Sanzaru Games' Asgard's Wrath 2 is extraordinarily ambitious, boasting a 60-hour campaign throughout a massive open world populated with numerous side quests and other activities all packed into Meta Quest's standalone VR headsets. The scale of the game both in terms of its gameplay features and square footage is unprecedented in made-for-VR games, and Sanzaru hopes that Asgard's Wrath 2 will open the door for the kinds of comprehensive VR games that the platform has traditionally lacked.
Game ZXC recently had a hands-on look at Asgard's Wrath 2 followed up by an interview with Sanzaru Games Studio Creative Director Mat Kraemer and Technical Director Evan Arnold to chat about our experience and the studio's vision for the game. They spoke about the various ways Asgard's Wrath 2 improves upon the original, what their plans are for the game post-release, and the many ways players can tailor their characters and companions to emphasize their preferred playstyles. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: As a sequel, what did Asgard’s Wrath 2 learn from the first game? Was there anything you paid special attention to improving or revamping the second time around?
Kraemer: The first game’s combat is very lock-and-key. You'll come up to areas with enemies, and we're like, “This is how you need to defeat this enemy: you need to block x amount of attacks to get the opening to kill this guy, and that's the only way that you can defeat that enemy.”
In Asgard’s Wrath 2, it is open to any playstyle however you would like to defeat these enemies. If you like kiting enemies and just throwing weapons or if you like going in close and getting those close-range parries and getting those windows to strike those little gems to hit the weak spots, you can play that way.
And each hero has a different playstyle. So you may like one over another, and you may be like, “Oh, I love the harp on this character and these projectiles,” and you can play that way. It's interesting because, in a lot of playtest data, we see people doing unorthodox things that I didn't even think about. I love seeing that. I like seeing those combinations and those kinds of playstyles. That's definitely one thing that we took from the first game, and we totally changed with the second game.
Kraemer: Another one that we talked about earlier was the followers. With followers in the first game, you’d find the shark and convert them and you’d find the turtle and convert them, and there was no backstory to those characters, you just converted them and they were a lock and key mechanism to move the game forward.
In Asgard’s Wrath 2, these characters have full-on backstories. You met Sabira the Panther. When you first meet her, she's in trouble. She's in a situation and she has her own little story. “How did she get there? Why is she there?” You're there to help her out. And so after you meet those characters and you convert them to your side, that story continues. You start to form a bond with that follower.
We have a friendship system that works through usage and through stuff that you're doing with that follower throughout the game. You can increase the friendship which pays out skill points, and all these other things that are totally new to Asgard’s Wrath 2 and were something that was very missed in the first game. We get a lot of questions on that.
I remember at the E3 showing for Asgard’s Wrath 1, people would make their own stories up about the shark guy and our “Teenage Mutant Mutant Ninja Turtle” buddy. Once we saw that gravity of like, “Hey, people really want to know more about these characters, they love the high fives, they love fist bumps.” When I see stuff like that happening, I'm like, “Okay, that's something we need to invest more time into and create a whole ecosystem narrative and story around.
So that's another good example from looking at the first game.
Q: Speaking of the companions, they also have skill points and unlocks. How do these affect their capabilities and how players will interact with them in gameplay?
Kraemer: On the follower side, companions can unlock new moves they can do. They have certain kill moves they can do, and each companion has a different skill set of moves based on the weapon tree they come with, and then all the skill points accent that. If we look at the heroes, for example, let's take a look at Abraxas: the skill tree is broken into the shield, the whip, and the sword and axe. If you're like, “I really love the axe, the axe is my favorite weapon in the game,” you can spend all the skill points in that tree if you like that.
Another thing is the relics too, they're super cool. All the weapons as you upgrade them have relic slots in them, and you'll be able to take these relics and socket them wherever you want. They have outward-facing damage outputs or they can buff characters and do all kinds of stuff, so it’s fun to mix and match all of those things.
Again, another thing taken from the first game into the second game: people wanted more depth in the weapons. They wanted more depth on things like the types of attacks. We have a huge elemental system now, so you can have a fire enemy and you're like, “Oh man, these guys are really hard. I'm in a fire part of the game, so I probably need some water relics or something.” So you outfit yourself with all these water relics to counter those guys, and it adds a whole new depth to the weaponry and the combat. That was really learned from the first game where a lot of the combat felt a little one-dimensional.
Q: The previous Asgard’s Wrath had a pretty large file size, and Asgard’s Wrath 2 is similarly massive in scope. Will Quest 2 players using the smaller 64-gig version be able to install the game?
Arnold: We are supporting the 64-gig version. The file size is not final yet, but we are working on reducing it further. We've been working closely with Oculus teams to make sure that it's as good of an experience as it can be for those on the Quest 2. We really care about players’ accessibility and there are plenty of people out there still active on the 64-gig Quest 2, and we didn't want to exclude them.
Kraemer: The other thing in terms of what we're trying to achieve with Wrath 1 and Wrath 2 is that we want to open the gates for these kinds of games and show that they can exist and be made on the VR platform. You really have to give credit to Meta as a whole and the production crew that we work with at Meta because they believe in this vision. Our producers Mike Doran and Mari Kyle are phenomenal. If we did not have the openness of that production crew and working so closely with them, I don’t know where we’d be. This is the best production crew we've ever worked with, and they've been with us since VR Sports Challenge all the way to where we are now. I think having that aligned vision with the dev team along with the rest of the company and the production side has been a blessing.
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Q: In addition to side quests, I noticed there are also some event-type activities in the game. Can you talk about how those play out?
Kraemer: Every month, when you come back, there'll be a slew of new objectives. We call them “cosmic objectives.” Some of those are tied to the endgame. We call them “anomalies” that appear throughout the game, and they'll pop in anywhere that you're playing and the content that's in some of those anomalies changes each month. So it may be, “Hey, here's a new anomaly that appears with a totally new enemy type in it.” Now you have an objective like “Go find that anomaly to kill that enemy in there.” If you complete those, you can get more cosmetic stuff, and you can unlock different weapons and all kinds of other things. That stuff is totally free month to month, and it changes throughout the course of the game.
Q: I noticed when talking to NPCs that I had different dialogue choices. Will there be branching paths or moral choices through dialogue, or is it more just to express the player’s personality?
Kraemer: Yeah, it's more of a roleplay thing.
Q: Was there anything you wanted to avoid when it comes to gameplay? Are there certain tropes or features you see in other games that you want to steer clear of?
Kraemer: I think the biggest one – which I already touched on – was the way that we approach combat. We wanted to avoid that lock-and-key key stuff like, “Hey, this is how you need to play the game” or “This is how you need to solve this puzzle.” In this game, there are a lot of different options. You can solve things in different ways, you can fight in different ways. We’re trying to keep it as open-ended as possible.
Another one is the way you recruit NPCs to the hideout. I don't like games where it's like, “Oh, you just finished quest X. Look, this guy appeared in your hideout. Now the store is open.” Like, who is this guy?
Well, the guy that's going to appear in your hideout? You actually met them out in the world and you did a quest for him. You did some story and you actually met him and then he appears to say, “Hey, you're a pretty good god, I'm gonna go back with you and help you out.” And then he appears back in the hideout and that narrative story continues. So that's another trope kind of thing that I always think about.
Q: In the long term, do you have a vision for how Asgard’s Wrath 2 will be expanded on? Can players expect expansions or additional cosmetics later on?
Kraemer: Right now we're just focused on some DLC down the line and then the free post-release content with a mix of free and paid DLC.
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Asgard's Wrath 2 releases December 15 on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro.