David Jaffe claims that the PlayStation 2’s first God of War, back in 2005, was basically designed for an FPS view.

Even those who have been following the story of Sparta’s Ghost from the beginning would not have believed the series would embark on such bold experimentation with camera angles. And yet one of the flagship titles of PlayStation has almost become a very different game. The camera’s point of view had already brought us up close and personal with Cory Barlog’s 2018 reboot of our warrior, but as we’ve now learned, an even closer look was the original plan: we were going to see the world through Kratos’ eyes, to be precise!

The father of the saga, David Jaffe, revealed on his YouTube channel that the original God of War was first conceived for combat with an interior view. The 2005 Legend would have used this move to solve the problem of the protagonist getting lost in a wave of enemies, namely the camera’s jerkiness.

“At the time I thought it would be a good way to differentiate ourselves from the others. In the end, we realized that we wouldn’t have gotten the same emotion across during the fights, and we wouldn’t have been able to reflect the character development in the same way,” said Jaffe, who also revealed that Sony’s Santa Monica studio started to take the game in a different direction after seeing images from the ICO and trying out the Devil May Cry demo.

Either way, the consequences of that decision are now well known: the series has become one of the most beloved games in the PlayStation library. Next up is God of War: Ragnarok, which will bring the muscle-bound antihero to us in 2022, and looks set to conclude Kratos and Atreus’ foray into Norse mythology. Eric Williams and Cory Barlog told 3DJuegos’ Spanish colleagues about this in a chat.

Source: 3DJuegos