It is fair to say God of War creator David Jaffe is less than enamoured with the series’ newest entry, 2D side-scroller Sons of Sparta.
God of War: Sons of Sparta was announced during last week’s PlayStation State of Play, coming from Mega Cat Studios in partnership with Santa Monica Studio. It’s a canon story all about Kratos and his brother Deimos in their youth at training at the Spartan Agoge (which was very “brutal”).
At the same time it was announced, Sons of Sparta released on PS5 consoles. And, well, Jaffe is not impressed.
During a nine minute YouTube video, Jaffe quickly laid into the series’ latest offering. “This is the kind of game I have always wanted in terms of 2.5D God of War… but this to me is not what I was talking about,” Jaffe begins, before stating in no uncertain terms: “I don’t like it, I don’t recommend it.”
That was fairly gentle, though, compared to the rest of the video, where Jaffe calls Sons of Sparta “crap”, “dumb” and even “stupid”.
“What the f**k are they thinking,” Jaffe expressed. While the original God of War director did say the gameplay in Sons of Sparta is “fine” and “servicable”, he still can’t wrap his head around why the game is “in existence” at all.
“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” Jaffe said with his face in his hand, reflecting on a conversation he had had with a former Sony Santa Monica developer about the scene in God of War Ragnarök where Atreus and Angrboda chat while riding along together. Allegedly, the developer told Jaffe Sony Santa Monica is “these days driven primarily by story”, which Jaffe seemed less than enthusiastic about.
“In Sons of Sparta, what I played – which was only about an hour of it, and I’ll never go back to it – it’s just like ‘get over yourselves, man,” the God of War creator said. “They just kept stopping over and over and having the characters just talk and talk and talk. And the voice acting’s not very good, the story – at least what I played… maybe it gets really good… – [but] who the f**k wants to play [Sons of Sparta]. This is not God of War.”
He continued: “I want you to think about this for a minute, and the choice this team had… the idea of saying ‘hey, we want a 2.5D metroidvania God of War game’. Most gamers would say ‘oh my god, yes please’. [But] the idea of ‘aaand, we don’t want it to be the Kratos that you know and love from either 2018’s God of War, or the Greek trilogy God of War. F**k it, that character’s boring, no one likes that Kratos, that we’ve built billions of dollars franchises on. Let’s make him just some generic f**king kid’… it makes no f**king sense.”
Jaffe then said Sons of Sparta’s origin story for Kratos as a “dumb idea”, and suggested fans would have rather played a game like the much bloodier and violent Metroidvania title, Blasphemous. This, Jaffe said, has the “tone” of the earlier God of Wars. “I’m pretty sure when people said they wanted a 2D God of War, they meant [like Blasphemous]”, not Sons of Sparta. “Who the f**k greenlit this? Who thought this was what the audience wants?”
Meanwhile, if that wasn’t enough, Jaffe also laid into Sons of Sparta’s production quality. “Compared to what we got just this last year,” he said, “if you look at the gameplay variety and just the joy of playing a game like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, if you look at the art and level of detail and just genuine interesting scenarios at a moment-to-moment gameplay level of Neon Inferno – which also came out towards the end of last year, which is just an excellent shooter by the way, I highly recommend it – if you of course look at the production value of the 2D Shinobi, I mean look at that thing.
“People want this production value, and they want this vibe, and they want it to be classic Kratos.”
Jaffe suggested that if you “pulled God of War” out of Sons of Sparta, and instead said “hey, we are making a game about this kid”, people wouldn’t be interested. “I want to know who at Sony thought this was what people wanted,” he said. “By the way, I don’t need the big budgets. I would have loved bigger production value, smoother animations, this, that, and the other, but I don’t need that, right? If the gameplay was interesting, if it was violent, if it had personality, if you opened immediately and the players were like ‘oh my God, I’ve never thought of that kind of mechanic in a game like this’, or ‘this is so fun to do’, you could make it super inexpensive like this seems to be. I can’t imagine this cost that much money to make.
“But why would you even put this out? All it does is leave a bad taste in God of War fans’ mouths, in my assumption.”
Jaffe said this whole thing “shows such a collapse of the great executive work that Sony in the past has done”, and “the fact that they would think this is what people want from God of War… I just don’t know what to f**king tell you”.
You can check out Jaffe’s increasingly – erm – impassioned speech in full below.
As well as this Sons of Sparta, the original God of War trilogy is getting remade (which will hopefully not receive the same reception from Jaffe on its release). However, this particular project is still in the early days of development, so don’t expect anything more soon. “As we look to the future, we also want to invest in the past and tend to the series’ roots that got us to where we are today,” Sony said last week, announcing the remakes.
“We know that remaking the Greek saga has been a frequent request – the genuine, passionate interest from fans to see the original games return is something we’re very thankful for and can’t wait to share more when the time comes!”