Okay, to be fair, I can't dismiss every multiplayer mode haphazardly bolted onto a strong singleplayer game out of hand. There's a reason Naughty Dog is keeping the The Last of Us multiplayer servers alive to this day, after all. Still, God of War seems a strange choice (and yes, I remember Ascension).
As seems to be the case more and more often in the gaming industry of today, though, every IP with more than three fans must be milked dry. Details have leaked about a canceled God of War multiplayer game that was previously in development at Bluepoint Studios, no doubt started as part of Sony's recent push toward live service trends. According to MP1st, an outlet that received leaked screenshots directly from a source inside Bluepoint, this unnamed live-service title would have returned to Kratos' Greek origins:
The screenshots from the project that were shared with us offer a good glance at an early stage of development, showing some assets and environments that were being worked on for the title.
The first noticeable detail that we can get by looking at the gallery is that the game was clearly planned to return to a Greek setting. This is evidenced by the presence of Greek temples, classic artifacts such as pottery, and other details we will discuss later.
In addition to the temple exteriors, we can see other environments, such as caverns and interiors, that appear to have been designed to accommodate multiple players, such as an armory stocked with weapons and shields.
Another interesting detail for those familiar with the lore is the apparent inclusion of the god Hades, at least in name. We were told that Hades would have been the owner of the armory, as well as the yellow sulfur pools visible in the caverns. So if the game was meant to fit into the established canon at all, the involvement of a living Hades suggests a timeline prior to the events of God of War III. That's if this game was meant to be canon in any way; otherwise, it could have been an anything-goes kind of thing, not connected to the main God of War continuity beyond name.
In the end, though, PlayStation lacked confidence in the game's long-term viability. This move is understandable considering the poor reception most live-service proposals receive from PS fans, especially given the fairly recent example of Concord.
After Concord, I certainly don't blame Sony for writing off the entire live-service well as poisoned. The sooner big publishers realize that chasing the Fortnite gravy train is a fruitless endeavor, the sooner we can get a steady stream of high-quality singleplayer titles again.
