Last year, we learned that Sony had cancelled several of its live-service projects, one of which was some sort of God of War spinoff by developed by remake specialists Bluepoint. With Bluepoint now shuttered by Sony, we’re starting to get some details, including what the God of War title was going to be.
Journalist Jason Schreier has the report over at Bloomberg. According to his sources, Sony was hoping God of War could support numerous spin-offs, “…like its own smaller version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” One of those – God of War: Sons of Sparta – just got released and seems to have done okay, even if it didn’t set the world ablaze.
Bluepoint’s live-service title was apparently going to star Atreus, the son of Kratos. According to Schreier’s sources, Atrues was going to find himself in Hades.
“A loose idea was for players to control different versions or aspects of Atreus as they battled through Greek hell, and to have some sort of cooperative gameplay and ongoing support,” writes Schreier.
Unsurprisingly, the project was struggling as the small team, which hadn’t released an original title in nearly two decades, found itself trying to create a live-service game.
“Some Bluepoint staffers grumbled that they should be working on another traditional action game like Demon’s Souls or God of War Ragnarok rather than a live-service project that few of them seemed to want to make.”
Schreier notes that despite help from Santa Monica, Bluepoint did not make much progress and “floundered” for years.
The project was then cancelled outright, and Bluepoint was left pitching ideas. We even learned that they once again pitched the idea of a Bloodborne remake, but it was shot down, not by Sony, but by another company.
I’ll be honest, none of the cancelled game’s concepts sounds appealing to me, but I would have taken it if it meant Bluepoint could stay alive. Of course, when it failed (which it probably would have), they would have been left in the same boat. Or if it had somehow been successful, they would have ended up working on it full-time, and the Bluepoint we knew would have disappeared, so I guess it was a lose-lose scenario.
