God of War drops at the end of this month, dear readers, and we’re just now getting a look at some of the cooler aspects of this new addition to the franchise. A new trailer released by Sony now shows off a bit of the game’s updated progression system, as well as some armor customization for our beloved Kratos.

In a move toward more of an RPG style of gaming, we see that Kratos will now be able to collect and craft armor components that boost his stats. Aspects like Runic, Strength, Defense, Luck, Cooldown, and Vitality can all be tweaked using different pieces of this armor. Each armor piece will also have different looks, effectively changing Kratos’ appearance in-game, and will allow players to tailor the way they go through the game more to their own individual styles of play.

Cory Barlog, Sony Santa Monica’s creative director talked about the changes, recently. “What we wanted to do was make sure that all the customisation that we offered to player fed directly into the core loop of the game. All of Atreus’ core abilities, all of Kratos’ core abilities, as well as his reactions, the cool-downs and how fast those go. All of your damage, as well as your ability to take damage, all of those things are factors that you can have control over,” he said

According to everything we know, players will also be able to gain new abilities as they go through the game, allowing for more customization based on their own individual play styles. God of War will also contain a variety of skill trees, allowing players to gain skills for the axe, improve Kratos’ defensive capabilities, or boost his hand-to-hand combat proficiency.

 

Lead gameplay designer at Sony Santa Monica, Jason McDonald, talked about the game’s ambitious scope: “This God of War game is definitely the biggest one we’ve ever made. There’s a lot of content, and we wanted to make sure that out of all of the players playing, everybody plays it a different way. We just want players to have choice. We want players in the game with a different Kratos as somebody else’s Kratos, even when they’re still Kratos at the end of the day”. Ok everyone. Got it? We think we do…

Let us know what you think of these changes to the mechanics of the God of War franchise! Are you more or less excited to play this new chapter of the life of Kratos? Leave us a comment below, and stay tuned for our first impression of the game once it releases on April 20th on PS4!