Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn’t worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they’re not staying true to the spirit of the character and the franchise. The creator noted that if developers want to pour their life experiences into their work, they should do it with new IPs and characters.
I mean, I too would be unhappy with the new games’ stories. They’re not very good stories overall.
But, they’re better than the vast majority of video game plots, because that’s a low bar.
Still, Jaffe seems to imply the old stories in GoW were any better, when they were pure drivel. I might still be very underwhelmed by the story in the two new God of War’s, but I at least like that they’re trying (even if I think the direction of relying heavily on animation and visual flair is the wrong one, as far as telling good stories goes).
Jaffe always struck me as a perpetual adolescent. The two GoW games he worked on were great for the time, but the stories were shallow excuses to showcase as much gore as possible. His other big property, Twisted Metal, was genre-defining gameplay but any narrative was just edgelord violence and/or crass humor.
The last “big” project I remember coming down the pipe from him was Drawn to Death, which took his signature juvenile tastes and combined them with horrible gameplay and eye-blistering art direction. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t worked on a game since.
I’m not saying the new GoW games are perfect, but I wouldn’t say Jaffe has a trusted critical eye.
I fully agree. If you read my first comment, I pretty clearly as much as the new ones are pretty bad (story wise), the two Jaffe worked on are even worse in that regard.