God of War and its sequel are some of the best PS2 games ever made, but Sony's Santa Monica Studio didn't really know what it was getting into when development on the epic mythological action game got underway. The studio's story was similar to many in the era: a lot of missed deadlines and intense overtime.
"We started God Of War in 2001, but we didn't start with the idea that it would ultimately take four years," lead coder Tim Moss explains in the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine. "We crunched like motherfuckers. We were young and enthusiastic, and we didn't know any better, so we worked hard and kept moving the deadline. That was the way it got done."
Prior to God of War, Santa Monica Studio developed the moderately horny racing game Kinetica, and its engine both of Kratos' PS2 games – so technically, the development lineage stretches back even further than those four years. That might sound like nothing today, when games like The Elder Scrolls 6 are stretching fandom patience to the breaking point, but it was pretty unusual for a game in the PS2 era to take that long to make.
Progress on the sequel was quite a bit faster, Moss says, but it doesn't sound like it was anything smoother. "We made God Of War II in two years, but really most of the game was finished in the nine months up to its completion," Moss says. "We were very time pressured. I mean the crunch was even worse than the first one."
Moss singles out God of War 2's Pegasus sequence – where you ride atop the back of the mythical winged beast and do battle with enemies in mid-air – as a particular challenge. "Pegasus was one of the new things that we did," Moss explains. "Pegasus was difficult because it was completely different than everything else. Really it was asking for something that was slightly outside the capabilities of the engine that we had."
Studios and developers alike have thankfully pushed to reduce crunch in recent years, but as working conditions improve AAA games have simultaneously been increasing their scope to unprecedented levels. It's now been four years since the launch of God of War Ragnarok, and we have nothing more than rumors about what the next entry in the series will be. Some elements of the PS2 era – crunch included – are best left behind, but there's gotta be a happy medium in there somewhere.
