God of War is getting a New Game+ mode

Fans of the latest God of War have been clamouring for a New Game+ mode basically since the critically acclaimed game was released in April. Now they can finally breathe a sigh of relief, as Sony casually mentioned between the bigger announcements in their E3 press conference that the mode would soon be coming to the game.

A Playstation blog post from Santa Monica Studios shortly after the announcement confirmed the mode and provided more details about it.

As with all New Game+ modes, you’ll start with almost all of your items and abilities that you acquired in your first playthrough, with some story-related abilities (such as the ability to open certain doors) necessarily being held back until the relevant time. The difficulty will ramp up to compensate for this advantage, with Santa Monica Studios’ Aaron Kaufman stating that a fully upgraded leviathan axe will likely be needed to get through a New Game+ playthrough – ‘it won’t just be a sunny stroll through Midgard’.

This comes as welcome news for fans, and is something that the game quite frankly needed. While the core game was a thrilling ride, the end-game content proved a bit limp for those wanting more – with players having the choice between grinding through 2 pretty repetitive and monotonous realms (Niflheim and Muspelheim), or Valkrie-hunting in a very lonely post-story world (enemies do not respawn in God of War).

No news yet on when New Game+ will be available, just that the development team are working on it and it’ll be available via a patch “at a later date”. If it helps though, “at a later date” was the same vague timeframe Santa Monica studios gave for God of War’s photo mode, and it took them less than a month from announcing that to patching it into the game.