When the reviews for God of War on PlayStation 4 went live last week, fans around the world were refershing aggregator sites like Metacritic to see how critics would rate Kratos’s latest adventure. But it wasn’t just fans who were smashing F5 on their keyboards — God of War director Cory Barlog was doing the same, and he filmed himself doing so.
In a 5 minute video log on YouTube today, Cory Barlog shared the moment that he first saw that near-universal praise for God of War.
“I’m really trying to stall as much as possible,” Barlog said. “I am very nervous about seeing this. It is a long, long time coming. Five years of work has gone into this game. This moment means … a lot.”
Barlog then clicked through to the game section of Metacritic to see that God of War had earned a “Metascore” of 93. You can see the relief come over him, and then he puts his face in his hands as his emotions bring him to tears.
“Ninety-three. Ninety-three metacritic. Ninety-four! It just changed,” Barlog said. “It shouldn’t matter, but I’m just so fucking proud.”
God of War now has a 95 on Metacritic after 94 reviews. That makes it one of the best-reviewed games of all time on that aggregation site.
In the description for the video on YouTube, Barlog said he debated whether he should release this video at all. The clip shows him as vulnerable, and it’s a moment that, if it happened to a lot of us, we would want to keep private.
“But then I thought of what my son, Helo, is going through right now,” wrote Barlog. “He doesn’t want us to be around when he is sad — opting to run in another room and yell at us if we try to come in. It has been important to us to let him know that it is OK to be sad, it is OK to cry. There is nothing to hide. I thought I would try to set a good example and show him that papa can cry in front of the world, or at least the 50 people who end up watching this.”
The video went live less than an hour ago, and 2,000 people have watched it.
