God of War will move away from Ancient Greece and into Norse mythology when the new game launches exclusively on PS4.
But according to God of War developer Sony Santa Monica, the studio was torn about where to set the new game.
Creative director Cory Barlog told Eurogamer that half the team wanted to pit Kratos against the pharaohs by sending him to Ancient Egypt.
“Egyptian mythology was the other one and half the team was way into that,” Barlog revealed.
“All of them had great reasons. I think, for me, as I looked at both of those, Egyptian mythology is about the pharaohs as embodiments of the gods on earth and there’s a lot more about civilisation – it’s less isolated, less barren.
“I think at this time, we really wanted to focus on Kratos. Having too much around distracts from that central theme of a stranger in a strange land.”
The God of War developer also revealed more about the Norse setting, and explained why they didn’t put any Norse gods into the E3 stage demo.
“We’ve actually moved away from Greece and Kratos has kind of wandered,” Barlog continued. “We are parsing it as the time in which the vikings spoke of their gods walking the earth.
“So it’s not in the era where the vikings are around, we’re predating them by a considerable amount of time.”
Barlog said that while spectacle was part of the studio’s DNA, it was important to stand out from past games in the series.
“I made a very deliberate choice not to put that in this demo, because I feel like we know very well how to do that. We needed to stand out a little bit and show people why we changed this game.
“But there’s still the David vs. Goliath. The troll fight is a small version of what we really have to show.”
