The new 'God of War' game was almost set in Egypt.
God of War
The action-adventure video game series loosely based on Greek mythology has been reimagined to "create a different, better and truly more memorable experience than before" but the new Norse setting was originally due to be Egyptian.
After unveiling a trailer at E3, creative director Cory Barlog told Eurogamer: "We've actually moved away from Greece and Kratos has kind of wandered. We are parsing it as the time in which the vikings spoke of their gods walking the earth. So it's not in the era where the Vikings are around, we're predating them by a considerable amount of time."
"Egyptian mythology was the other one and half the team was way into that. All of them had great reasons. I think, for me, as I looked at both of those, Egyptian mythology is about the pharaohs as embodiments of the gods on earth and there's a lot more about civilisation - it's less isolated, less barren. I think at this time, we really wanted to focus on Kratos. Having too much around distracts from that central theme of a stranger in a strange land."
The new game, which is not a reboot nor a retelling of the original story, will focus on the relationship between protagonist Kratos and his son, but there will still be plenty of action sequences which the series is famous for.
Barlog added: "I think spectacle is part of our DNA. I made a very deliberate choice not to put that in this demo, because I feel like we know very well how to do that. We needed to stand out a little bit and show people why we changed this game. But there's still the David vs. Goliath. The troll fight is a small version of what we really have to show."