God of War team celebrates victory after the Game Awards.

God of War postmortem — The making of God of War

Sony made a big bet on God of War, putting a team of 300 people to work for years (and nearly five for the game’s creative director) on the PlayStation 4 exclusive. And it all seemed worth it when the game debuted to accolades in April 2018, and then won Game of the Year at The Game Awards in early December.

Cory Barlog wept tears of joy and relief on camera when he saw the review scores come in (it garnered a rating of 94 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic) as the game debuted. That was validation for a lot of work over the years in the re-imagining of what was an aging Sony video game franchise.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.