God of War (2005 video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  In God of War, a 2005 game from Santa Monica Studio, a Spartan named Kratos kills a Hydra for the sea god Poseidon. The victory brings him no relief. For ten years he has served the Olympian gods. Now he is tired of the work and the suffering it brings. So he summons the goddess Athena, and she offers him a bargain. Perform one last act, and his sins will be forgiven. The act is the killing of Ares, the God of War. What did Kratos do that needs forgiving? What object could possibly kill a god? And how did a development team feel free enough to bend Greek myth to its own purposes?

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• 2. Debt To Ares

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  Kratos once captained soldiers in the Spartan army, and the game's flashbacks show him as successful and bloodthirsty. His men won several victories under him. Then a barbarian king defeated them. Facing death, Kratos called on Ares and promised to serve the god if Ares would spare his men and give him the power to destroy his enemies.

  Ares accepted the offer. He bound the Blades of Chaos to his new servant, a pair of chained weapons forged in the depths of Tartarus. Armed with them, Kratos beheaded the barbarian king.

  The worst day came at a village full of worshippers of Athena, which Kratos attacked at the command of Ares. Unknown to him, Ares had secretly moved Kratos's wife Lysandra and his daughter Calliope into the village. In a blind fury, Kratos killed them inside its temple. Ares believed the horror would free Kratos to become the perfect warrior.

  The plan failed. Kratos renounced his pledge to Ares and swore vengeance instead. The village oracle cursed him by fusing the ashes of his dead family to his skin. It turned him ash-white and earned him the nickname Ghost of Sparta. Plagued by nightmares, he vowed to serve the other gods in hope of ridding himself of the visions.

  The blades that Ares gave him would never be enough to kill the god himself. For that, Kratos would need Pandora's Box.

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• 3. A Temple On A Titan

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  Athens, when Kratos arrives, is a war-torn city under assault by Ares. The god is attacking out of hatred for his sister Athena. She sends a mortal instead of acting herself, because Zeus has forbidden divine intervention. A gravedigger urges Kratos to keep going. The oracle of Athens then tells him that only Pandora's Box, an artifact that grants the power to kill a god, can stop Ares.

  Beyond the city lies the Desert of Lost Souls, a vast and windy stretch of ancient ruins. Athena tells Kratos that the Box is hidden in a temple chained to the back of the Titan Cronos. Zeus chained it there as a punishment for Cronos's part in the Great War. Kratos summons the Titan and climbs for three days to reach the temple entrance.

  The temple is where most of the game takes place. An architect named Pathos Verdes III built it, and it is packed with traps and monsters. It has three sections, dedicated to the Titan Atlas and to the gods Poseidon and Hades. The wider world is an alternate ancient Greece with six locations, including a stretch of the Aegean Sea strewn with shipwrecked vessels. The game sits between Chains of Olympus from 2008 and Ghost of Sparta from 2010 in the series chronology.

  Kratos does find the Box. As he leaves the temple, Ares hurls a huge pillar into him and kills him. Harpies carry the Box to the god while Kratos falls into the Underworld. It is a fiery realm of spiked pillars crowded with souls, where flaming versions of earlier enemies attack him. The gravedigger helps him escape and tells him that Athena is not the only god watching over him.

  The novel adaptation later reveals who that gravedigger really is.

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• 4. Blades And Rage

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  Two blades on chains, wrapped around the wrists and forearms of Kratos, are the heart of the combat. The game is played in third person through a fixed camera, and the blades can be swung in many different maneuvers. Late in the adventure he picks up a second weapon, the Blade of Artemis. It is a large sword that opens up other ways to fight. The opponents come straight from myth: undead soldiers, harpies, minotaurs, Medusa and the Gorgons, cyclopes, wraiths, Sirens, satyrs, centaurs and cerberuses. One boss is Pandora's Guardian, a giant minotaur.

  Magic gives Kratos four more attacks. Zeus' Fury throws lightning bolts at distant targets, and Medusa's Gaze turns enemies to stone. Poseidon's Rage calls lightning from the sky to hurt everything within its radius, while the Army of Hades summons the souls of the dead to fight for him. A relic called Poseidon's Trident lets him breathe underwater. Early on he also gains Rage of the Gods, which makes him invulnerable for a short time and increases his damage.

  Chests scattered through the world hold green, blue and red orbs. Green orbs restore health and blue orbs restore magic. Red orbs pay for upgrades to weapons and magic and also refill the Rage meter. Kratos can collect red orbs by defeating foes or smashing certain objects. Hidden Gorgon Eyes extend the health meter, and Phoenix Feathers extend the magic meter.

  Quick time events decide the biggest fights. Once the player has weakened a strong enemy, an image of the circle button appears on screen. The player must press the right buttons in time during a short cinematic. Success ends the battle, and failure usually costs Kratos health.

  Between fights, players climb walls and ladders, jump across chasms, swing on ropes and balance across beams. Some puzzles only ask for a box to be pushed into place. Others send the player across different areas to gather several items that open a single door. Finishing the game unlocks the Challenge of the Gods, ten trials that reward costumes, behind-the-scenes videos and concept art.

  The game's creator, David Jaffe, was blunt about how original all of this was meant to be.

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• 5. Borrowed Ideas

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  David Jaffe summed up his starting point in a single line: "let's do that with Greek Mythology." He had played Capcom's Onimusha and felt the concept owed it a debt. Santa Monica Studio began work in 2002 under the working title Dark Odyssey. It unveiled the game two years later at SCEA Santa Monica Gamers' Day 2004.

  The 1981 film Clash of the Titans was another touchstone. Jaffe said the real high concept for him was "merging it with Heavy Metal magazine." He enjoyed the kids' side of Greek mythology and wanted to add adult themes such as sex and violence. His team gave itself "lots of freedom" to alter the myths and wrote a story from the "coolest aspects of the subject." Charlie Wen, the lead concept artist, looked to Clash of the Titans and to the 2000 film Gladiator for the tone of Kratos and his world. Jaffe also cited Raiders of the Lost Ark, because he wanted players to feel what he felt watching it as a child. Eurogamer later called Capcom's 1989 arcade game Strider a vital influence on the gameplay.

  The game ran on Kinetica, an engine the studio had built for its 2001 game of the same name. Jaffe's goal was to "make the player feel brutal, letting their inner beast free and just going nuts." The team designed a macro system that lets players choose between normal combat, magic or a quick time kill. A micro system covers the button sequences behind individual attacks. Early plans called for 15 to 25 attacks with the main weapon and combos that could be chained in almost any order. Some puzzles filled up to three rooms, while global puzzles stretched across four or five areas. Jaffe compared the series to Prince of Persia and said each God of War puzzle "is its own beast."

  Sony gave Jaffe nearly complete creative control and a substantial budget. He said he wanted to make the game "out of passion, not fear." He also admitted that the design was deliberately simple and not innovative, which forced the team to keep producing fresh material to move players along.

  For about three months, Jaffe seriously considered a first-person view, inspired by the Dreamcast game Maken X. Then he and lead programmer Tim Moss saw presentations of Ico and Devil May Cry at a D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas. They chose a third-person camera, because first person could not carry the emotion, combat and character building he wanted. At the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the team watched players struggle with that camera and ran focus tests to fix the trouble spots.

  The camera would still be the complaint that critics returned to most often.

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• 6. Godhood And Its Cost

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  Pandora's Box changes the final fight completely. Kratos takes it back from Ares, opens it, and gains a godlike power that lets him battle the god on equal terms. Ares tries to break him in body and mind. He strips Kratos of every weapon and spell, then forces him to relive the death of his family. Kratos endures it all. He finally kills Ares with the Blade of the Gods, a giant sword that had been serving as an ornamental bridge into Athens.

  Athena tells Kratos that his sins are forgiven, but the gods cannot erase his nightmares. Feeling forsaken, he throws himself into the Aegean Sea to end his life. Athena intervenes and carries him to Mount Olympus, where the story closes in the throne room of the God of War. As a reward for his service, she gives him a new set of blades. She also gives him the seat of the new God of War, from which he watches over every war in history.

  Critics in 2005 greeted that ending, and everything before it, with remarkable agreement.

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• 7. Reception And Sales

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  Metacritic reports "universal acclaim" for the game. Tom Lane of CNN wrote that it "makes you remember why you play games in the first place." He praised its speed and called it one of the most violent games on the market. Raymond Padilla of GameSpy called the gameplay excellent and the violence over the top. He judged it "the best thing to happen to Greek mythology" since Harry Hamlin played Perseus in Clash of the Titans.

  Chris Sell of PALGN found the combat's simplicity its greatest pleasure and the quick time events highly satisfying, especially in boss fights. He called the graphics "quite possibly the best on the PS2." Kristan Reed of Eurogamer described the audio as "a stunningly evocative example of a well-judged dramatic soundtrack and thunderous effects." Eric Blattberg of PlayStation Universe noted that it could run at 480p on a widescreen television.

  The complaints were few. Sell said the camera sometimes let enemies attack from off-screen or hid a jump until too late. He also found the replay value thin and the final fight with Ares a little disappointing. Reed found some of the balancing acts bothersome. Mikel Reparaz of GamesRadar saw the graphics occasionally stutter on the aging console. He still gave a perfect score and called the game "an ultraviolent masterpiece."

  By the end of July 2005, the game was the sixth-best-selling title of that year so far. It joined the PlayStation 2 Greatest Hits line on the 1st of March 2006. By July 2006, it had sold 1 million units and earned 43 million dollars in the United States alone. Next Generation ranked it the 50th highest-selling game in that country among releases for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube from January 2000 to July 2006. In June 2012, Sony reported more than 4.6 million copies sold, making it the 12th best-selling PlayStation 2 game ever.

  At the 2005 Spike Video Game Awards, it won Best Action Game, and David Jaffe won Designer of the Year. TC Carson, who voiced Kratos, was nominated for Best Performance by a Human Male. At the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, it won more awards than any other game, including Overall Game of the Year and Console Game of the Year. It also won for animation, original music, sound design and Carson's male character performance. IGN ranked it the seventh-best PlayStation 2 game in 2009. Complex magazine placed it eleventh in 2012 and sixteenth in 2022.

  That success led to eight more games, and to ports, a novel and a film that never reached screens.

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• 8. Beyond The Console

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  A demo called God of War: The Hydra Battle reached players on the 1st of January 2005. It ended partway through the fight that opens the full game. The game itself arrived on the 22nd of March in North America, the 8th of July in the United Kingdom and the 17th of November in Japan.

  On the 17th of November 2009, the God of War Collection brought the game and its first sequel to the PlayStation 3 with improved graphics and Trophy support. Its digital release on the 2nd of November 2010 was the first time PlayStation 2 software was sold as a download. By June 2012, the Collection had sold more than 2.4 million copies. A PlayStation Vita version followed on the 6th of May 2014.

  Seven composers shared the original soundtrack: Gerard K. Marino, Ron Fish, Winifred Phillips, Mike Reagan, Cris Velasco, Winnie Waldron and Marcello De Francisci. It reached the Sony Connect Music Store on the 1st of March 2005, and a voucher code in the game box unlocked it for free. Dave Valentine of Square Enix Music Online gave it 8 out of 10. He praised its avoidance of "a neverending dullness of action themes" and its ancient and ethnic instruments. Spence D. of IGN gave it 6.9 out of 10 and disliked the uneven transitions between tracks.

  Matthew Stover and Robert E. Vardeman wrote the official novel, published by Del Rey Books on the 25th of May 2010. Vardeman had not played the game. He described its source as "the accepted mythology on steroids" and called Kratos "a great, if troubled, hero." The book fills in what the game leaves unsaid. Athena manipulates the other gods into helping Kratos. Zeus decides to aid him with magic and as the gravedigger, hoping Kratos will become the next God of War. Poseidon is convinced that Ares brought the Hydra into his domain, and Artemis joins because Ares is wrecking her wilderness. The novel also names Hephaestus as the smith of the Blades of Chaos and explains that the new Hydra is a spawn of the Titans Typhon and Echidna. It was nominated for a Scribe Award in 2010.

  A live-action film was announced in 2005, with a script by David Self and Universal Studios committed to the project. Brett Ratner said in September 2008 that he would direct, then left in February 2009 to make Tower Heist. Jaffe said the script went to Daniel Craig, who turned it down. In July 2012, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan were hired to rework it. They planned to open with Kratos as a mortal with a family, and the budget stood at 150 million dollars. By May 2021, a Sony spokesperson confirmed that no God of War film was in development. A television series for Amazon Prime Video was later confirmed, but it adapts the Norse-based games.

  On the 12th of February 2026, during a State of Play presentation, TC Carson announced that remakes of God of War, God of War II and God of War III were in early development for the PlayStation 5. The man who first gave Kratos his voice was the one chosen to announce his return.

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