With two new God Of War games announced at the recent PS5 State of Play, a reader is concerned the franchise is starting to go in the wrong direction.
As a fan of God Of War I should have been happy with this week’s State of Play. As a whole I thought it was good, but it also had two big God Of War announcements so I should’ve been over the moon, but, to be honest, they were the worst part.
Sons Of Sparta looked bad from the moment it was announced and the artwork is absolutely terrible. I haven’t bought it, but I’ve been watching streamers on it all day and it’s clear it’s pretty bad. A below average Metroidvania that you can get dozens of better examples of. Even the story doesn’t seem to be worth the while, especially given how expensive it is.
Then you’ve got this remake trilogy of the original Greek games, which may or may not be made by Santa Monica Studio. I really hope it’s not because it sounds like a complete waste of their talents and something that absolutely did not need to be made.
Remaking three games (two PlayStation 2 and one PlayStation 3) is a massive job and while they didn’t say, I assume they’re going to cut them down and smoosh them all into a single game. Which you can guarantee is going to lead to endless arguments about stuff that was unfairly cut. And that’s before you get into what a monster Kratos was in those games.
Are they going to keep the bit in it where he jams an innocent women into the gears of a door’s locking mechanism, so it stays open? Or the creepy sex scenes? Or all the ultra-violent deaths where Kratos refuses to help people he could easily have saved? Those original games were so edge lord I really don’t see how they’re going to fly today and yet sanitising them is only going to bring out the worst in people.
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On top of that you’ve got the fact that the games have a lot of old-fashioned platforming and puzzles sections that are going to seem really obscure and difficult to modern games. I like the old games but only because I played them at the time, and I much prefer the modern Norse ones.
Remasters of the games are fine, because they should be preserved for historical reasons, but complete remakes of all three games at once seems complete overkill.
Someone pointed out recently that Naughty Dog hasn’t actually released a new game yet on the PlayStation 5, just remakes and remasters, and I really don’t want Santa Monica Studio to be the same. Spin-offs were all very well when they didn’t take that long to do but a remake takes just as long as a regular game, so now when are we going to get an actual new God Of War game?
Unless it’s the secret other game that they’re apparently making (and it doesn’t sound like it is) it might not even be out this decade. Games taking longer to make than ever is one thing but then delaying everything because you’re messing around with remasters and other stuff that nobody wants is only making things worse.
Bethesda is just the same and they’ll either not release Fallout 5 until the mid-2030s or they’ll have to get someone else to do it. And who knows where the follow-up to Skyrim is, a game that is now 15 years old!
I get you want to keep a game’s name in people’s mind, but I think it would be much better if Sony didn’t waste time with spin-offs and remakes and just got on with the job at hand. Ragnarök came out in 2022, so we really should have been looking at a new game by around 2027. But it doesn’t feel like we’re anywhere close to that.
Personally, I don’t want God Of War turning into Horizon Zero Dawn, with endless spin-offs and dithering about, but no actual sequels. More importantly, I don’t want the franchise to be diluted by sub-par games, which is exactly the vibe I’m getting off these two new announcements.
By reader Rooster
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