God of War: Ragnarok will mark the end point of the Norse story arc of the revived God of War series, which is a point that has disappointed some fans of the 2018 revival, but there is actually a fairly sensible reason behind it. Cory Barlog, who now has a role as producer on this new game, explained that it’s simply because these games take so long to make.
Speaking to YouTuber Kaptain Kuba about the decision to bring an end to the Norse saga, Barlog explained that it stemmed from the length of time it would take to tell the story across three games.
“I think one of the most important reasons is the first game took five years, the second game, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m just going to throw out that it’s going to take close to a similar time to do this. Then if you think, wow, a third one in the same [time], we’re talking like a span of close to 15 years of a single story and I feel like that’s just too stretched out.”
“I feel like we’re asking too much, to say the actual completion of that story taking that long just feels too long, and given sort of where the team was at and where Erik was at with what he wanted to do, I was like look, I think we can actually do this in the second story.”
Of course, Barlog is coming at this from the perspective of a game developer who has been with the project from the very beginning. God of War 2018’s development started in 2014, though gamers obviously only got to actually play and experience it for the first time in 2018. For the team that has now moved on to the sequel and is expected to release it sometime in 2022, they will have spent the better part of a decade on these two games, while gamers will have experienced their story in five years.
It’s absolutely fair that Barlog is mindful of the time that it takes to create these experiences. Where AAA video games could routinely be cooked up and released in two years, projects now take significantly longer and require more and more manpower to produce, which obviously ramps up the cost of production. Naughty Dog produced the four blockbuster action games through the PS3 generation, but only two on PS4. As production is stretched out – and this isn’t something that Barlog digs into too deeply – it’s sure to have a wearing effect on the teams. Similarly, it’s great that Sony accepts this decision, instead of seeking to stretch the franchise out as much as possible.
For those worried that this will have an impact on the quality and scope of the experience, Barlog continued, “Most of what we were trying to do from the beginning was to tell something about Kratos and Atreus, that the core of the story’s engine is really the relationship between these two characters and the complexity radiates out like ripples in a pond.
“We could make it an ocean and make those ripples go for thousands of miles, but is that necessary and is that beneficial? Or are we feeling like it’s just spreading it too far apart? The ripples get too far apart, and you sort of lose the plot a little bit”.
Don’t expect God of War: Ragnarok to be a small game, though. set a few years later, Midgard is now frozen by the winds of Fimbulwinter, while all nine realms will be represented in game, with Vanaheim, Svartalfheim, and Asgard added to the six from the 2018 game.
You know what else is going to be big? Well, there’s Tyr, who it turns out isn’t quite as tall as Lady Dimitrescu, and then there’s the bulk of Thor. Some people say he’s fat, but if you ask a world record holding powerlifter (like we did), it turns out this is just his ideal form.
God of War: Ragnarok will release for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 sometime in 2022.
Source: Kaptain Kuba