Barlog also notes that to some degree, the intent always was to make a leaner game than what God of War 2 and especially God of War 3 had been.
"All the stuff I was approaching, the way I was telling it, the way I explained it to people in the beginning was, "look, this is how we'll do it. Simple story, complex characters. And we'll figure everything out from there. Focus on this father and son journey, a coming of age for both of these characters, while they're on the road. That's it. Everything else, we'll come up with as we go," he said.
"We didn't start by plotting "this is so-and-so, he wants to kill so-and-so, and he wants this". Those characters came from the interactions in the story, and what they would offer, and the concept of limiting the number—something that I think we were criticized a little bit about, too. There's not a lot of characters. There's not a lot of bosses. And that's intentional, 100%. You look at the first God of War game, not a lot of bosses. Not a lot of characters. And I think that's good. I thought of God of War 3, I love it, but it's like a swan song for Greek mythology, so there's a lot of characters, which we spent two games building up relationships for. Now, we're introducing Kratos to a new world, and like a fish going into a tank, he needs to adjust. We need to leave the bag in the water for a little while before we release him in so he can go free."
