God of War: Ragnarok, which seems to be the official unofficial title for the sequel to 2018’s God of War according to Sony’s investor presentation from last month, has been delayed. This isn’t all too surprising considering the year we’ve all had and the lack of any recent updates since the teaser late last year. Today, Santa Monica Studio released the following statement:
Since the release of the next God of War teaser last year, we’ve been humbled by the amount of love our community has shown us. We’re incredibly grateful to see so many people excited to experience the next chapter of Kratos and Atreus’ journey.
We remained focused on delivering a top-quality game while maintaining the safety and wellbeing of our team, creative partners, and families. With this in mind, we’ve made the decision to shift our release window to 2022.
Thank you all for your continued support, we’ve got some exciting things in the works that we can’t wait to show you!
This delay is entirely understandable, and I look forward to seeing more of God of War next year, but there’s more to this news than just that. This statement was made alongside a Q&A with Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios, which was published on the PlayStation blog. Along with announcing the delay of God of War, when asked “How have the teams at PlayStation Studios been able to cope and adapt with these big challenges over the last year?” Hermen Hulst said the following:
So we have, currently, two very big, very narrative-driven games in development: Horizon Forbidden West and the next God of War. And for both of those, they’re frankly affected by access to performance capture and talent. For Horizon, we think we are on track to release this holiday season. But that isn’t quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that to you as soon as we can.
This seems to suggest that although Guerilla is aiming for a Holiday 2021 release for their Horizon sequel, they might not be able to hit that date. Last week, after the Horizon: Forbidden West gameplay reveal, Guerilla, tweeted that while they aren’t prepared to give a date just yet, development on the game is going smoothly. When asked about how PlayStation Studios was adapting to the challenges of working in a post-COVID world Hermen had this to say:
Perhaps the biggest challenge has been when we need specialist locations, often physical locations. Primarily performance capture, audio work. We’ve come up with some really clever solutions to some of this, we built tiny recording studios in people’s houses.
But when you’re doing performance capture for a lot of cinematics, with multiple actors — that’s not so simple to solve. So you’ve got a choice. You could do it later in the schedule, which could cause you problems. Or you could risk the final quality by doing it in a different way.
Don’t worry, as a PlayStation consumer there are still great games coming. According to Hermen, PlayStation Studios has over 25 titles in development and as they move into the next generation of gaming with the PlayStation 5 and slow release of PC ports, he assures gamers that Sony is not forgetting about the 110 million PlayStation 4 owners out there. In fact, in the Q&A we got confirmation that God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7 will be releasing on the PlayStation 4 alongside the PlayStation 5.
PlayStation Studios has had a great year so far with Returnal being a successful new IP launch and Days Gone on PC being well received. Speaking of Days Gone, Bend Studio is working on a new IP that will apparently build on the deep open-world systems of their previous game. While it is still difficult to get your hands on a PlayStation 5, the system has been performing well on the market worldwide, seemingly outselling the Xbox Series X|S at a steady pace.
