Cory Barlog Quotes

Before 'Final Fantasy VII,' I would have told you that I had zero interest in RPGs with turn-based combat. But that game was so well done, I didn't care what genre it was. Any genre can be done poorly or done well.

I still like to play games that have a beginning, an end and a story.

You don't really want to talk about 'Duke' in terms of, how many levels are there, how many guns does it have, how many monsters… It's got everything it needs in terms of that, but it's always been about the 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.

There have been a lot of amazing action games that, perhaps, the focus is on cinematics or story or even how the camera works so that they've created this amazing immersive experience.

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

You can even express movies and poetry using video games. For those reasons, I've decided to create stories through video games.

The Uncharted' series really pushed me as a developer. They managed to raise the bar with every single release and produce an action- packed thrill ride starring characters I wanted to hang out with, and mechanics I can easily pick up and play.

The point of view is the biggest problem with games, because what we play must be clearly presented in the best way for me to have an immersive game experience.

The way games are designed is you create a story, and then you create an obstacle course inside that story, and the player has to endure it to see more. So it's artificial. Game designers are so intensely worried about people getting bored that they pile on busy work for players to do.

With a movie, it's probably easier to sustain intensity and seriousness over the 90-minute duration. But in an open-world game it becomes exhausting, demotivating and even uninteresting for the player.

Ninety percent of video game AI really is pretty damn bad. I think that's actually why it's so much fun to shoot things. Because the AI is so bad and the characters are so annoying.

I don't want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry - directors and producers - are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.

What strikes me is that 'XIII' looks like a movie. The shot making is movie-like, which is kind of fun - the kind of playful action movie shot making is pretty, is pretty good. What's also great about this game is its style and interesting story-line.

A game like 'Myst' may be a gorgeous slide show that preserves its beauty at the expense of speed. A game like 'Doom' sacrifices almost everything for action. But the eye soon adjusts: the degree of detail more than adequately conveys infinite claustrophobic labyrinths populated by howling monsters.

Not only a great game, 'Uncharted 2' raised the bar for storytelling for the medium. The game treated action as a part of the overall story rather than a way to move from plot point to plot point.

You can't just come up with an idea for a game and stick the drama on top. It all has to be one driving thrust.

I don't just write a script, and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.

I always try and come up with a clear theme when I'm making a videogame.

Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

I think 'Overlord' has definitely benefited because I work with every single level designer, and working where we have space to tell the story. That's what it's all about - getting writers and storytellers involved in the team and being a back and forth process.

The video game market is huge, and the ability to tell stories, and tell different kinds of stories in the gaming space is quickly evolving and changing for the better.

There's a theory in gameplay, particularly in first person shooters, that sometimes you don't want to have that much of a character because then it destroys the experience of the player being that character.

Story may not be a great addition to some games - games where action is the whole reason for the game to exist.