Secret Code in GoW: Ascension Teases New Hero, Setting - News
by Arthur Kabrick , posted on 12 March 2013 / 5,126 Views
It is increasingly common practice for developers to hide secret messages in their games, often with the intention of teasing future releases in the series or from the development studio, and it appears that Santa Monica Studios' God of War: Ascension, released today in North America, is the newest example.
Viewing a painting of Mount Olympus found in the game reveals the caption
Of all the prophecies I have seen, this one haunts my dreams.
QUJIKPHIUEEEKMJQUJ
The full truth of this nightmare yet remains hidden. – Aletheia
The string of characters in the second line appears to be an encoded group of words. Since no cipher is provided, they could mean a whole range of things. However, an astute NeoGAF user thought to look at the versions of this string in other language releases of the game. Naturally, the strings were different, but deciphering them had to give the same phrase in the language used.
The strings were as follows:
English: QUJIKPHIUEEEKMJQUJ
French: QJFTRFJRQTEUCJTUNFRJHQJHQJFTRF
Portuguese: MHDILMMLKHNHOKHDRLHMHD
Spanish: QJFLTORJPJFOJIQJF
As it turns out, there is a group of words that fits these four very well indeed:
English: SUN BIRD BULL LION SUN
French: SOLEIL OISEAU BOEUF LION SON SOLEIL
Portuguese: SOL PASSARO TOURO LEAO SOL
Spanish: SOL AVE TORO LEON SOL
Translated to English, each of these sentences is the same.
Each of these words is connected to the mythical Persian deity Mithras, which could suggest that the next game will concern itself with Persian mythology rather than Greek, which in turn implies a new hero to replace Kratos, who has now appeared in six full games.
