God of War’s Title Was Picked At Random, Creator Reveals

At this point, God of War is one of the most beloved and highest selling series in the industry. So much so that it’s hard to imagine it could ever have been anything else. However, on Twitter, series creator David Jaffe revealed that something as basic as the name of the game was up in question originally.

Posting in a thread about how the iconic film Back to the Future was originally going to have another name, Jaffe talked about how there were three names in contention for the original God of War prior to its release—God of War, Dark Odyssey, and At the Hands of the Gods. The name was literally selected by pulling from a hat—it sounds like Jaffe himself was rooting for the game to be named God of War, so he was happy with how things turned out.

Dark Odyssey would have been a cool name for the original game, given how it was a form of a Greek tragedy in a sense, but I feel like God of War is just a far more fitting name that is just flexible enough to have applied to every subsequent game in the series, while also fitting the first one.

ACTUALLY it was originally between 3 titles: GOD OF WAR, DARK ODYSSEY, and AT THE HANDS OF THE GODS. We could not get everyone on the same page so all 3 went into a hat and we drew at random and agreed that whichever we drew would be the title.THANK ZEUS 'GOD OF WAR' came up! 🙂

— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) March 5, 2019