In the recently announced God Of War Laufey, you will not step into the shoes of John Kratos’s dearly departed wife Faye. You will not embark on a rollercoaster adventure through a syncretic, pick-and-mix “Everywhen” of dead mythological figures that sounds suspiciously like the backdrop for a future God Of War Smash Bros.
There will be no “intimate, brutal combat”, combining the fluidity and juggle potential of God of War’s Ancient Greek era with the camera perspective and architectural stylings of the Norse instalments. You will not get to punch people so hard they sneeze their souls out, or lacerate them with a flippity-dippity ribbon sword. You will not get to obliterate a Tibetan dharmapāla, or kick sand in the face of the Egyptian goddess of disease. You will not get to experience this famously masculine series through the eyes of a woman, and never ever shall you befriend a cube of cosmic jelly.
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While I’ve got you, don’t go running around thinking you’re Marvel’s Wolverine, either. There is no Wolverine in your future, you oaf. Rest assured that on 15th September 2026, you will not be poking cyborgs in the chest like a man with a full bladder trying to unlock his own front door in the dark. You will not be riding a motorbike until it explodes, and then fighting on top of a lorry until that explodes.
Teaming up with Jean Gray to play telekinetic spikeball with assorted hoodlums? No, none of that. Saving X-children from nefarious billionaires? Guess again. Getting so ticked off that you regrow your entire solar plexus, after bumping heads with a Gatling turret? Absolutely off the menu. And no bonus “reflective claws” when you preorder, either.
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None of these things will happen to you because as a devout Rock Paper Shotgun reader, you play games on PC, and the above games are badged “only on PlayStation”, despite previous God of War instalments and Insomniac-developed Marvel games gracing our desktops.
It corroborates an older report from Bloomberg that Sony aren’t putting any of their first-party singleplayer games on PC, for the foreseeable future. The reasoning behind this move is simple: Sony Interactive Entertainment president Hideaki Nishino believes PCs are haunted. “A console with a mouse and keyboard?” he is said to have said during a recent board meeting. “Witchcraft!” When underlings pointed out that most videogame consoles and indeed, wristwatches, doorbells and soft toys are functionally PCs these days, Nishino allegedly fled to the airplane washroom, demanding that he be given a scalpel in order to free himself of “the demon within”.
I kid, I kid! As far as I can tell, based on Bloomberg and Jason Schreier’s coverage, Sony’s rationale for retreating to the sunny uplands of console exclusivity is basically that they’re going to announce the PS6 in a year or two, and that shit is going to cost two million dollars a unit, because generative AI companies have eaten all the copper and the USA keeps blowing up the global economy. As such, it’s very important for PlayStation consoles in general to offer experiences you absolutely won’t find elsewhere, and especially not on any hypothetical future Xboxes that run Windows.
The silver lining for PC-based Goddess of Warlikers and Wolventhusiasts is that once the inevitable juiced-up PS6 editions are out, and assuming Sony isn’t suddenly bankrupted by production costs, we can surely start the countdown till the belated reveal of PC ports. I give it a couple of years.
In the meantime, I will season my sour grapes with the observation that Sony’s first-party blockbuster slate is pretty boring, right now. Laufey may stand apart for having a female protagonist, but it still looks like a game about going into posh rooms and murdering assorted undead. Wolverine appears to be the same but with more exposed ribcages. Naughty Dog’s forthcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is business as usual for that studio, going by the bit of footage at the end of the announcement trailer.
Yeah, we can afford to sit this lot out. Do think of us if you ever get round to publishing Bloodborne 2, though, Sony.
