It would shock you just how unfinished games are even a few months before they release. PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida must have seen his fair share of incomplete games, but when he first played God of War (2018) just six months before its planned release date, he was so "horrified" he pushed it back another six months to give the team time to polish it.
"I was horrified," Yoshida says in an interview with Game File. "I didn't say the game was horrible." So what exactly was the issue?
"That was one of the biggest games in development," he remembers. "The company had huge expectations and had an amazing reveal announcement. But it was, like, six months before the planned [2017] launch. I visited the studio and Cory [Barlog] presented and let me play. The game was maybe 80% complete. But I had really struggled to play that one level that Cory wanted me to play. The enemy was shooting at me from behind the camera. I felt really cheated. And there were some frame rate issues and multiple things were not working."
Things like textures not being done or enemies not being placed in the right spot or balanced correctly are the kinds of things you'd probably expect to see a ways out from development, but with a game as big as God of War, Sony couldn't afford to let it flop.
"Thinking about the time left for the team and all the expectations from the company and maybe even the players, I was like, 'This is a problem,'" Yoshida says. "But, because Cory is such a creative guy and a very nice person and very passionate, I couldn't tell him. Even though my facial expression was communicating something."
I can imagine anyone would be pretty terrified if their boss told them their work wasn't up to par and would need another six months in the oven, so it's nice Yoshida kept the pressure of Barlog in the immediate aftermath of his play test.
"After the meeting, I went back to [executive producer] Shannon Studstill's office and said to Shannon, 'We have a problem,' Yoshida explains. "And eventually we were able to push the game back. The game was planned for [an] October release of that year. We pushed it to April in the next year. So an additional six months. That really helped the team to polish."
Shigeru Miyamoto famously said, "A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever," and we see proof of those words all the time. Assassin's Creed Shadows was delayed several times and shot past three million players in just a week, and it had the second-highest day one sales revenue of any Ubisoft game in history.
God of War went on to win multiple Game of the Year awards and also sold incredibly well, so clearly the extra time given to the team worked. I just hope they didn't have to crunch to get it onto the shelves. Ragnarok was also delayed so that Kratos actor Chris Judge could undergo medical treatment, and that game also did phenomenally well.
Check out our list of the best PS5 games if you want some more great PlayStation action.
