God of War is in the building blocks of Knack says Mark Cerny

Mark Cerny system architect for the PS4 and  designer of Marble Madness, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Ratchet and Clank and more recently spoke frankly about the influences for upcoming PS4 title Knack in an interview on the PlayStation Blog.

Cerny revealed that the game — and its protagonist — where designed with international appeal in mind in addition to drawing in casual and hardcore gamers alike.  “We are definitely speaking to the nostalgia that people feel for the play experiences of the past,” Cerny said. “If you play this game on the hard difficulty setting it will definitely challenge you. I think many people will go to the store and get, say, Watch Dogs or Killzone…for themselves and they’ll get Knack for another member of the family, but I also think a lot of core gamers will end up getting Knack for that old school – with a twist – feel.”

Cerny makes mention of several games which he feels inspired the design of Knack, including unlikely candidate God of War. “There’s a bit of Crash Bandicoot in there, a bit of Katamari Damacy…and there’s a bit of God of War too…especially in the control set, where the right stick is the dodge.” he said.

Knack is being developed by Sony’s Japan Studio, but Cerny reiterated that it’s being designed with a global audience at the forefront. “The original concept was ‘let’s make an international title,’ he said, but infers that creating a mascot is inherently difficult “that mascot is going to be immediately identifiable as a Japanese mascot, or a US mascot”.

To sidestep this problem, the team instead focused on making the character with an effect. Cerny recalls “We came up with the idea that he would pick up things in the environment and get bigger, and a year or so later Knack was born.”

Knack will be available exclusively for PS4 when it launches later this year.