Presentation
A man covered in ashes, two chained blades and a handful of particularly unlucky gods are usually enough to bring Santa Monica Studio to mind.
That makes sense. Since the release of the first God of War in 2005, the American studio and Kratos have almost grown up together. But reducing Santa Monica Studio to a factory built to produce God of War sequels would erase a large part of its history.
The studio was founded in 1999 within Sony. Its original team formed around PlayStation veteran Allan Becker, working from the former offices of 989 Studios. It began with only a small group of developers and was already trying to create a more open environment, less constrained by the habits of a large organization.
Its first experimental ground was not Greek mythology, either, but futuristic racing. Kinetica, developed for PlayStation 2 and released in 2001, arrived several years before Kratos.
Then God of War happened.
And everything changed.
The saga gradually became the studio's public identity. Yet behind that enormous franchise, another, quieter story was developing: that of a team supporting external studios, encouraging new ideas and contributing to games sometimes very far removed from Kratos's adventures.
For a long time, Santa Monica Studio effectively lived with two faces: building spectacle internally while helping other creators experiment elsewhere.
History
A new studio inside PlayStation
Santa Monica Studio was created in 1999 with a small team emerging from the PlayStation environment. Its first developers initially worked from the former offices of 989 Studios before gradually building their own production culture.
The studio's first game, Kinetica, was released for PlayStation 2 in 2001.
It would obviously not become the franchise that defined Santa Monica Studio.
But four years later, another project would.
2005: Kratos enters the stage
In 2005, God of War arrived on PlayStation 2.
Spectacular action, Greek mythology, brutal combat and gigantic creatures gave Santa Monica Studio an instantly recognizable identity.
For several years, the formula evolved without abandoning its central idea: make the player feel as though they are taking part in something impossibly large.
Gods fall.
Monsters fill the screen.
Kratos gradually becomes one of PlayStation's emblematic characters.
But after pushing that formula further and further, a question eventually emerges.
What do you do when a saga built on escalation seems to have reached the summit?
The other Santa Monica
While God of War occupied the spotlight, Santa Monica Studio developed another activity that was far less visible to the general public.
The studio supported external teams, sometimes in something close to an incubation role. Its history consequently became connected to developers such as thatgamecompany, Giant Sparrow, SuperBot Entertainment and Tangentlemen.
Those collaborations helped bring forward games as different as flOw, Flower, Journey, The Unfinished Swan, Sound Shapes, Fat Princess, Bound and Here They Lie.
The contrast is rather beautiful.
On one side, Kratos is quite literally tearing pieces out of Greek mythology.
On the other, Journey lets two anonymous figures silently glide across the desert.
Same house.
Not exactly the same energy.
This ability to support radically different productions became an important part of Santa Monica Studio's history, even if God of War remains its most recognizable internal creation.
When continuing means changing everything
By the middle of the 2010s, Santa Monica Studio was confronted with its own history.
God of War had existed for a decade. Kratos had already fought a considerable portion of the Greek pantheon. Simply making the monsters even bigger would probably have started to feel like a competition against itself.
The studio chose a riskier path.
Change almost everything without erasing what came before.
The team moved Kratos into Norse mythology, transformed the camera, redesigned the combat and, most importantly, turned the character into a father facing his son, Atreus.
God of War in 2018 therefore does not erase the past.
It gives that past weight.
Kratos is no longer interesting only because he once killed gods. He becomes interesting because he has to live with the man those actions created.
A camera that refuses to look away
That narrative transformation also required a technical one.
For God of War (2018), Santa Monica Studio pursued an especially ambitious idea: present the adventure as one continuous shot, without a visible camera cut.
The choice was not simply a technical demonstration. It helped preserve immersion and closeness to the characters without constantly interrupting the experience through a clear separation between gameplay and cinematics.
That forced the teams to rethink animation, staging, transitions and interactions with Atreus.
Technology and storytelling became trapped inside the same problem.
If the camera never cuts, nobody can cheat behind it.
And that is precisely where the constraint becomes interesting.
Ragnarök and the consolidation of a new era
This new direction continued with God of War Ragnarök, released in 2022.
The studio retained Kratos, Atreus, Norse mythology and the foundations established four years earlier while expanding their relationship and their journey across the Nine Realms.
Twenty years after the birth of God of War, Santa Monica Studio remains deeply associated with the franchise.
Yet that continuity hides something rather paradoxical.
The studio kept the same hero by agreeing to change the way it looked at him.
What sets it apart
Evolving a franchise without erasing its past
Santa Monica Studio did not build its identity by constantly jumping from one franchise to another.
Almost the opposite.
A large part of its history rests on a single saga.
The challenge is therefore different: how do you stop a franchise that has existed for twenty years from becoming a repetition of itself?
The transformation of God of War in 2018 offers a particularly clear answer.
The studio does not erase the old Kratos.
It uses that old Kratos as narrative material.
His past violence, anger and mistakes become precisely what helps us understand the much quieter father Atreus discovers.
The franchise's past stops being a catalogue of previous games. It becomes the character's past.
It is a particularly effective way of turning the burden of continuity into a storytelling tool.
Technology in service of scale… then intimacy
Since the earliest God of War games, Santa Monica Studio has tried to create scenes that feel larger than the player.
Gigantic architecture.
Monumental creatures.
Impossible battles.
But the evolution of the series also reveals another use for that technical mastery.
The continuous camera of God of War (2018), the transitions between exploration and storytelling, Atreus's behavior and the camera's proximity to Kratos are less concerned with showing how enormous the world is than with reducing the distance between the player and those who inhabit it.
The spectacle has not disappeared.
It has simply learned to share the screen with something more fragile.
An internal studio that also looked outward
The other major characteristic of Santa Monica Studio is less obvious when looking only at its internal productions.
For years, the studio supported external teams and projects, helping create a kind of creative ecosystem within PlayStation.
Flower does not resemble God of War.
Journey even less.
Neither does The Unfinished Swan.
And that is exactly what makes this part of its history interesting.
The studio capable of producing one of PlayStation's most spectacular AAA franchises also helped create a space where much smaller games could try something different.
Two scales.
Two ways of taking risks.
One structure.
Good to know
- Santa Monica Studio was founded in 1999 within Sony. Its original team formed around PlayStation veteran Allan Becker.
- God of War was not its first game. The studio previously developed Kinetica, released for PlayStation 2 in 2001.
- The first God of War was released in 2005, six years after the studio was founded.
- Santa Monica Studio has not limited itself to internal development. Historically, it supported studios such as thatgamecompany and Giant Sparrow and contributed to numerous external projects.
- The studio left Santa Monica in 2014 and moved to Playa Vista, while keeping its historic name.
- God of War (2018) represents a genuine reinvention rather than a simple reboot. A new mythology, new camera, redesigned combat systems and a new central relationship between Kratos and Atreus all accompanied that transformation.