First off, as you may have read in the recent preview coverage, we offer four difficulty options when you start a new game, in order of easiest to the most challenging:

Give Me A Story: lets you experience the story without too much of a difficult gameplay challenge. You won’t be taking a gondola to the top of the highest peaks in all the Norse Realms, but you will have a far greater margin for error in enemy encounters.

Give Me A Balanced Experience: is the mode we’d recommend most players start with. The name says it all. We’ve tuned it to deliver a balanced, challenging playthrough.

Give Me A Challenge: is harder and less forgiving. It is recommended for players who find action games extremely intuitive, and for confident long-time God of War series veterans who’ve beat past games on harder difficulties.

Give Me God of War: is the sort of thing reserved for people who wrestle polar bears in their undies. Maybe not quite that, but it’s the most difficult mode in the game. We haven’t just made you weaker or enemies stronger; we’ve looked at enemy behaviors and placements in encounters as well, tweaking everything to make it as threatening as possible. Best of all, you cannot change difficulties once you start a game on this mode, so if you suddenly realize you’re in way over your head, you’ll have to start a new game. Don’t be sorry, be better?

The community reaction to the new gameplay footage released last month was hugely rewarding to our team (it’s been a long road!), but we couldn’t help but notice inquiries into whether the UI can be scaled back or turned off.