayer in an interview with Jeff Rubenstein from Playstation Blog. If you guys want to see the video for yourself then check out the following link:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/04/30/god-of-war-ascension-multiplayer-announcement-live-from-santa-monica-studio/

We are going to list down the key facts about the multiplayer that we gathered from the interview and sites all over the web. The multiplayer is going to -

-Look amazing, almost as good as the single player in terms of graphics
-They are bringing in a lot of customization which will also be dependent on which God you have aligned yourself with.
-There are primary 6 different areas on a character that can be customized - boots, skirt, gauntlets, weapon, chest piece and helmet.
-There will be four Gods to choose from: Poseidon, Zeus, Ares and Hades which would basically represent different classes
-A max of 8 players will be able to play together as two teams of 4 vs 4
-They are balancing the game around hand to hand combat
-They are working with several gameplay modes which would be basically along the lines of Domination, Base Defense, Capture the Flag. The multiplayer gameplay demo shown at E3 showed their version of Domination which they call "Favor of the Gods".
-They are designing large multi-leveled maps (current data suggests a total of 7 maps) solely for the multiplayer which will be littered with power-ups, treasure chests and traps.
-Depending on the maps being played there will be different objectives that has to be completed in order to win the matches, and at some levels more than one objective would have to be accomplished

A lot to look forward to, right? Also keep in mind that this is only the multiplayer mode that we are talking about. There is also the epic single player campaign to look forward too as well where this time around we will get to see more of the human side of Kratos.

This is all that we know for now guys. Be sure that more info will be revealed as we get closer to the launch date. Till then keep a check on our site for more info on GOW Ascension and enjoy the multiplayer gameplay video (link given below).

Multiplayer Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlbqWyfUs-k

What custom controller would you make to match the series?

Blog by Shahriar Azad