Mysterious image hints at upcoming God of War sequel

The image, which can be seen in its entirety on Facebook (though all the pertinent bits are embedded above) reads, “Will Vengeance Bring Redemption? 04.19.12” Taken out of context the image is almost meaningless, but a host of hints exist that seem to point to this image as a teaser for an imminent announcement of yet another title in Sony’s deity-on-deity action series God of War.

Obviously, being on the official PlayStation page, this image must be tied to a first-party (or, less likely, an important second- or third-party) title. That’s hint number one. Hint two would be the pseudo-Grecian text used in the piece. Though not a definitive indicator, it is extremely reminiscent of the in-game text seen in every God of War title to date. Third, it’s been a while since a new God of War title hit shelves, and given Sony’s recent dire financial straits, its renewed commitment to gaming and the rising prominence of Sony’s Vita handheld, it seems a perfect time for the firm to roll out an addition to a series that has yet to prove anything but wildly lucrative.

Of course, all of that evidence is relatively circumstantial. However, given that the image’s full URL includes the letters “gowa_fb,” it seems quite likely that that this thing was explicitly designed as a teaser for the God of War series. As Eurogamer speculates, those letters may very well be an acronym for “God of War announcement Facebook.”

Furthermore, a swath of job listings discovered last year, seem to hint that Sony was bolstering its development team for an upcoming God of War title that would introduce multiplayer functionality to the series. Whether that is what this image is hinting at or not remains to be seen, but all of this information does seem a bit suspicious.

That said, we still don’t know for certain what will happen on April 19. The smart money holds that Sony has chosen that date to announce the game, but until next week we won’t really know for sure.