Let’s admit it: God of War, the PlayStation 4-exclusive that came out on April 20, 2018, would not have been the same without Kratos (and we’re not saying it because how he keeps calling his son, Atreus, almost entirely throughout the game BOY). However, Sony Interactive Entertainment Santa Monica (shortened to SIE Santa Monica from now on) could have gone down that route, too…

Previously, we also wrote about how SIE Santa Monica was also considering cutting Atreus out of the game, but in the end, Kratos’ son remained in the game (which is a good thing: he can come in handy on higher difficulty levels with his warnings about attacks and the like). Let’s twist the situation: Kratos could have received the same treatment!

„Early in discussion [regarding the game’s development], people were saying we had to get rid of Kratos. It was like, ‘He’s annoying, he’s done.’ It took a lot of convincing to make them think it was a good idea,” Cory Barlog, the director of God of War, said at GameLab in Barcelona, as reported by Eurogamer.

The protagonist was initially designed to not be a likeable character, but Barlog could save him by figuring out how to evolve Kratos to steer him away from dark desires. Barlog also prepared a B plan with Atreus: if he would have got cut out from the game, he wrote a story for the game with Kratos going alone on his adventure. (Luckily, we did not get this version of the game.)

SIE Santa Monica was considering to cut Atreus because there were concerns about the budget and because the animators and the programmers thought it was difficult to make sense of Atreus being part of the story.

God of War‘s sequel is likely already in development for the next-gen PlayStation. (PlayStation 5?) We wrote about it about a week ago.

Source: GameSpot