God of War creator David Jaffe is not happy with Sons of Sparta, the newly released side-scrolling spin-off in the long-running series.
In an almost 10-minute tirade, the ex-Santa Monica Studio lead tears the title to pieces, saying it’s “insulting to the fans [and] the people who worked on the game”.
While he concedes the core experience is acceptable, Jaffe’s criticisms seem to come from the price, production values, and, most importantly, the characterisation of Kratos.
“What were they thinking?” he exclaims. “Like, what were they thinking? Why is this in existence? I don’t understand – I just don’t understand.”
Sons of Sparta is set before the events of the original God of War trilogy, and focuses on a young Kratos before he became the character we know and love.
He fumes:
“I only played about an hour and I’ll never go back to it. Like, just get over yourselves, man. They just kept stopping over and over again and having the characters just talk and talk. And the voice acting is not very good. Who the f*ck wants to play this?”
Jaffe posits that, based on a conversation he had with an ex-employee of Santa Monica Studio, this may be because the first-party developer is increasingly focusing on story. He points to the sequence in God of War Ragnarok featuring Atreus and Angrboda, which temporarily slows the pace of the plot, as evidence of this.
But it’s not his only criticism: he also rips into the decision to focus on Kratos’ younger years, as opposed to the character we’re all familiar with.
“Nobody likes the character we’ve built billion-dollar franchises on,” he remarks sarcastically. “Let’s just make him some generic kid like we’re watching a WB Kids TV show or something. It makes no f*cking sense.”
Jaffe then proceeds to compare the game to other side-scrollers like Blasphemous, Neon Inferno, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. He points out that all those games look and play better, but can be purchased for less than the $30 being charged here.
Personally, we like the style of Sons of Sparta, as its pixel art reminds us of classic Amiga games like Shadow of the Beast, which we think is the look dev Mega Cat Studios is going for.
It’s also worth mentioning that, with just an hour on the clock, Jaffe has barely scratched the surface of the game here – although it clearly hasn’t held his attention during that time, which is still a valid criticism, we suppose.
For what it’s worth, we felt the foray showed enormous promise during our initial hands on, and you can read our thoughts so far through here.
But in a concluding rant, Jaffe goes on to tear the decision makers at Sony to pieces.
He vents:
“This makes me really angry. Not just because I have a personal connection to the brand and the franchise, but because it shows such a collapse of the great creative work Sony has done in the past.
The fact that they would think this is what people want from God of War, I don’t know what to f*cking tell you. It’s crap, it’s dumb, it’s stupid – I would say avoid this f*cking thing.”
Readers, we don’t think he likes the game.