God of War III

• 1. Introduction

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  Early in God of War III, the sea god Poseidon dies at the hands of the Spartan Kratos, and the oceans pour across Greece. He is only the first of many gods to fall. This 2010 action-adventure game, made by Santa Monica Studio for the PlayStation 3, follows a man with a single purpose. Kratos was once the God of War. He has learned that Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, is his father, and that Zeus betrayed him. This was also the first mainline entry in its series made without its creator, David Jaffe. So who shaped the story once Jaffe was gone? How did a studio fit a war against an entire pantheon onto one console? And why did critics who adored the combat disagree so sharply about the plot?

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• 2. Revenge Up Olympus

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  Gaia, the Titan, hangs from the side of Mount Olympus while Kratos plummets past her, and she refuses to catch him. Zeus has just hurled a lightning bolt and knocked the whole assault off the peak. In her eyes, Kratos is only a pawn in the Titans' revenge.

  Kratos lands in the River Styx, where he loses the Blade of Olympus. The souls of the Underworld sap his strength and ruin his Blades of Athena. When he climbs out of the river, the spirit of Athena is waiting. She sacrificed herself to save Zeus from Kratos, and she now sees truths that were hidden from her before. She gives him the Blades of Exile and tells him he must put out the Flame of Olympus to kill Zeus.

  In the Underworld, Kratos briefly meets the spirit of Pandora and mistakes her for his dead daughter, Calliope. After meeting the blacksmith Hephaestus, he recovers the Blade of Olympus, kills Hades and frees the souls held there. He is tempted to search for Calliope's soul, but Athena reminds him of his quest. In the city of Olympia he finds Gaia pleading for help. He severs her arm as payback for her earlier betrayal, and she falls to her apparent death.

  When the Sun God Helios dies, Greece falls into eternal darkness. The Titan Perses has already fallen by Kratos' hand. In the Chamber of the Flame, Kratos learns that Pandora's Box is held inside the Flame of Olympus, which only Pandora can quell. He then catches and kills the overconfident Hermes, and a plague spreads across Greece.

  In the Forum, a drunken Hera ignores Kratos' question about where Pandora is and summons Hercules instead. Kratos offers his half-brother the chance to step aside. Hercules instead talks of his jealousy, duels Kratos and dies. Aphrodite, indifferent to the war, leads Kratos through Hyperion's Gate to her estranged husband Hephaestus. The blacksmith sends him to Tartarus for the Omphalos Stone and promises to forge a new weapon in return. Kratos kills the Titan Cronos for the stone.

  Back at the forge, Hephaestus tries to kill Kratos and is impaled by his own anvil. Before dying, he admits he was protecting his daughter Pandora. She was imprisoned in the Labyrinth after Kratos opened her box. Kratos then kills Hera for insulting Pandora, and all plant life in Greece ends.

  Daedalus, the architect held in the Labyrinth, dies after learning that his son Icarus is dead. Kratos unites the Labyrinth and crosses its aerial puzzle to reach Pandora. He neutralizes the Judges of the Underworld and breaks the Chain of Balance. Pandora tries to enter the Flame, and Zeus intervenes. She sacrifices herself anyway, despite Kratos' reluctance, and the box turns out to be empty.

  Kratos attacks Zeus, and then Gaia joins the fray and tries to kill them both. The two escape through an open wound on her body and keep fighting inside her chest. Kratos impales Zeus against her heart with the Blade of Olympus, killing Gaia and apparently Zeus.

  Zeus' astral form then attacks Kratos and strips away his weapons and powers. A vision of Pandora rescues Kratos during a journey into his own psyche. The spirits of his daughter Calliope and his wife Lysandra help him forgive himself. He wakes with the power of hope, forces Zeus' spirit back into its body and beats him to death.

  Athena returns to find an apocalyptic Greece and demands that Kratos hand back what she thinks he took from the box. Zeus had sealed the evils of the world inside it after the Great War, and Athena had secretly added hope. When Kratos opened the box to defeat Ares, the evils escaped and slowly corrupted the gods. Hope passed into Kratos, hidden under his guilt. Athena wants it for her own rule over Greece. Kratos refuses and seemingly kills himself with the Blade of Olympus so that hope can spread among mankind. He collapses on a mural of a phoenix, and a disappointed Athena leaves empty-handed.

  After the credits, a trail of blood leads away from the mural and the Blade of Olympus.

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• 3. Weapons and Magic

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  The Blades of Exile, a pair of blades on chains wrapped around Kratos' wrists and forearms, replace the Blades of Athena as his main weapon. Players swing them in a range of combination attacks. Three more primary weapons arrive along the way: the Claws of Hades, the Nemean Cestus and the Nemesis Whip. The Cestus is a pair of gauntlets, and the player needs it to break through objects made of onyx.

  Magic works differently from earlier games. Each new weapon brings its own spell, so the Army of Sparta can be summoned only with the Blades of Exile. The Claws of Hades offer Soul Summon, which conjures souls to attack enemies. The Cestus brings Nemean Roar, and the Whip brings Nemesis Rage. Players can hold up to four magical attacks and a power-enhancing ability. Kratos can also switch rapidly among his four primary weapons without breaking a combination.

  Three secondary weapons, called Items, complete the arsenal: the Bow of Apollo, the Head of Helios and the Boots of Hermes. Each is required to advance through certain stages. The Head of Helios doubles as a lantern in dark areas and reveals hidden doorways. Relics from earlier games return as well. The Golden Fleece deflects enemy attacks, and Hades' Soul lets Kratos swim in the River Styx.

  Minotaur Horns are a new collectible. Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Feathers still raise the health and magic meters. The horns instead extend the items meter, which governs how long secondary weapons can be used.

  The combat grapple is a new ranged grab. Depending on the weapon, it either pulls Kratos toward foes or forces them away, and at one point it lets him ride harpies across chasms. A simpler grab lets him use a weak enemy as a battering ram. Around him swarm centaurs, harpies, chimeras, cyclopes, satyrs, minotaurs, Sirens, cerberuses and Gorgons. Between fights, players climb walls and ladders, jump chasms and swing on ropes. One puzzle borrows mechanics similar to Guitar Hero.

  Ten Godly Possessions, often hidden near defeated foes, add abilities such as unlimited magic during bonus play. A Combat Arena lets players pick their own difficulty and opponents. After the story ends, the Challenge of Olympus opens with seven trials. One of them asks the player to kill every enemy without weapons inside a time limit.

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• 4. A Vision Changes Hands

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  In a 2007 interview with GameTrailers, David Jaffe described the ending he had once planned for his series. He said that "God of War explains, or ultimately will explain, why there are no more Greek myths." In his version, gods and Titans would fight for domination in a "hell on earth." After Kratos killed Zeus and the other Greek gods, other pantheons would be drawn in. Humankind would stop believing in the gods, which Jaffe called the only way a god can truly die. The ending that shipped came from game director Stig Asmussen instead.

  Cory Barlog, who directed God of War II, first mentioned the third game at a launch event for its predecessor. He promised full 1080p resolution, which became 720p in the final release. He also promised Sixaxis tilt and vibration. That caused confusion, because the announcement came before the DualShock 3 controller existed and the Sixaxis could not rumble. At the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the team said they had removed tilt controls because they "could not find a suitable situation to use Sixaxis in the game effectively."

  After the first eight months of development, Barlog left Santa Monica for other opportunities. Asmussen took over as game director. He had been lead environment artist on the first game and art director on the second. He said Barlog "had a major impact on the game" and that the team talked with him afterward, though never formally. Jaffe, too, visited the studio a few times to offer feedback on high-level ideas.

  Barlog had shown early interest in a cooperative mode, if the team could do something unique with it. In November 2009, Asmussen told GamePro why it never happened: "There's a story we want to tell and an experience we want to deliver, and multi-player doesn't fit into that."

  In December 2008, Sony reported that this would be the last game in the series. By January 2010, studio director John Hight told Joystiq that it would conclude the trilogy but would "won't spell the end of the franchise." Japan received its own surprise. The Computer Entertainment Rating Organization gave the game an adults-only Z rating, although the previous two games had been judged suitable for players 17 and older.

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• 5. Engineering Olympus

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  Designing the decapitation of Helios could take a full year, according to Asmussen. He named the "complexity of everything" as the hardest part of building the game for the PlayStation 3, because the expected level of detail crossed multiple departments. The hardware gave the team more flexibility with characters and with how they interact with the environment.

  The PlayStation 2 games built Kratos from about 5,000 polygons. The PlayStation 3 model used about 20,000. Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves used 35,000. Art director Ken Feldman noted that polygon count was not the only factor and credited increased texture detail for Kratos' realistic look. A new technique called blended normal mapping added visible veins, muscle movement and a wider range of facial animation. The animators worked on all the main protagonists by hand because it gave better results than basic motion capture. Only the voice actors' facial movements were recorded, using Image Metrics' performance capture system. For hair and similar elements, the animators wrote a secondary animation code called Dynamic Simulation. It lets the console calculate the motion that animators once spent long hours recreating.

  Senior producer Steve Caterson said the team ported the engine from God of War II to the PlayStation 3 and could play the game quickly. Everything Kratos could do before, he could still do. Programmers then swapped out PlayStation 2 components, replacing the renderer, the particle system and the collision system. Feldman insisted the core engine was brand new regardless.

  Between the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo and the ship date, the team added morphological anti-aliasing. Graphics engineer Ben Diamand said it "improved edges dramatically and saved substantial amounts of frame-rate." The freed processing cycles went into depth-of-field, motion blur, light rays and refraction, which were added or improved in the same period.

  Asmussen estimated the game at 10 to 20 hours, depending on skill, and Hight promised it would outlast either earlier game for hardcore players. The finished script ran about 120 pages. The number of enemies on screen rose from 15 in earlier games to a maximum of 50. Christer Ericson, head of development, confirmed there were no loading screens and no hard drive installation. Bruno Velazquez said that none of the cutscenes were true computer-generated imagery, since all ran on the in-game engine. The trailer that debuted on the 11th of February 2010 was entirely gameplay footage. Players sometimes keep control while the camera pans away from a major fight, and a first-person view appears in the last stretch of the Poseidon and Zeus boss fights.

  The game filled 35 gigabytes of a Blu-ray Disc. Its budget was $44 million, and the staff stood at 132 by the end of development.

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• 6. Voices and Score

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  Terrence C. Carson returned as the voice of Kratos, joined by Erin Torpey as Athena, Corey Burton as Zeus, Debi Derryberry as Calliope and Gwendoline Yeo as Lysandra. Susan Blakeslee, who voiced two characters in the first game, took the role of Gaia. Linda Hunt, who had previously voiced Gaia, now provided only an introductory narration.

  Rip Torn played Hephaestus, Natalie Lander played Pandora and Malcolm McDowell played Daedalus. George Ball and Clancy Brown replaced Lloyd Sherr and Nolan North as Cronos and Hades. Kevin Sorbo won the part of Hercules because of his role in the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Elijah Wood also took a minor voice role.

  Five composers wrote the score: Gerard K. Marino, Ron Fish, Mike Reagan, Jeff Rona and Cris Velasco. The Skywalker Session Orchestra and the Czech National Symphony Chorus recorded it. Marino brought a brooding, rhythmic, percussive approach, while Fish set hopeless and somber moods. Reagan said the composers may have borrowed each other's themes but did not collaborate directly. The real collaboration came from Clint Bajakian, Sony's Senior Music Supervisor, and his team. Reagan added that the score allowed more melodic development than the first game. Recording under a new American Federation of Musicians video game agreement let the composers work locally with some of the best musicians in the world.

  Bajakian described the ensemble in rock terms. The brass section is the "lead guitar," the choir gives the epic feel, the strings are the body of the sound and the percussion is the foundation.

  The soundtrack CD came out on the 30th of March 2010 through SCE and Sumthing Else. Square Enix Music Online gave it nine out of ten and called it the best score in the series to date. G4 found the music "fantastic" even on its own. Tracksounds gave six out of ten, finding it short on intricacy and personality, and advised listeners to "Enjoy in small doses." At the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, the soundtrack earned a nomination for Best Original Score.

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• 7. Selling Olympus

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  The campaign began in early 2008 with a single image at the end of the instruction manual for God of War: Chains of Olympus. It showed the original PlayStation 3 logo surrounded by the Greek omega. A teaser trailer followed at Sony's 2008 E3 press conference, another premiered at the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards, and an official trailer arrived in February 2009. The demo debuted at E3 2009 and later reached players through Qore subscribers, the Blu-ray of District 9 and, on the 25th of February 2010, the PlayStation Store.

  In October 2009, Santa Monica Studio announced the Ultimate Edition for North America. It came with a replica Pandora's Box, a limited-edition The Art of God of War III book and downloadable extras. Those included the Challenge of Exile mode, the Dominus costume and the God of War Trilogy Soundtrack. A limited Ultimate Trilogy Edition went to Europe, Australia and New Zealand, adding the God of War Collection and four Kratos costumes. Retailers offered their own costumes for pre-orders. In the United States, 7-Eleven sold a Kratos' Fury Slurpee. A NASCAR car driven by Joey Logano wore a God of War III paint design on the 20th of March 2010. The game also had 36 trophies, including "Releasing the Floodgates" for killing Poseidon.

  God of War III reached North America on the 16th of March 2010, Australia on the 18th, Europe on the 19th and Japan on the 25th. It outsold its predecessor by nearly 400,000 copies in the first week. NPD Group counted about 1.1 million copies sold in the United States by the end of March, making it the best-selling game of the month. Opening-month sales ran 32 percent higher than those of God of War II. By June 2012, the game had sold almost 5.2 million copies worldwide: about 2.8 million in North America, 2 million in PAL regions and 417,866 in Japan and Asia. It joined the PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits lineup and, on the 28th of August 2012, appeared in the God of War Saga collection.

  On the 2nd of November 2010, the Dominus skin and Challenge of Exile mode became available to everyone as a bundle on the PlayStation Store. The bundle was free for PlayStation Plus subscribers. When players earned the platinum trophy, they were linked to spartansstandtall.com. On the 4th of May 2010 that site became the home of God of War: Ghost of Sparta, and early copies of that game carried a voucher for a costume of Kratos' brother Deimos in God of War III.

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• 8. Reception and Legacy

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  Metacritic recorded "universal acclaim" for God of War III. Adam Sessler of X-Play said it "finishes the trilogy on an exceptionally high note." Chris Roper of IGN described the Titans as "larger than entire levels in other games" and called Kratos perhaps the most impressive-looking character in video games. Mike Jackson of Official PlayStation Magazine UK rated its graphics as good as those of Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2. Joe Juba of Game Informer found the camera work more impressive than Naughty Dog's work on Uncharted 2.

  Matt Leone of 1UP praised the variety, saying every corner seemed to hold something new to see or acquire. Christian Donlan of Eurogamer said the combat, level flow and pacing were largely untouched, though everything was bigger and grander. Tom McShea of GameSpot said the brutality of combat is "one of the most satisfying aspects." Jackson noted that familiar core gameplay kept it from being among the very best. Roper thought two of the three extra weapons were by and large more of the same.

  The plot split critics. GameFront's Phil Hornshaw felt the protagonist was overly cruel and assumed players enjoyed misery and violence as much as Kratos did. Donlan called the story as simple as it can get, and Juba saw no standout revelations. McShea disagreed, saying the story became powerful and moving in unexpected ways near the end.

  At the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, it won Most Anticipated Game of 2010. The 2010 ceremony named it Best PS3 Game and Best Graphics, and gave Kratos the Biggest Badass award. GameTrailers, GameSpy, Game Revolution and Shacknews each gave it their own best-of honors. The 2011 BAFTA Video Game Awards gave it the Artistic Achievement award. The 14th Interactive Achievement Awards honored it for Outstanding Achievement in Animation, and Carson's performance as Kratos earned a nomination.

  On the 14th of July 2015, God of War III Remastered arrived on the PlayStation 4 to mark the series' tenth anniversary. Wholesale Algorithms ported it with 1080p support aimed at 60 frames per second, plus a photo mode. Metacritic found reviews only "generally favorable." Critics thought the smoother textures and frame rate were not enough to justify paying US$40 again, and they wondered about remastering a story that picks up directly from the second game. By June 2023, it had sold an estimated 4 million copies.

  A sequel titled simply God of War came out on the 20th of April 2018. It took place several decades later and moved the series to Norse mythology. On the 13th of February 2026, TC Carson announced a remake of God of War III during a State of Play presentation. It is the final part of the God of War Remake Trilogy, then in early development for the PlayStation 5.

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