Early this morning when I should have been sleeping, I instead discovered a tweet from God of War creator David Jaffe about the title of God of War and how it was randomly selected from a hat. It seems absolutely insane now to think of God of War as anything other than God of War, but back before it first launched, it was an unproven property. We didn?t yet know Kratos, his Blades of Chaos, or his thirst for vengeance against the Greek pantheon.
Jaffe revealed that God of War was selected randomly from a hat, and that we could possibly have known God of War as either Dark Odyssey or At the Hands of the Gods. Would the game have done nearly as well had it been named something else" Would Cory Barlog have ever reinvented Dark Odyssey or At the Hands of the Gods into a new and more emotionally mature narrative more than 10 years later" As seemingly random as the selection seems, I believe that fate intervened that day to make sure that God of War was chosen. It communicated what it needed to in 2005. It provided a sense of recognition and familiarity in 2018. Would we feel that same attachment were everything the same but for the name"
As a creator myself, I have to say that coming up with names and titles for things is one of the most difficult parts of the job. Regardless of the meat of the writing, the name alone can make or break its success. Of course I wouldn?t be able to call myself a writer if I didn?t have a library of unpublished short stories and nov...