4d ago - Community Strategist Aaron Kaufman at Santa Monica Studio posted up a video today showcasing God of War: Ascension Multiplayer including DLC and primordial weapons below.

To quote: Champions, with eight glorious weeks of God of War: Ascension Multiplayer now etched into the stones of Olympus, it's time to look ahead to what the Oracle has seen in our future.

It's also time to see what the community has achieved thus far - see the infographic along the side of this post (click on it for the full, ultra high-resolution image).

Our God of War Development Team here at SonySantaMonica is working steadfastly on a wide array of additional multiplayer content, including new weapons (plus a powerful fourth weapon class) and armors, large and small maps, and a few other surprises. We'll have more to share later this month.

Today we are releasing our second wave of Multiplayer DLC - the Primordial Weapons - comprised of the Armor of Typhon and the Mercenary Blade. These will be available to purchase today on PSN (search "God of War"), alongside the "Armors of Anarchy" and "Blades of Darkness" released last week. Pay close attention to the Artemis & Thanatos Blades; they have new moves and FX to augment your playing style.

6w ago - Today Sony Designer Vincent Napoli at Santa Monica has shared a video announcing that the God of War: Ascension update brings new PS3 features and fixes with details below.

To quote: Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to run their Blades through my poor little champion’s skull every night in God of War: Ascension‘s brutal multiplayer mode. After a long day of work, there is definitely something to be said about gutting and impaling people into the wee hours of the morning!

One of primary reasons we’ve been relatively quiet in the last week regarding support and DLC updates is because we’ve been heads down, working on an update which expands our God of War: Ascension multiplayer experience and addresses some key issues our community has helped us identify and diagnose. There are lots of gameplay developments coming down the pipeline, and today we’ll be sharing some of the stuff that’s moved into our final testing and tuning phase.

Elite Levels – Going Beyond Level 30

One of the biggest enhancements in our upcoming 1.04 update will be increasing the allegiance level cap from 30 to 40. With the addition of 10 levels for every God allegiance, we are introducing a new item, two new relics, and an ultimate magic for every...

10w ago - Game Director Todd Papy has officially revealed the final multiplayer allegiance for God of War: Ascension which arrives today.

Below are the details, to quote: God of War: Ascension is out in North America today! It represents the culmination of two and a half years of blood, sweat, and tears on behalf of the God of War team at Santa Monica Studio.

We wanted to create the best looking, best playing, most compelling entry in the series to date, a game that took every aspect of the experience to a new level, that sought to show long-time fans a different side of the iconic Kratos character, and that added something entirely new yet addictively deep to the franchise: multiplayer, which many of you joined us in playing and improving during our Beta weeks ago.

We put a great deal of thought and effort into the multiplayer modes you'll discover in Ascension, including the recently revealed 2-player cooperative Trial of the Gods. Supporting this new addition to the God of War universe and the community we're hopeful builds around it for a while to come is of the utmost importance to us.

Looking forward to being among the first to receive access to an exclusive early demo of The Last of Us, included in each retail copy of God of War: Ascension? The new target date upon which that...

10w ago - Following up on their previous release, today PlayStation 3 scene release group Duplex is back with a PS3 EBOOT Patch.

As always, below are the related PS3 NFO file release details:

God.of.War.Ascension.Eboot.Patch.PS3-DUPLEX / God of War Ascension PS3 DUPLEX

10w ago - Sony Blog Manager Fred Dutton has shared a God of War: Ascension PS3 Q & A update below today which takes Kratos to the next level.

To quote: With God of War: Ascension's launch just a few days away now, we sat down with the game's Lead Combat Designer Jason McDonald and Lead Game Designer Mark Simon to find out how they've kept the formula fresh six games into the series, and what challenges the addition of multiplayer presented to the team.

We'll have more insight from Game Director Todd Papy next week before Santa Monica's lean, mean new actioner hits the shelves on March 12th. In the meantime, over to Mark and Jason...

PlayStation.Blog: How difficult is it retro-fitting a prequel story onto the existing God of War trilogy?

Mark Simon: It's kinda nice actually. At the end of God of War 3 Kratos is completely rage-filled. His sole-focus has been figured out. With Ascension, we can go back to a different time period before he was this character.

He has a wider range and you can explain things about him that you didn't know before. You get to find out what turned him into the guy that he is - what makes him snap, and why is it that breaking a bond with a god like Ares does this.

PSB: If I was to plot Kratos' anger on a graph,...