David Jaffe Blasts God Of War: Sons Of Sparta: ‘What The F**k Are They Thinking’

God of War creator David Jaffe has made it clear he’s not a fan of the latest entry in the series, the 2D action-platforming spinoff, God of War: Sons of Sparta.

God of War: Sons of Sparta was announced last Thursday during Sony’s latest State of Play broadcast, and was developed by Mega Cat Studios in collaboration with Sony Santa Monica Studios. The game was released the same day, and follows Kratos and Deimos during their younger days while training at the Spartan Agoge.

However, Jaffe has now released a video on YouTube where he heavily criticised God of War’s latest offering. While he acknowledged that the general gameplay is “fine” and “serviceable,” that’s about as far as any praise is concerned, as Jaffe proclaimed, “what the f**k are they thinking.”

In Sons of Sparta, what I played – which was only about an hour of it, and I’ll never go back to it – it’s just like ‘get over yourselves, man,” the God of War creator said. “They just kept stopping over and over and having the characters just talk and talk and talk. And the voice acting’s not very good, the story – at least what I played… maybe it gets really good… – [but] who the f**k wants to play [Sons of Sparta]. This is not God of War.

I want you to think about this for a minute, and the choice this team had… the idea of saying ‘hey, we want a 2.5D metroidvania God of War game’. Most gamers would say ‘oh my god, yes please’. [But] the idea of ‘aaand, we don’t want it to be the Kratos that you know and love from either 2018’s God of War, or the Greek trilogy God of War. F**k it, that character’s boring, no one likes that Kratos, that we’ve built billions of dollars franchises on. Let’s make him just some generic f**king kid’… it makes no f**king sense.

Compared to what we got just this last year, if you look at the gameplay variety and just the joy of playing a game like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, if you look at the art and level of detail and just genuine interesting scenarios at a moment-to-moment gameplay level of Neon Inferno – which also came out towards the end of last year, which is just an excellent shooter by the way, I highly recommend it – if you of course look at the production value of the 2D Shinobi, I mean look at that thing.

People want this production value, and they want this vibe, and they want it to be classic Kratos.

Jaffe cut his teeth working on the likes of Skyblazer and Micky Mania on the Super SNES and Mega Drive, before serving as game designer on the original Twisted Metal for the PlayStation in 1995. He subsequently worked on multiple title in the franchise over years into the PS2 era, where he headed up the original God of War.

Jaffe departed Sony in 2007 and formed Eat Sleep Player before leaving in 2012, and founded his most recent studio, The Ballet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency, in 2014. The company released one title, 2017’s Drawn to Death, before shutting down a year later.

[Source – David Jaffe on YouTube via Eurogamer]