God of War (2018) for PC Has Been in Development for 2 Years - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 January 2022 / 2,352 Views
Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Sony Santa Monica Studio will release the PC version of God of War (2018) via Steam and Epic Games Store today.
Senior manager of technical production Matt DeWald on the game in an interview with GameInformer revealed the PC port of the game has been in development for two years.
"I actually play most of the time on mouse and keyboard now just because I’ve been working on it for two years, and it’s just been my default," said DeWald. "It feels super natural to me to play it on mouse and keyboard."
DeWald was asked how he felt people playing the PC version with an Xbox controller and he said it is "awesome."
"We even put in all the glyphs for you so you don’t get confused by the button press," he continued. "Yeah, we have no problems with that. You can even use a Switch controller here as well. You can definitely use any of the third-party controllers. We tried to add as many options as possible because why limit people who want to play the game?"
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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That's a crazy time to port it over but I'm sure the wait will be worth it for those who haven't yet had a chance to check out GOW.
For those a little apprehensive about the GOW franchise I strongly urge you to check this game out. It was probably one of the best games to come out of last gen IMO and is a great example of breathing new life into an established franchise.
After you play it I'm sure you'll see why so many are excited for the soon to be released sequel.
-POOOOOOOOORRRRRTTTTT!!! NINJA APPROVED-
4K/dlss well north of 100fps. Hell yeah. (3080/Ti)
Can't wait to see the mods for this game
A mod that turns Kratos into Shrek and Artreus into Donkey
Why does it take to port? I would understand if the system the port was going to was weaker than PS4, but this is PC we are talking about.
they wanted a premium PC feature set and that can take some time. One example of this is ultra wide support, which took a lot of developer input to get running properly because the PS4 doesn’t support ultra wide and a lot of the panning camera shots were originally made without ultra wide in mind.
This was a very high effort porting job and it shows
They also may have had it in a release-able state earlier, but didn't have permission from head office to release it yet. They may have wanted other PC releases to launch first, or to wait a specific period of time after the PS4 release to do the PC release.
A number of reasons firstly the engine it was built on makes a difference , they are first and foremost PS engines, highly tuned to the platform and how the PS4 feature sets work , Days Gone being done on UE was considered a real porting advantage also why modern console architecture means it has become easier it is still early days in Sony porting to PC, hence why they purchased Nixxes secondly look at the troubles Horizon had at launch with it's port , these games also need some modern touch ups and we need to remember the big AAA titles like GOW are more complex than the average Console/ PC game , so it takes time to get it right.
That means development really got going when the pandemic started so everyone was working from home. I wonder how much that lengthened development time. Either way, the port has been a thing of beauty!
I imagine it may have been a small focused team, otherwise it would had impacted Ragnarok or the new IP from Cory
They had Jetpack co developing it. https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/72593/jetpack-interactive-is-handling-god-of-war-pc-port/
Dunno if they struggled, used few people on jetpack or since they had to wait the timeframe from Sony they took their sweet time doing it and smoothing things out.
Damn, so the time it took to port this game takes almost as long to develop a new game.
2 years in the middle of a pandemic with a support studio Jetpack interactive doing the port with santa monica just supervising.
Still, 2 years on a fully completed game to be ported over on X86 architecture is quite a long time. We are not talking about porting something over using alienated tech.
It was done during the pandemic by a small studio and it incorporated a lot of extra functionality and all this extra attention according to DF and others is why it ranks as one of the best and most complete PC ports they can remember and its this that separates it from other ports, also it's not just simply about X86 architecture , PS games and the engines that support them while now running on X86 hardware and no longer being as bespoke still have a lot of customisation going on under the hood, remember Sony doesn't use DX solutions, 343 industries with the full resources of Xbox behind them needed 12 months to re polish Halo so that should show that the time taken considering the improvements isn't that long .
It took Turn 10 2 days to get Forza Motorsport 6 running at native 4k and at 60fps with only 1 guy working on it. To take 2 years is still incredibly long for a Port. GoW is not a remake or built from the ground up game for PC, however it taking two years it might of well been. Small team should still be able to get a port out in a year at least.
They should have gotten him to polish halo ?,there's a big difference between a res and framerate upgrade for a racing game and the effort put into this but don't believe me look at the DF and others have to say.
I am not referring to the polish, i am referring to the time needed. It shouldn't take 2 years. You act like this was built from the ground up. Not sure why you continue to bring up Halo, Halo's issue is completely different as it launched along side the console versions. Their was no previous polished Infinite version beforehand. We are referring to a 4 year old PS4 game that's is already polished and complete.
I'm referring to all of Halo Infinite in general needing 12 months to be polished it was completed and was close to being launched and they went back and reworked it well that is basically what happened here except they reworked it for today's PC's by a small studio , yes it was a 4 year old game complete for PS4 not PC's 4 years later that's the point .so hence why they put in all that extra work could it have been quicker the answer for the teams size and what they wanted to achieve especially after seeing the teething problems with horizon it took exactly the time that was needed, also read aTokenYeti's reply above.
Halo went through development hell, its alittle different compared to just porting an already polished game. If Turn 10 can port thier entire ForzaTech engine to PC in just acouple days than the devs behind the port of GoW must of been monkeys. Im glad the game came out great in the end, i am just questioning the time frame. As my OG statement, you could make an entire game in 2 years
believe what you want and like i have said getting the forza engine to run in 4K and 60FPs a racing game isn't the same , one example for GOW is one of the new features was ultra wide support something that the PS4 doesn't have and it affected all the panning shots and GOW is infamous for its use of panning shots so it took a lot of developer input to integrate that and that's just one thing , like I said don't believe me about the effort places like DF have done a video . I know I this reply wont change you feeling I'm over playing the effort for this port , or me feeling that your downplaying it so let's' call it quits.
I have seen the DF video and i understand the effort put into it, but 2 years? Again, all i am saying is it takes 2 years to make a full video game. To port it in that same amount of time is a little ridiculous. GoW on PC does not do anything new or revolutionary as a port. Its a great port and its well received as one. I am only questioning the time frame.
Please show us which AAA game you have seem developed from scratch in 2 years.
Because if you want to just be generic, in NES they made several top sellers (AAA for the time let`s say) in matter of few months.
https://nintendoeverything.com/wp-content/uploads/zelda-chart.png example for Zelda is 1 year on NES and 5 years on latest (possibly more).
Seems like Mega Man 7 took 3 months. So should we use that as standard to complain about Halo?
Just to remember, a lot of Sony games when the devs decided to put the work had very fast patches to enable 4k, 60fps, and the like. As you said that isn`t anything similar to porting the game to a completely different standard.
No. Halo gone through a lets release like that, but wait gamers didnt like so let`s redo.
Comparing porting to completing a game are very different, you should know this. It shouldn't take 2 years to port a game that's already finished and polished.
You were the one that started it, saying a complete game could have been made in the time it took to port this one.
Yes a video game can be made in 2 years. Not all video games take two years to develop, which i thought was pretty obvious. Halo is a flagship title, like Zelda, they take more time to create, not to port.
