Todd Papy (GoW: Ascension) Leaves Sony Santa Monica

God of War: Ascension's director has announced that he's no longer at Sony Santa Monica.

[allformats]

Wishing him all the best in his next endeavors. Thanks for your work at PlayStation!

[HolyDuck]

Will be interesting to see where he moves too, another studio maybe, might even start his own.

[xHeavYx]

His other tweets say he is moving to Germany and that he hasn't quit games. Isn't GG in Germany or somewhere close?

[wenaldy]

@Heavy

GG is in Netherland. GG Liverpool is in well, UK.

[wenaldy]

Edit: double post :p

[strickers]

GG is in the Netherlands ( Holland) but the other GG is Cambridge, not Liverpool. Sony Liverpool used to make Wipeout and have been closed.

[Tzuno]

yeah, next please. :)

[itBourne]

What the hell... is it like a rule in that studio, direct a GoW game, then your ass needs to get the hell out!

[Persian_Immortal]

Stig Asmusseen directed God of war III he still at SSM he's currently making a New IP, Cory Barlog just recently returned to the Studio after working on Tomb Raider(reboot) with crystal Dynamics. Since his return Cory Barlog is forming a new team his oceans eleven as he likes to call it. As far as looking at the God of war director situation David Jaffe left after 1, Cory after 2, and papy after Ascension Stig is the exception to this walk out.

[Walker]

Good news. ascension really was bad compared to trilogy !

[Baka-akaB]

Good news ? He was still Design Director on God of War 3 wich no one complained about .

obviously now SM never had issues replacing its leaving talents so far

[zpoc]

so what? all that proves is that he's a great design director but a shitty game director.

[xXxSeTTriPxXx]

No it wasn't it was great, but it was the same old great, nothing new.but he made gow combat better then ever b4, so much need depth.

[x5exotic]

Complaints about God of War:

1) Button mashing; like you don't mash the climb button or the shoot button in platformers/shooters respectively. You can go through pretty much every game through one button, but in GoW that's optional (along with most HnS)

2) Same gameplay; well same can be said for every single franchise, and the ones that do change gameplay find great imbalance within the series (AC1 --> AC2) to the point where playing the sequel first makes the previous game unplayable.

I'm all for revolutionary gameplay styles... For new game series. For sequels, the same is perfect if it isn't broken.

3) Bros before Hoes; well Sessler is a joke now so I won't bother.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

The hell do you mean good news? He's always been with the God of War team. David Jaffe created the series and then left. Was that good news? Cory Barlog directed the amazing sequel, and then he left. Was that good news too?

[firelogic]

Barlog is back with SSM. And while not great news, it allowed others to take the reigns and they all did admirably, save for Papy.

[firelogic]

Totally agree. It was the worst game in the series which was surprising because prior to GoW:A, there were 5 games all with different directors from 2 different studios and they were all great.

[KUV1977]

As thin as Ascension's story was at least it made sense. While GoWIII was more intense in the area of boss fights it did not make a whole lot of sense and was a real bad ending to a great trilogy (not because he dies - that was the only logical thing to happen - that his corpse was gone again was pretty cheap though). GoWII was the best part for me. Actually I even liked Ghost of Sparta better than GoWIII. Ascension and GoWI would be about the same for me, and I would rate GoWIII in last place just the same as Chains of Olympus- for different reasons though. Gameplay was great, graphics and sound was awesome. Boss-Fights were great. But the story: oh boy. I feel however that a lot of people don'T care about story as much. Ripping of Helios' head was probably violent enough to call the game best of series for some.

[wenaldy]

Balrog in, Pappy out.

Wish him for the best. Personally, I love Ascension.

[Deltaguy]

Hold on Corys back?

[neoMAXMLC]

Yep. He made the announcement personally months ago. Seems like he'll be working on a new IP with them.

[DigitalRaptor]

Yup. Game director for best GoW game is back.

http://blog.us.playstation....

[sypher]

That God Of War game director position seems to cut through people like butter :)

Must be a very stressful job because everyone quits after doing it lol

[firelogic]

Stig Asmussen (GoWIII) is still there working on something new.

[InTheZoneAC]

who moves TO germany?

[KUV1977]

How often have you been to Germany, and what makes you give a statement like this?

[InTheZoneAC]

from what I hear from actual Americans having visited there, say those people are very rude and obviously weather is very depressing...