The July issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine (PTOM) features God of War 3 on its cover, and inside includes the first new info. on the game since Sony unveiled it back in February.
Kicking things off, lead combat designer Adam Puhl goes into detail on the game's Spider-Man-style grappling ability, which essentially takes the grapple points from God of War 2 and places them on the game's enemies. "At any point, if there's an enemy on the ground, in the air, wherever, Kratos can throw his blades at them, pull himself into that enemy [or pull the enemy over, or toss the enemy left or right], and perform a shoulder ram," he says. "When it hits, the game slows down, so you get this impactful attack, and you can continue to combo after that...the combat grapple is a linker for the entire combat system."
While the article doesn't reveal any new weapons, it confirms there will be four "main" ones in the finished game, so that leaves two (in addition to the blades and the Cestus) that have yet to be revealed. Apparently each weapon will be tied to its own magic attacks, and one of the Cestus' magics sees Kratos "pound the ground to send a massive wave of destruction in front of him," according to PTOM 's Teresa Dun. Puhl notes that magic attacks "will have more gameplay [than magics in previous God of War games]" and that "there'll be more interesting things that you can do" with them."
Another change to the game's mechanics is the addition -- or perhaps I should say rebranding -- of what the game calls "items." Puhl explains that players hesitated to use the Wind Bow in God of War 2 because it shared the same power bar as other, stronger magic attacks, so the developers created the "items" distinction to encourage players to use them more often. Items (such as the previously revealed Fire Bow and Helios' Head) will have their own power bar, which will automatically refill, so there's limited punishment for using them.
PTOM also had a chance to see a few new scenarios from the game for their story, the most newsworthy being the boss fight with Hades. As Dun describes it, the fight takes place in a "circular space" surrounded by souls that Hades can pick up and throw at Kratos, and at one point in the battle Hades tries to steal Kratos' soul from his body in a button-mashing tug of war.
