I get being weary of the media liking a comeback story, but this really is one. Partly for the reasons Nightengale mentioned:
Well, maybe not in too much trouble, but SSM wasn't having the best years of their studio fora long time.
2013: God of War Ascension released to tepid critical and commercial response. The IP was internally debated within Sony to be shelved or put on hiatus due to that.
2014: New IP Darkside was cancelled, and more than 50 Santa Monica employees were laid off. God of War project hastily accelerated in timeline which put pressure on Cory and co. Also underwent new studio relocation from Santa Monica.
2015: The Order 1886, a SSM-externally produced game was also released to tepid response. GoW3 Remastered also released to tepid sales. ( granted, the remaster was barely marketed was of really poor value )
2016: Sometime between late 2015 and early 2016, SSM gutted their external development team to focus solely on internal development. What Remains of Edith Finch was sold to Annapurna. And games like Wattam, etc was left in a limbo.
2017: Usual development challenges with any major AAA game. Cory likes to talk about how Atreus was often nearly cut from the game, etc etc.
But also, people forget that Santa Monica's first God of War was a blurb in a lot of places. I remember seeing a short write-up on it in EGM's 2004 E3 issue, with Shane saying, "Keep an eye on this one." And then they exploded as the best Sony studio, creator David Jaffe became a bigger name and was invited to all these interviews, the game featured a behind-the-scenes element that most games didn't have, and this new IP comes out of nowhere late in the gen. Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, they weren't the big dogs yet.
Having posted on a billion boards over the years, Naughty Dog wasn't known as a GOTY creator until Uncharted 2 in 2009 as none of their games really garnered the praise of games like MGS2 or GTA or Metroid. I still remember Jak 2 criticism at the time. It got to a point where all you had to do was see the ND logo and you were psyched.
God of War 3, despite being a really fun game, had plenty of issues even noted at the time by a lot of gamers. Many people even here probably gushed over it at the time, as did I, but the puzzles really took a hit, especially after the first game's excellent "Align all the doors in Pandora's Temple" (the Labyrinth did not live up to that), and the pacing kind of took a hit upon getting to the Labyrinth since it blew its load with bosses in the first 4 hours. The gameplay became more refined, and it had some great boss fights, and it's a lot of fun, but it didn't blow the doors off as the first one did.
Ascension was disappointing, the cancelled IP, the layoffs, and the only game being a remaster of GOW3 for a while (instead of a full Saga collection as PS3 received), and I wasn't as, "OMG CAN'T WAIT FOR SANTA MONICA'S NEW GAME" as I used to be.
It's actually pretty cool: RDR1 won a ton of GOTY awards over GOW3. This year, GOW wins this big one and is holding its own in ways the third did not.
