The Lost Levels

“It’s really tough when you have to cut ideas that you’re really passionate about out of the game. But you do so, so you can make the other ideas that you do have in the game shine even brighter.” – David Jaffe

God of War’s “hardest cuts”
Beating the original God of War on the PS2 unlocked a special documentary with commentary from Creative Director, David Jaffe. It features tons of fascinating footage and shows off several levels and features that never made it into the final version. Notice the regret in Jaffe’s tone of voice when he starts talking about why they had to clip Icarus’ Wings from the game. Fans of the series will recall that the Icarus Wings did eventually make it into God of War 2. But what Jaffe describes as the “hardest cut” in God of War comes at the end, when footage of a really cool sounding level, featuring a moving elevator and lots of platforming mechanics starts playing. Watching Kratos jump on and off the moving elevator as he tries to keep up with it looked like a good mix of old school 2D platforming and 3D action. We wish the level made it into the final game too, but at the same time, it’s good to know that cutting the level allowed the development team at SCE Studios Santa Monica to make everything else shine brighter.

There are lost levels and cut content for just about every game and we’ve barely scratched the surface here. While it’s not uncommon for games to include DVD-like director’s commentary features like the ones shown above for Halo 2 and God of War, it’s still rare. We’d like to see fewer special edition versions of games with gaudy stickers and useless in-game items and more games that give us a behind-the-scenes look at how the game we just played was created. Great stories are hiding in every game’s lost levels and we want developers to share them.

Apr 8, 2008