God of War developers pay tribute to Leviathian Axe developer George Mawle

God of War developers pay tribute to Leviathian Axe developer George Mawle
Ben Borthwick Updated on by

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God of War’s creative director Cory Barlog has led tributes to gameplay engineer George Mawle following the latter’s untimely passing last week.

Mawle is credited with the handling of the Leviathan Axe and the Chaos Blades in the 2018 reboot of God of War. He passed away last Thursday, and tributes have been pouring in from developers across Sony Santa Monica and beyond. Balrog’s tribute said “George was such an amazingly funny, smart and warm human being. He was one of the fathers of the Leviathan feel. Without his curiosity and intellect those moments of pure joy recalling the axe would never have existed.”

Combat Design Lead Mihir Sheth also added his condolences in his own thread. He credited Mawle with working on “Kratos’ weaponry, navigation, RPG systems, a myriad of combat behaviors, improvements to the scripting system to empower designers, and SO much more. He was a veteran on the team who played a huge role in closing out the game and squashing bugs.”

Sheth also shared some comments from Mawle following the release of the game. He said “After GOW2018 shipped, he’d always say that he never thought he’d work on a game and feature so beloved in his career of ups and downs. He would repeat this out of the blue, two years after. “We really did alright didn’t we”. Yes George, we did alright.”

God of War wasn’t George Mawle’s only game in his 20 plus year career, of course. He also has credits on Scarface: The World is Yours, Prototype 2 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. All of us at Videogamer also pass on our condolences and our thoughts are with his family & friends at this time.