CORY BARLOG

Gotta know the rules to break the rules.

There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.

I don't want to work on any games that don't have some kind of story component because that is the draw for me.

We did so much work developing the character of Kratos, why would we throw all that out? We're sort of treating the first seven games like chapter one of this character's life.

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.

God of War' was a 40-60 person team. It was a lot of very different, very passionate, very crazy people.

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.

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.

I think the best thing you can do with a 'Superman' game is to kind of explore the psychology of what it would be like to be a person who slowly begins to realize that he can't save everybody.

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.'

Do not make decisions for your kid. It's not going to turn out well.

Resident Evil 4' truly changed the way I look at making games.

I had a very specific idea of the personal nature of the story I wanted to tell, really changing the image and the perception of Kratos.

The thing I really liked about the early 'God Of War' games was the idea that from the menu screen it felt like you went right into the game.

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 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.

When you pitch a half-baked idea it's so easy for someone to pick it apart and hate on it.

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.

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.

Certain games, I think it's great that they give you a continuing experience.

God of War 2,' for me, was great because we were experts at the platform. You know, it was at the end of the PS2's lifecycle and we knew everything about it.

I wanted to experiment with more deliberate combat but I never wanted to lose that DNA of what 'God of War' is.

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.

Puzzles are always a difficult thing, I don't think I've played any games where the puzzles are perfectly contextualised, unless the entire game is a puzzle game built upon that concept.

Games change by the different creatives that get involved and say, 'I have this crazy idea.'