With God of War PS4, Sont Santa Monica has set a new bar for storytelling. But the development of the game and crafting the narrative wasn’t easy. In fact, they had to make some compromises due to the limited time they had. According to Cory Barlog, they cut around 110 minutes of story content from God of War PS4.
Note: From this point forward there are minor story spoilers so if you haven’t played the game, it is best not to read on.
There is a section in the game where Kratos reveals his true identity to his son Atreus. From that point on, Atreus shows signs of arrogance and ego but creators didn’t have time to properly develop this side of his personality so it feels abrupt. According to Cory Barlog:
In that period of time where he realizes like “we’re gods, this is awesome, we can do whatever we want,” right? In a real human life that takes a few years to develop. You go through a lot of stuff and you start to lose touch with reality simply because you start to believe in your own hype. And we didn’t have that kind of time but we did have a lot of time that was allotted in the game. That was a section that we ended up cutting, it would’ve been about 110 minutes of Atreus becoming more and more of what we call “Jerk Mode.” He is becoming more and more of a Jerk. So we had to kind of shift everything all the way back so he starts becoming a jerk when you get to the boat. And then you go onto the waters and he’s like “we can go wherever we want, we are gods” and that begins the transition. But we went accelerating through that so it does feel abrupt.
Atreus’ true identity was revealed toward the end and knowing who he really is sheds more light onto his transitioning personality. God of War PS4 laid the foundation of the 3 part series so expect more of Kratos and Atreus in the future.
