 God of War III was first mentioned by Cory Barlog at a God of War II launch event , and it was officially announced at the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo ( E3 ) . After the first eight months of development , Barlog left Santa Monica for unexplained reasons and Stig Asmussen ( lead environment artist and art director on God of War and God of War II , respectively ) became director . Asmussen said that one of the greatest challenges in developing God of War III for the PlayStation 3 was the " complexity of everything " ; individual tasks , such as designing Helios ' decapitation , could take a year because the " level of detail [ that was ] expected [ was ] so high and intricate , it [ crossed ] multiple departments . " He said that the PlayStation 3 's hardware capabilities allowed more flexibility in character creation and interaction with the environment . The engine for God of War III was ported from the first two installments to the PlayStation 3 . As the game was being developed , the code department swapped out PlayStation 2 components with PlayStation 3 components . They replaced the renderer , the particle system , and the collision system . Although they were re @-@ using the engine from God of War II , the core engine for God of War III was brand new . Between E3 2009 and the time the game shipped , morphological anti @-@ aliasing ( MLAA ) was added , which graphics engineer Ben Diamand said " improved edges dramatically and saved substantial amounts of frame @-@ rate . " Diamand also said that " depth @-@ of @-@ field , motion blur , crepuscular ' god ' rays and refraction were either added or improved in quality and speed " during that same time period . 
