God of War has 10 different motion blur settings and you shouldn't use any of them

Kratos pulling a funny face in God of War
(Image credit: Santa Monica Studio)

One of the best things about Sony bringing its top PlayStation games to PC is that we can finally banish motion blur to where it belongs: the bin. There's truly no singular graphics setting I dislike more, yet it runs rampant across many hit console titles. It's almost like they don't design these games specially for my wants and needs alone.

Hand me a game I've been meaning to play for a long time now, say God of War, which releases on PC tomorrow, and the first thing I'm doing is finding out if I can throw motion blur to the curb. 

The good news is you can cut motion blur entirely out of Sony's Norse epic. Thank Thor for that. But imagine my horror when I find out this game has not one, not three, but 10 different motion blur settings.

That's not the worst part. The default setting? Oh you bet it's 10.

It's enough to make you nauseous. So I thought it best to put out a PSA just so that every like-minded gamer knows what to do when they boot God of War up for the first time. 

Just take a look at these comparative clips I put together in order to better show what I mean.

The difference is night and day.

I remember a similar overzealous motion blur ridiculing my every move in Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4, prior to the game's PC release. Thankfully that could be cut out entirely on PC, meaning I could actually stomach more than a few hours of playtime in one go.

In God of War, it's just as impactful on my experience. If not more so. You'll find you spin the camera around a whole lot in combat, and I dare say it's more fun when you can see what's going on around you as you do.

Of course, there are some in-between settings for motion blur in God of War that are passable. So if you really must have some form of blur to better your time in-game, perhaps I can tempt you towards a 2 or a 3, rather than the default 10. After all, this is as much a heads-up that the motion blur is exceptionally high by default in God of War on PC as it is a tirade against the entire concept. 

Everything in moderation, right? Though especially motion blur.

Jacob Ridley
Managing Editor, Hardware

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, and would go on to run the team as hardware editor. He joined PC Gamer's top staff as senior hardware editor before becoming managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll now find him reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries and testing the newest PC components.

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