Just months before near-perfect review scores, God of War Ragnarok devs were panicking that "the game's not good"

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"I can't even imagine how they feel today," says game director Eric Williams

God of War Ragnarok
(Image credit: Sony)

Some of the folks at God of War Ragnarok developer Sony Santa Monica were still deeply worried about the state of the game in the final sprint to its impending launch.

Speaking with GQ, game director Eric Williams discussed the challenge of staying motivated throughout such a long project. 

"You gotta stay hungry, right?" he said. "That's the one thing that kills this stuff. You have some success and then people think it's just gonna happen. They forget what it took to get there." 

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God of War Ragnarok raven perched on rock

(Image credit: Sony)

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"When you work with people that are at the apex of what they do, you're going to get magic. I just came from a room with those people," Williams added. "All I could say to them was, 'Thank you.' They were freaking out three months ago, 'Holy crap, the game's not good. What are we going to do?' I can't even imagine how they feel today. I wish I had a time machine to go back and feel like that." 

Of course, Ragnarok's launch comes on the heels of a wave of near-perfect review scores that have positioned it as the second-highest-rated new game of 2022 and, according to review aggregate Metacritic, the biggest challenger to Elden Ring for GOTY. Our own God of War Ragnarok review also gives the sequel extremely high marks, only docking it for a slow start. 

It'd be interesting to hear what, exactly, these folks were worried about three months ago, and how the game may have evolved since. Three months isn't a lot of time for major changes, especially since Ragnarok had officially gone gold as of October 7. That would explain why so many of the devs were openly elated when reviews came pouring in, though. 

God of War Ragnarok's day-one patch is also fixing some lingering issues – over 150 bugs, in fact. 

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.