During a launch live stream, PlayStation has revealed a prototype version of God of War that was submitted to Sony in the effort to have the green light on the project before embarking on the quest of properly build it.

You can now check the prototype out in the video below, and interestingly a few things have changed as they were often used as a placeholder while the real stuff had still to be put in the process of making it (like real enemies and not humans).

It’s worth mentioning anyway that many of the things at display here have found an application in the complete game, too, such as the presence of Atreus (that creative director Cory Barlog had a tough time to make approve) and runes to apply to Leviathan, Kratos’ AXE.

On top of that, the quality of the prototype was still very below the standard set by the real game, as it was pitched way back in 2015 and Sony hadn’t even launch PS4 Pro and the demo itself lacked a lot of the polish that made the final version so good.

It’s always nice to have the opportunity to give a look at how games are made behind the scenes because it allows you to understand how much effort the development teams have to put into the making of such a big title.

So, my confidence is high that God of War will be the biggest exclusive debut on the PS4. Only question I have left is how high is the sky for a primarily story driven, non service game. Haven’t seen a game like this rated this highly in years, so this will set the benchmark.

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 18, 2018