God of War sex mini-games were designed by women, and Aphrodite's chamber was intentionally shaped like female genitalia

Former Sony Santa Monica writer Alanah Pearce dropped an interesting fact about the original God of War trilogy during a recent stream: those infamous sex mini-games, long seen as a textbook example of male power fantasy, were largely created by women on the dev team.

"Fun fact: the God of War sex mini-games were designed by women," Pearce said. "In fact, I worked with one of them. They were largely worked on by women on that dev team. In fact, when you walk into, I think it's Aphrodite's chamber, this was designed – again, including a group of women – to look like a labia. It's literally designed to be evocative of a vagina. And the women were the ones who did that. When you look at it, it makes sense, but I feel like a lot of people didn't notice that. I worked with one of the women who worked on these, and she was very proud of it, and it was really fucking cool."

Pearce identified that colleague as Ariel Lawrence, who held production roles across the original trilogy and God of War: Ascension. Behind-the-scenes footage from the motion capture shoot for the God of War 3 sequence shows Lawrence talking about the work openly and without a hint of embarrassment.

The scene itself takes place in Aphrodite's chambers, where the goddess is with two handmaidens on a bed framed by distinctly yonic curtains – before she turns her attention to Kratos. The deliberate design choices were very much intentional.

Pearce doesn't see anything disrespectful about the content and thinks it should stay in the remake.

"I recognize that in God of War, like, it's a little silly the way it was in those games," she admitted. "But again, I think it should still be in those remakes. I think it belongs there. I don't think it was disrespectful to women."

"I think that, if anything, those games are quite critical of who Kratos is as a person. The rage is clearly not fulfilling to him. It almost serves the journey that he ends up going on in 2018 and Ragnarok better if you have that version of him to begin with. I don't think it should be changed personally. I definitely think they should be there."

It's still unclear what form the trilogy remake will actually take – a full reimagining with new gameplay, or a visual upgrade that keeps the original structure intact. The scenes in the first two games are considerably more restrained than in the third, so God of War 3 will likely require the most deliberate call from whoever ends up making those decisions.