A God of War 4 gameplay trailer was debuted at the Sony E3 2016 press conference, with it shaping up to be a massive departure for the action series.
Though not officially titled God of War 4, with it instead appearing to be a reboot for the franchise, the game does outline the next chapter in Kratos’ life, with the hyper-violent Spartan tracking a deer alongside his son, who is a notably less accustomed to this whole “killing” thing than his father.
The snippet of gameplay highlighted in the trailer weirdly shares quite a few similarities with The Last of Us, pairing a grizzled and reluctant father figure with a more optimistic child partner. It does feature combat, though not the combo-driven hack and slashing you’d expect, with the camera instead remaining firmly in third-person as Kratos dishes out simplistic melee attacks. There is a big monster our anti-hero must take down, but other than this it’s a very different take on this established series.
Oh, and can we take a minute to discuss what a colossal asshole Kratos is? The man’s obviously had a pretty tough life, what with him having to fight off various Greek gods throughout his life and the whole “wife and child being killed” thing, but Jesus, guy, can you at least hug your kid or something? I can safely predict that his whole “standoffish parent” act probably isn’t going to lead to positive results for his young son.
Santa Monica Studio is still behind the game and, of course, it’ll be releasing exclusively on PS4. Watch the debut trailer below:
