The developers of the PlayStation 4 exclusive God of War originally had many more boss fights planned. Game director Cory Barlog told Noclip that “a lot” of boss fights ended up on the cutting room floor, in part because it was too much work.
“We cut a lot of bosses. A lot. We had so many more,” he said. “It was a much more ambitious, crazier game. And as you go through development, you start realising, ‘No, it’s too big, we can’t do this.'”
Barlog said a single boss battle took 18 months of work from a team of 30 developers, so as such, the number of boss fights had to be scaled back to make sure the game actually came out this decade. “One boss takes like 30 developers a year and a half. It’s an absolutely massive scale when you really consider it, and you measure it against other games in which we finished the game in a year and a half,” he said.
The developer also pointed out that the “boss team” had other tasks as well, which took up even more of their time. At the end of the day, Barlog said, “It became a reality that some of these things will have to be cut.”
Also in the interview, Barlog talked about how the troll fights were never intended to be boss battles. He shares many more interesting anecdotes from his time working on one of 2018’s most celebrated games; check out the full video below.
In other news, Barlog said he had an idea for a “really fun” expansion for God of War. However, it was “too ambitious,” and Sony eventually decided to scrap it.
