God of War PS4 received almost universal critical acclaim and achieved record-breaking sales milestones for exclusives on the console. For that reason alone, we’re sure that no one would have thought Sony Interactive Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida could ever say that he was “horrified” after playing the game. That did happen, though, and what makes this revelation even more shocking is that it happened just six months before the game eventually launched in April 2018. Let that sink in.
According to God of War PS4 game director Cory Barlog (as reported by GamesIndustry.biz), Sony Santa Monica decided to release a demo of the game ahead of the PlayStation Experience expo in December 2017. The purpose of this was to inspire the development team to focus on completing the game. However, this also meant that they had to invite Yoshida over to the studio and try out the game for himself.
Unfortunately, Barlog never did receive Yoshida’s feedback in person. This was due to Barlog leaving the room to instruct the God of War combat team about some work while Yoshida had to leave to catch a flight. Barlog explained: “He kinda just shook his head and walked out the door. He never told me how he felt. In fact, he only told one of my friends, who he saw at a party. He [Yoshida] said, ‘Oh, you’re working on God of War? I just gotta say, I played the game the other day. I was horrified.”
Thanks to this initial reaction by Yoshida, the development team managed to “rally together” and finish the game. Barlog described the second occasion that Yoshida played the God of War: “In the end, it worked. He played it again, and you can see the two different poses of Shu. Horrified is much more rigid. The second time, he was not horrified. It was super good. Very exciting.”
In other related news, Dark Horse Comics announced a prequel comic miniseries for God of War PS4, which will explore the adventures of Kratos preceding the events in the game.
