A Norse To Be Reckoned With

Director and writer Cory Barlog opens up about returning to God Of War

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Few people have stayed with God Of War for as long as Cory Barlog, writer and director of Kratos’ return on PS4. After taking up the mantle of lead animator on the first game, he returned as director on its sequel before leaving early into the threequel’s development to work with Mad Max’s George Miller, and juggle God Of War on Sony’s PSP handheld. So why come back for PS4’s soft reboot?

“I think it’s rewarding, that’s the whole point of it,” he says as we sit down to chat. “These things take so long and so much of our lives that I felt like it had to mean something to me. I had to feel like I was digging a little deeper into this character and this world.

“For this one, it’s more like instead of babysitting it’s my own kid – meaning when I go home from work my worry never stops… at all. I am constantly thinking about this, because I think it’s such a big place for this franchise, this idea of saying, ‘Let’s take a really bold move.’ Right from the beginning I kind of had this direction I wanted to go in but trying to realise that I think every day the scale of it grows larger and larger to the point where you just can’t get your head or your hands around it.”

It’s certainly a larger game, in both ambition and team size. But Barlog is a different man from the one who hunkered down to make a Lethal Weapon/Gladiator mashup work back on PS2. In the time between God Of War releases Barlog has dabbled in film VFX and even spent time working with his idol George Miller on the Mad Max universe. It’s all fed back into how he approaches creating this new God Of War on PlayStation 4.