Game director Cory Barlog has experienced enormous success with the most recent edition of God of War. The game has been ranked as one of the top third-person games of all time and has won numerous awards including the 2018 Game of the Year Award. The PlayStation 4 game launched on April 20th, 2018 and maintains a high MetaCritic rating two years late. In a recent interview with PlayStation Access, Barlog reveals that the reason for the game's success is due to it being done "The Sony way."
Barlog explains that there's a level of trust that Sony endows in its lead developers. Many on the development team had worries as they were taking great risks with the story and the direction of Kratos, whose character was nearly cut from the game entirely. Throughout the process of development, Sony executives were encouraging of the new direction and allowed Barlog to do it his way.
God of War had several games in its canon before the release of the PS4 2018 version. There was plenty of backstory for the director who had previously worked on the first two games. "Really the essence of all character development and drama is that the character change, they evolve". Barlog acknowledges that when people become invested in a franchise like God of War, many are wary of any changes, especially to Kratos. Upon reflection of his own life as a father, Barlog admits that there are qualities as a parent he's not proud of passing on to his kids, and that was a great motivator for the direction and character development of Kratos and his son.
The interviewer jokes that trust in a director's vision is not typically the way video games are made, and Barlog agreed.
"It is not common," Barlog admits, "I've been at a bunch of other companies and that level of trust is never really there....Everybody wants to be involved."
"Everybody" meaning general managers or producers who suddenly fancy themselves as creatives according to Barlog. Sony appears to have stepped back and allowed Barlog to do what he knows he can do best. What Sony did do for Barlog was to provide him with an excellent team who followed the path that Barlog jokingly describes as "myopically focused on details."
God of War is styled like an epic single shot without any camera cuts, which Barlog knew in his mind would fit the story perfectly, the problem was whether they could pull it off. Instead of it being about the feat of achieving this goal, Barlog wanted it to "be about a story that you couldn't look away from..." With the help of his hard-working team and very little resistance from Sony executives, the beautiful nail-biting and emotional game was achieved, but Barlog admits he couldn't have done it without his team and his vast previous experience.
Barlog wasn't always the creative that he is today. By his own admittance, he went to film school but had no idea what it took to make films. Barlog assumed that because he watched movies, he understood how they were made. What he soon came to realize was that he needed to look at how to create an experience that players can follow and develop that personal relationship with a character. It took Barlog several years to hone his skills as a storyteller and achieve the quality that he has today, a quality that he now freely recognizes in other games as well.
God of War is currently available for PlayStation 4.