What Could Have Been / God of War

Some of Kratos' earlier designs.

God of War

• Kratos originally looked much different.
• The original game contained three bonus videos hinting where the series could go next. These concepts would be recycled for God of War: Ghost of Sparta, God of War II, and God of War III though heavily altered:
  • The Fate of the Titan shows Kronos' corpse being discovered in the desert by modern archaeologists who would explore the temple's contents, suggesting a new hero would arise. Interestingly, Cronos has a hole in his forehead, roughly where Kratos canonically stabbed him with the Blade of Olympus.
  • Birth of the Beast revealed the existence of Kratos' brother Deimos, who ended up in the Underworld and became a demon seeking revenge against Kratos for abandoning him, when the two were separated because Deimos was deemed weak as a child.
  • A Secret Revealed shows Kratos, now God of War, tracking down his mother to learn his father's identity. In her attempt to tell Kratos, a curse turned her into a monster that Kratos has to slay, but in her final breath, revealed that Kratos was the son of Zeus, leaving Kratos with a desire for revenge.
• The Cyclops was originally going to have a visible penis, because the game director wanted them to have a feel similar to zoo animals.
  • Kratos' final design was almost going to have blue tattoos instead of red.

God of War III

• They originally planned for Aphrodite to draw a dagger in the middle of the sex mini-game and try to stab Kratos, forcing you to win a Quick Time Event to survive, but changed their minds.
• This interview, (content starts 10 minutes in) reveals an alternate story for the game. Zeus would have been killed at the beginning of the game and the gods from Egyptian Mythology and Norse Mythology would fight the Olympians and Titans for control over the world. The game would end with all the gods dead, Kratos killing himself to reunite with his family and The Three Wise Men following the Star of David. The Three Wise Men following the Star of David was hinted in the second game. It appears as one of the pictures in the Sequel Hook room.
• The first two games had a Once per Episode boss fight with a Gorgon sister - Medusa and Euryale, respectively. The third game would have featured Stheno as the last remaining sister, but she ended up being cut and not even making past the concept art. She would later appear in Ascension multiplayer mode, though as an stage hazard rather than a boss character. Oddly enough, she's never faced by Kratos during the story mode.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta

• Due to fan demand, there were plans for a female Kratos skin. It was cut for unknown reasons, but a single piece of concept art of it exists.^note The most likely reason for cutting the skin was the fact that Fem!Kratos would've been completely topless like her male counterpart, and might've been a step too far, even for God of War.

God of War (PS4)

• Apparently◊, the team experimented with an Egyptian setting, before settling on the current Norse narrative. It was rejected because that would mean a lot of dark-skinned Egyptian gods would be killed by a white man.
• In the writing of this game, Corey Barlog and the writers found that they were writing far beyond what we know as the end of the game. Realizing that they were writing the sequel already, they put a button on it to focus on the more personal story between Kratos and Atreus.
  • In a case of this for Ragnarök, the "post-2018" portion was held off so early in development that the final game bears little resemblance to it.
• Hræsvelg (the giant eagle in Hel) was intended to be a boss fight but according to Word of God, it was cut from lack of development time.