God of War has been reimagined and reborn as an action RPG- and while the game comes with a hefty post game that lets you explore its world and the wealth of secrets and content that is hidden within it even after you finish it, it is missing one staple of the genre that would work extraordinarily well with the kind of game God of War is- a New Game Plus. Just imagine starting a new game with all your levels and abilities retained, but enemies that are stronger, smarter, and more difficult!
So why is it not in the game? And is there a chance that it might be added in later? Speaking to GamingBolt in an exclusive interview, God of War director Cory Barlog mentioned that it was a feature they wanted to add to the game but never found the time for during development, and that it is something that they are still looking to do.
“New Game Plus is something I wanted so badly, right? And it is this Sophie’s choice you have to consciously make as you enter the last eight months of working on a game,” Barlog said. “You have a huge list of features, and so many of these things kind of get pushed down the list. And, the impact, the involvement of New Game Plus, kept pushing it further down the list, because keeping it would cause a lot of other stuff, and a lot of other stuff meant stability, and polish, would be delayed.
“But it’s something that everyone, I don’t think there’s anyone here who didn’t want to do New Game Plus, we just kept running out of time. Because, I think, what people don’t realize is, “you had five years, you had so much time!” No, we literally worked to the last second, refining and polishing, and tuning, and trying to make this as perfect as possible. Which is why Photo Mode didn’t even get started until after we went Gold. It was on the list, we had it in the previous game, but the engine was changed up, so we had to rewrite it. And that relied on the enthusiasm of the programmers to sort of get behind it after we just ran a five year marathon, to jump right in and start on that one…
“New Game Plus is definitely the same in that we all love that kind of concept, it’s just, we haven’t had the time to get started on any of that stuff. So it is definitely something that I am still trying to convince people of, but we’ll have to see where it shakes out.”
So, it’s not a promise, but Barlog makes it pretty clear that it is a feature he personally is passionate about and would want in the game at some point. Who knows, hopefully it is something that will be added to the game in a future update- it will add even more value to an already long, varied, and hugely packed single player campaign, that’s for sure.