The ‘God of War Ragnarök’ developers feared they had messed up the game until the last moment.

Producer Cory Barlog and director Eric Williams told GQ about the stresses of reframing the hit after Sony rebooted it in 2018, replacing its blood, gore and sex with more character development.

Eric said about the team behind the latest instalment in the franchise: “They were freaking out three months ago – ‘Holy c***, the game’s not good. What are we going to do?’

“I can’t even imagine how they feel today. I wish I had a time machine to go back and feel like that.”

He added: “It’s hard to understand that you're actually finishing it, because you've been on it so long. All you can see is the flaws and the things that need to be fixed.

“You have to be very judicious. The team's already kind of burned (out), and you're asking a lot of them at a place where they're already pretty fragile. It's tough. But we have a team of super-duper talented people and they know what good looks like.”

Cory added about their efforts: “By the end, development is kind of like riding a horse. When the horse decides it wants to run, and it just starts going, you feel like you have no control, and you're just holding on.”

Eric said about changing working practices during the pandemic as they have been working on the game for four years: “Working from home is a big wrinkle. We’ve been making games for 20 years – we know how that works inside the studio. And then, oh, I can’t talk to you anymore.

“The whiteboard was dead, the lunch-sharing knowledge was dead. Just wandering by somebody’s desk and seeing something cool was dead. How do you replicate all this and still try to be successful?”

‘God Of War Ragnarök’ is available now for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.