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David Jaffe is not a fan of new PS5 game God of War Laufey.
The veteran game director, who created the original PS2 game, looked visibly distressed during the new title’s 20-minute presentation. And he held nothing back in the aftermath, comparing the release unfavourably to Square Enix’s Forspoken.
(A game I, for the record, thought was fun.)
“What the f*ck is that?” he pondered. “That looks like sh*t, I’m going to be honest with you. It reminds me of that game Forspoken a little bit.”
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Jaffe went on to say that he thinks the new title looks “uninspired and dull”, which I can’t agree with when we’re literally talking about an afterlife for the gods. But each to their own.
He expanded:
“It’s dead. That game is not going to do well for what they expect it to do. This just feels like Cory [Barlog] or somebody wanted to write a fantasy story. You’ve lost the gore and the violence that made the first game. You’ve lost the character. You already lost him after 2018 because he changed so much he wasn’t the same character anymore. And you’ve lost me with the cube and the little Disney character at the beginning. This just seems like a fantasy.”
The former Santa Monica Studio employee went on to say that he believes without the God of War branding, no one would care about the game.
The views echo his comments about side-scrolling spin-off God of War: Sons of Sparta, which he described as a “terrible first-party game” earlier in the year.
Cutting through Jaffe’s somewhat obnoxious commentary, I think he’s just generally opposed to the overall direction of the franchise he created, which is clearly targeting a broader audience these days.
It’s true that Laufey is a departure for the series – he speculates that Santa Monica Studio may have been forced by management to create a different type of experience within the God of War universe – but I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing.
While I think the original God of War trilogy had its time and place – and is getting remakes, remember – I’m not opposed to different stories being told within that universe. Actually, as I wrote earlier, the entire premise of Laufey really appeals to me.
I think Jaffe is probably being earnest with his commentary here, but much like his criticism of Sons of Sparta, I think he also knows he can get engagement by being as scathing in his criticism as possible. After all, I’ll willfully concede I’m writing this story, and ultimately feeding the machine.
At the end of the day, I don’t agree with his views here, and looking at the overall response to the reveal, I think he’s definitely largely on his own with this one.
As the creator of God of War, his words will always carry weight when it comes to this franchise, but I think he probably needs to accept that the series he birthed has changed dramatically in the 20 years since it debuted.