Ryan points me to an excellent interview on Ain't it Cool News with David Jaffe, director of the game everyone's talking about, God of War:

"I am a massive movie fan. I’m totally inspired by movies. Hell, I’m more of a movie fan than a game fan. To hear another movie fan say that the game is great and that it works... I’ll tell you what. This is intentionally supposed to feel more like a movie. We did not want to make a game that was a hardcore game for gamers only. We wanted to make a game that was narrative, that was story-driven. We did things with hidden checkpoints so that if you died, you don’t have to replay very much. It’s really meant to be accessible..."

We’ve done a lot of commentary on the game in various magazines. Legal doesn’t like it when I say, “Here are specific things which were influential,” for some reason. I guess we’re supposed to create in a vacuum and never have any influences of any kind. You can just play through GOD OF WAR and be like, “Oh, there’s RAIDERS, there’s Harryhausen, there’s Marvel Comics.” And then hopefully, beyond that, people will still think that GOD OF WAR has its own identity. It’s clearly born of a love of those sorts of pop culture entertainments.