10 Ways God Of War PS4 Was Almost COMPLETELY Different
An adventure as fat Kratos with no Atreus? Definitely not Game of the Year.
The reboot of God of War started around 2013, when Director Cory Barlog came back to the studio, following three years away.
Barlog and his team set out to renew Kratos for a different era. The screaming, devoid of personality God of War we'd come to know just wasn't very compelling anymore, but Barlog had an idea for how to change that. The game we ended up getting, roughly five years later, is the best PS4 exclusive and one of the best games of all-time.
However, that wasn't always the case. Games are a very iterative process, and God of War was no different. Barlog has done podcasts and interviews with Kinda Funny, Polygon, and The Game Makers Notebook since launch, discussing some of the many, many changes the game went through over its five year development cycle. Some of them are pretty surprising.
God of War is a masterpiece and each of the decisions, from small to ginormous, played a role in crafting the game we received. From simple appearance changes, to story decisions that would have made a radically different game, so let's take a look at what might have been!
- Massive Spoilers Ahead -
10. Atreus Was Almost Bald
Starting with aesthetics, Sony Santa Monica originally planned to make Atreus look a lot more like his old man.
In the early days of the project, Atreus rocked a shaved head. In fact, that was the case when Sony Santa Monica pitched the game to the higher-up's at Sony in 2015, with a short demo. The demo was almost identical to that of the E3 2016 reveal, but even Kratos had a much smaller beard and looked younger.
Executive Producer of the game, Shannon Studstill, was the one who pushed for Atreus to have some hair, feeling he just didn't look right. The team agreed and gave Atreus his signature fauxhawk. A small change sure, but one that completely changes the game's look.