God of War developer Cory Barlog was at Devcom to talk about the making of the game and he shared many interesting behind the scenes development issues and never before seen concept art for the game.

According to Cory Barlog, they first started discussing the idea of a new God of War game in the same year when Ascension was released. The development team was equally divided in picking the mythology for the new God of War. Half of them wanted to go with Norse myth while the other half wanted to tackle Egyptian myth. Cory was the tie-breaker here and he picked Norse myth for his vision of God of War.

He also shared an early concept art for both and it gives us a first look at what kind of vision the team had for the Egyptian myth.

The first prototype of the game featured Kratos’ character model taken from God of War: Ascension. Cory had a hard time convincing everyone that Kratos had a kid. Even during the development, the team faced a lot of resistance against the changes that they made to Kratos and his relationship with Atreus. In the middle of the development for the game, they had some playtesters who were angry at Kratos going on a fetch quest for Freya saying this is not God of War or the Kratos that they remember from the past games.

It is interesting to hear about the development work and changes that happened behind the scenes. God of War has managed to become the fastest selling first-party Sony exclusive proving that Cory Barlog made all the right choices during the development of the game. He might have faced resistance with his creative decisions but at the end of the day, he proved that his vision was the correct one.

God of War is available now exclusively for the PS4. You can read our review of the game from here. It has managed to sell through more than 5 million copies worldwide within a month, making it the fastest selling PS4 exclusive.