Top 44 Cory Barlog Quotes

Find your own way into your story. Find your own way into your game.

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

I’m trying to be better for my son. And regretting every moment that I’m not spending with him.

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.

Drama comes from characters changing. If characters stay the same and nothing changes, there’s really nothing to look at.

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

I want games to have their own identity.

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 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.

Initially I took the job because I thought it would be really easy. I was like, I’ll take the paycheck because I want to do my own movie. That didn’t work out. In the first two weeks I fell in love with Kratos from an animation perspective; I’d never been able to do anything like this.

Despite what many say or think, the PS2 is here to stay. I know that Microsoft dropped the Xbox like a bad habit but PS2 still has more staying power.

At its root, ‘God of War’ was always the promise of adventure.

It is the adage of any creative thing; it looks terrible, it is an ugly baby, until the very last second.

It’s better to do something really really well and thorough, than I think to have a surface level version of a lot of different things.

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

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.

Having a kid motivates you to really take stock of yourself and how much of yourself you want to be reflected back in the actions of your kid.

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.

As a writer, you understand how hard it is to build up backstory for characters, so you can have impactful moments. You have to build toward something and then pay it off.

But I think it shortsells any idea when you say there’s a similar part to something else, like ‘aw man, ‘The Avengers’ is ripping off ‘Batman.’ You’ve got people running around in outfits.’ Of course, there are outfitted people and there’s superhero stuff, but it’s not just ripping off ‘Batman.’

I don’t really want to make casual games or games with no sort of story backbone or character backbone.

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

The dynamics of storytelling are very important. To just be serious and morose all the time would be not very enjoyable.

I used to animate. I started in animation, and you’d end every day with at least one substantive contribution.

Superman’ was created at a time when we needed some idealistic, perfect person to aspire to, which is why he is so flawless.

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.

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.

God of War’ is traditionally known for these cinematic, pull back cameras, which I think are fantastic.

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

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

Working with George Miller was an education. It was eight college degrees in character development and directing all at once.

Picking just one game above all is nearly impossible for me, but if I had to, it would be ‘Metal Gear Solid.’ I remember being completely blown away with the story, the mechanics and the overall presentation on my first playthrough.

Competition doesn’t drive me. It’s not to say that competition is bad, it’s not to say that competitive games are bad because I love that those that exist, but it’s not my thing.

Strength comes in so many forms. Not just the physical strength, but to understand the emotional strength. To have emotional vulnerability, to show that’s not a weakness.

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.

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.

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.

I enjoy flawed heroes that actually struggle, you know, with their own sort of path and are not really aware that they reach that level of being a hero.

The Resident Evil’ series. Not only are they great games, but the creators’ willingness to reinvent the game every so often is something I think positively affects our industry.

The vocabulary of film is camera cuts, it’s how they communicate. But games are different. We don’t really need to do that. We do it because it’s a language that we’re familiar with.

A game director, in my mind, is somebody who makes everybody on the team miserable for the duration of the project.

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.

If something evokes a strong emotional reaction in me, I need to push myself in that direction.

I love movies.