New God of War game influenced by cancelled Star Wars TV show

Sony’s new God of War title appears to have been influenced by stories from a galaxy far, far away.

Speaking to GamesBeat, the game’s creative director Cory Barlog said that the new God of War’s more thoughtful and quiet tone was influenced by a cancelled Star Wars TV series.

Barlog briefly worked at LucasArts as creative director, and during this time he read the script of a now-cancelled Star Wars television show that – in part – gave viewers a better look at Original Trilogy big bad, the Emperor.

Probably the really small beginnings of this idea, the germination of this — when I was working at Lucas, I was allowed to go up to the ranch and read the scripts for the [canceled live-action Star Wars] TV show,” Barlog said.

It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I cared about the Emperor. They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this fucking heartless woman. She’s this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That’s something magical. The writers who worked on that, guys from The Shield and 24, these were excellent writers”

The God of War series is known for both its over the top violence and set pieces.But the on-stage demo that opened Sony’s E3 press event – and introduced a new entry in the series – showed a slower, more restrained and thoughtful tone to this new entry. This, Barlog says, is in part due to the development team having children and growing up.

I mean, we’re getting older,” he said. A lot of us who are making games, who came up around the same time, we’re hitting a time in our life in which we see the world through a different lens. Creatively we see things differently because we’re all having kids. We’re all experiencing a change in our lives. We’re all getting to an introspective point where we look back on stupid crap we said to our parents and realising we’re hearing stupid crap from our kids in just the same way. The audience, I think, wants it as well. To me that’s the best part about it.”