Screenshots for Bluepoint’s cancelled live service God Of War game appear to have slipped through the titan fingers of publishers Sony. Assuming they aren’t a dream woven by Morpheus (via his earthly emissaries at MP1st), they reveal a few work-in-progress environments from the abandoned project, which Sony reportedly cancelled earlier this year alongside a new game from Days Gone devs Sony Bend.
As you might expect, the screens are heavy on Ancient Greek architecture. Although perhaps you weren’t expecting that, given that the last couple of Gowwers took place in settings from Nordic myth, with occasional, mostly unwelcome cameos from Kratos’s old chums south of the Alps. MP1st’s source for the screenshots claims that the game would have featured Hades, god of the underworld, playing the part of armory master. This suggests it would have taken place prior to God Of War 3. The cavern roofs and yellow sulphur pools in the snaps certainly look rather Stygian. There are also interiors with broken bridges and balconies that imply a touch of platforming.
The things that spring out to me the most from those screens are the pots. Such glorious pots! Pots of lime green and charcoal black and deepest terracotta, flaking away to bare pink clay. Pots with rolling, woven patterns and cute little handles and cracks that bespeak a lifetime of humble service. How I yearn to hit them with an axe and see how they fall apart. How I yearn to charge through them like piles of leaves. Quality pot smashing is six tenths of the thrill of action-RPGs, even when they aren’t game-as-a-service projects in which hidden, semi-random loot is the focus. It doesn’t matter how many HBO-courting father-son storylines you pack in if the urns don’t break real good.
I’d say these pots are fit to be published, but uncle Sony had other ideas. They’ve spent much of the past few years splurging on live service games, and are now cutting back on that investment in the wake of the ill-fated Concord (which they threw in the bin mere weeks after launch). Bluepoint appear to be keeping busy in the wake of the reported God Of War cancellation. Earlier this month, it was discovered that they were advertising for a senior combat designer with a “solid understanding of combat systems and mechanics for third-person melee action experiences”.
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