GAME · 2010 · USA
God of War III
- Developer
- Santa Monica Studio
- Publisher
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Platforms
- PlayStation 3
18 archived facts 4 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Nov 2026
18 Interesting Facts About God of War III
Interesting Facts (7)
- #001
The developers didn't want Poseidon to fight with tentacles, since players would compare it to the Hydra battle in the first game, so he got crab legs instead.
- #002
The books holding the game's background lore were meant to unlock as you read them, but because they weren't built that way to begin with, there was no time to fix them before release.
- #003
It's deeply ironic that Hera helps Hercules: in the actual myth she hated him and tried to kill him many times.
- #004
The Nemesis Whip is the only weapon Kratos holds in a reverse grip.
- #005
THE WILHELM SCREAM: In the first seconds of the game, a soldier falling during a battle on a bridge lets out this famous scream.
- #006
In God of War 2, the Claws of Hades were golden; in this game they are purple. This suggests they may have grown even more powerful since they were last seen.
- #007
Helios's severed head has an attack called the "sun burst." This attack shares the same name and effect as the technique in the Dragon Ball Z anime/manga.
Production Story (5)
- #008
God of War III was announced before the DualShock 3 controller existed, so its promised vibration support confused people: the Sixaxis controller has no rumble.
- #009
At the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the creative team said Sixaxis tilt had been dropped from God of War III because they couldn't find a good place to use it.
- #010
For Asmussen, one of the hardest things about making God of War III on the PlayStation 3 was the sheer complexity; a single task like designing Helios' decapitation could take a year, because the level of detail expected was so high and so intricate that it involved several departments.
- #011
God of War III was built on the engine of the first two games. Santa Monica senior producer Steve Caterson said the team ported God of War II's engine to the PlayStation 3 and had the game playable quickly.
- #012
Since Kratos could already do everything from the previous games on the PlayStation 3, the God of War III team could start designing new content straight away. As work went on, the code department swapped PlayStation 2 components for PlayStation 3 ones, replacing the renderer, the particle system and the collision system.
Behind the Scenes (5)
- #013
Stig Asmussen said David Jaffe dropped by the studio a few times during God of War III's development to go over high-level material with him and offer observations and feedback.
- #014
Kratos' model in God of War III used about 20,000 polygons, against roughly 5,000 in the PlayStation 2 games, though art director Ken Feldman stressed that polygons weren't everything and credited the richer texture detail for Kratos' lifelike look.
- #015
The main characters of God of War III were animated by hand, since the animators did a better job than basic motion capture, while the voice actors' facial movements were recorded with Image Metrics's performance capture system. A secondary animation code called Dynamic Simulation let the PS3 work out movements such as hair mathematically.
- #016
Morphological anti-aliasing was added to God of War III between the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo and release; graphics engineer Ben Diamand said it made edges dramatically better while saving a lot of frame-rate. In the same stretch, he said, depth-of-field, motion blur, crepuscular 'god' rays and refraction were added or made better and faster.
- #017
SCE America animator Bruno Velazquez said God of War III has no true CGI at all: every cutscene runs in the game engine, unlike the first two games, which used computer-generated imagery cinematics.
Deeper Meaning (1)
- #018
Had the first game's director, David Jaffe, made this one, it would have looked completely different. In his version, Zeus would have fallen in the first few minutes, and gods from other mythologies would have rushed in to fill the power vacuum he left. Kratos would have wielded Thor's hammer, and the ending showed the Three Wise Men (Kings) following a star.
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia God of War III — Wikipedia
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