- God of War franchise creator David Jaffe has heavily criticized God of War Sons of Sparta
- Jaffe played the first hour of the game after it shadow dropped and doesn’t like it, and doesn’t recommend it to fans
- He adds that he initially liked the 2.5D sidescrolling idea but has slammed the narrative concept
God of War franchise creator David Jaffe has bashed God of War Sons of Sparta, calling the spin-off “crap”, “dumb”, and “stupid”, and doesn’t recommend it to fans of the series.
Sony announced and shadow dropped Gods of War Sons of Sparta, a 2D sidescrolling spin-off featuring Kratos as a young boy, in last week’s State of Play presentation.
After playing an hour of the game, Jaffe put out a YouTube video to express his thoughts, criticizing the narrative concept of the game, even though he was initially “super into” the side-scrolling concept.
“This is the kind of game I’ve always wanted in terms of 2.5D God of War, super into it – but this, to me, is not what I was talking about,” Jaffe said. “I bought this game, it’s a $30 game, I don’t like it, I don’t recommend it.”
Jaffe went on to criticize the Sony executive who greenlit the project.
“I wanted to make a video more about what are they thinking, like what the f*** were they thinking? It’s not a bad game by any means, it’s fine, it controls decently… but to me the more fascinating part of this is, why is this in existence? I don’t understand.”
He then discussed how he stopped playing after one hour because the characters kept “stopping over and over [to] talk and talk,” adding, “this is not God of War.”
He also disliked the idea of a young Kratos, calling the version of a character a “generic f****** kid.”
“It’s probably some b******* writer going, ‘Oh people want to know why, how did people become this way?’ No one cares,” he said. “it’s a dumb idea,” he argued, as fans “wanted something like Blasphemous, in terms of it’s violent, it’s bloody, it’s serious, it has the tone of the early God of War games.”
“If you pulled God of War out of it, and you just said, ‘hey, we’re making a game about this kid,’ most people would say ‘that doesn’t sound like a very compelling idea for a video game character,’ because it’s not.”
Despite only playing the first hour or so at the time the video was posted, Jaffe was willing to say, “Maybe it gets better, I’m sure it does,” adding that “there’s nothing offensive about it”.
“The only thing offensive about it is its genericism,” he continued. “The only thing offensive about it is its inability to reflect the license, the brand. It’s like you get the John Wick license and you make a movie where he’s just sitting in a coffee shop talking. Now that might work when you have Keanu Reeves as he’s so compelling, and the character’s interesting.”
Later in the video, he expanded on this, saying he was interested in a 2.5D God of War game similar to Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Neon Inferno, or Shinobi.
“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, before going on to critique the narrative concept again.
“Every time you make a new game, you don’t have to go, ‘You know what? Let’s not go back to the great character that people love that built this franchise. Let’s see him as a little kid, some generic boring little f****** kid,'” the creator said. “It’s just insulting to the fans. It’s insulting to people who worked on the games that they would think this character right here is what people want. It’s crap. It’s dumb. It’s stupid. I would say avoid this f****** thing.”
The video is pretty scathing, but Jaffe did go on to play three more hours of the game and posted another lengthy video where he critiqued the game further, including some technical issues he came across, and determined that the game was “not ready for release”.
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