God of War sex minigames were designed by women, writer reveals

'It's literally designed to be evocative of a vagina'

Those who have only experienced the most recent era of God of War may think of PlayStation protagonist Kratos as a protective but loving father and a bereaved husband. But in the games from the early '00s, the god of war is lustful, vengeful, and impulsive. There are no shortage of hot, topless women throwing themselves at him, including the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite. Throughout the Greek trilogy, there are multiple minigames where Kratos has off-screen sex, and you have to keep time to the rhythm in a quicktime event.

Former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce shared some surprising details about those erotic minigames in a recent stream.

"Fun fact: the God of War sex minigames were designed by women," Pearce said. "I worked with one of them. They were largely worked on by women on that dev team. In fact, when you walk into, I think it's Aphrodite's chamber, this was designed – again, including a group of women – to look like a labia. It's literally designed to be evocative of a vagina. And the women were the ones who did that. When you look at it, it makes sense, but I feel like a lot of people didn't notice that. I worked with one of the women who worked on these, and she was very proud of it, and it was really fucking cool."

"You learn things about the characters by the way they experience sex," Pearce continued. "I am pro-sex-minigame. I recognize that in God of War it's a little silly in those games, but again, I think it should still be in those remakes. I think it belongs there, I don't think it was disrespectful to women. If anything, those games are quite critical of who Kratos is as a person."

The original God of War trilogy is a product of the 2000s, the era of Maxim magazine, The Man Show, and jeans so low they required mandatory Brazilian waxes. For better and worse, this was an extremely horny moment in popular culture, and these games reflect that. While it's hard to imagine that the content of the original games will be presented totally unaltered in Sony's recently announced God of War Greek trilogy remakes, these particular minigames are more suggestive than explicit — you'll hear some lusty moans and see a pitcher of water jiggling on a table. Now we know we have a talented group of women devs to thank for it.