God of War is a franchise that has long been praised by its gamer base, and during the PS2 and PS3 era, many games came from this series. However, by the time it was done, the series had gotten somewhat stale. So, when a PS4 title from the franchise was announced, gamers didn’t know what to expect, especially when Santa Monica Studios promised something that they had never seen before in the series. But changing the formula almost got director Cory Balrog to quit many times.
He revealed this to GameIndustry.biz, and noted that it was only because of other members of the dev team that he stuck around:
“The reason I ended up succeeding is because of this team,” he told the site, “because of these people who cared so much about the individual aspect of the game that was theirs,” said Barlog. “They took ownership, and they pushed themselves farther beyond than they ever thought they would to get there.”
So what was the thing that really almost pushed him to the edge? Well, that would be the character of Arteus, son of Kratos, who was a vital aspect of the game in terms of both story and gameplay, and that terrified Santa Monica:
“The concept of Atreus scared a lot of people,” he explained. “It scared everyone on the team, it scared the executives because I didn’t want to do just an additional character delivering narrative.”
Ironically, though they struggled, they did succeed in making God of War on PS4 both a refreshing and fun experience, and Arteus was a bit hit with both gamers and critics, as the son of Kratos helped flesh out his father’s new personality as it were, while not being useless in battle like other games have done with similar characters.
God of War on PS4 was also the best-selling game in the franchise.
