God of War Director explains the lack of bosses

God of War is absolutely a great game — a huge number of awards proves it. But the previous good old God of War games have had a distinctive feature — numerous and unique bosses to fight with and mega-epic battle scenes. Yet God of War 2018 is quite a cosy game next to its predecessors. Even if you can't observe it, there was always something in it that feels incomplete. 

Cory Barlog made an exclusive interview with NoClip for their documentary. 

In an interview for the NoClip documentary on the game, director Cory Barlog explained that it simply wasn't feasible to add more. Barlog spoke to NoClip's Danny O'Dwyer.

'We cut a lot of bosses – a lot. You know, we had so many more, it was a much more ambitious, crazier game. As you go through development, you start realizing, no, it's too big, we can't do this. One boss takes like 30 developers a year and a half. It's an absolutely massive scale when you really consider it.'

Barlog told about a special 'boss team' — their job was to work on bosses for God of War. Unfortunately, team members had other things to do on the game, making it more difficult to simply add in bosses.

 

Also, Cory explained the troll-fights — they were clearly not meant like bosses, just the developers couldn't come up on how to place a health bar on such a big enemy to always stay in front of players' eyes. Barlog wanted to adjust the lore with the troll names, as well, but couldn't fit it into the scope of the story. 

Moreover, the developers recently spoke about a huge God of War DLC cancelled — precisely because of its massive size. Imagine, what a game it could have been if Ready at Dawn and Sony Santa Monica had more time?