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We also see the mad dash to building God of War‘s tremendous E3 2016 reveal — both the amount of work that went into it and the stressed out build-up until it was finally released into the world. And then, the year and a half of work that followed as Santa Monica Studio turned 10 minutes of footage into a 30-hour game.
At every step, familiar faces pop up again and again. The voice actors, for starters. Also: studio head Shannon Studstill and producer Yumi Yang, two of the key voices working alongside Barlog. And then a long list of others, all representing different disciplines: art, level design, combat design, quality assurance — and then some.
More than that, we get to know some of these people outside of their jobs. Interviews explore everything from the real-life touchstones that inform creative impulses to the actual human cost of signing on for such a demanding and high-profile project. There are genuine tears, from both the interview subjects and — unless you’re a heartless monster — from you, the viewer. Noclip weaves such an effective story here, it’s impossible not to invest in these individuals’ lives as you’re watching.
That’s so important. While Raising Kratos is fundamentally a behind-the-scenes look at game development, the movie also implicitly acknowledges the impossibility of telling such a story without holding the humans behind it up to a microscope. In order to understand the process of making a game, we need to understand the tangible day-to-day work that goes into it.
If you have any appreciation at all for video games, Raising Kratos is a vital document.
It’s an especially poignant look at video game development during this turbulent moment when the industry is being forced to face its own demons. In the past few years, investigative reports have uncovered all manner of problematic studio cultures, such as Rockstar Games’ struggles with crunch and BioWare’s dogmatic adherence to an idealistic vision of game development as “magic.”
Raising Kratos hardly paints a rosy picture. There’s a sense that we never get to see the God of War team’s truly dark moments, but the documentary also pulls no punches when it comes to presenting game development as a challenging and endlessly unpredictable process. Watching makes it easier to understand how a project like this can go horribly wrong and lead to harmful working conditions.
If you have any appreciation at all for video games, Raising Kratos is a vital document that will help you better appreciate the craft behind the hobby. It’s must-watch material for anyone who hopes to one day break into the industry, and it should be required viewing for every person, well-meaning or not, who has referred to the act of making games as something miraculous or magical.
It’s neither of those things. Game development is hard, especially when you’re operating at the level of a game like God of War. It takes an army, along with a staggering amount of effort, knowledge, and time. Raising Kratos is absolutely essential for laying all of this out with such raw, emotional clarity.
Raising Kratos is a free-to-stream documentary that you can watch anytime right here on PlayStation’s YouTube channel.