Master Chief hidden in God of War III?

As you may know, the recent patch issued for PlayStation 3 exclusive God of War III fixed a glitch which allowed players to start a new game with all weapons and abilities intact. According to our source, it also papers over an Easter Egg snuck in by Santa Monica Studio – which Sony fear may have Microsoft reaching for the lawyers.

The screenshot at the top of the page was provided to us by a Sony insider who, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. Our copy of God of War III is currently out on loan, but if you have it – and you haven’t downloaded the patch – you can try it out for yourself. This is how:

First, you must have 100% of the trophies; the platinum is necessary in order to access the Easter Egg. If you have the platinum, then choose ‘New Game’ and the difficulty ‘Mortal’. As soon as the game starts – before you touch any buttons or either of the analogue sticks – pause the game, and go to the options menu. Press ‘X’ three times, and a new option of ‘Activate Master Mode’ appears. Select that, and the game will unpause… with a new, suspiciously recognisable avatar.

All cut scenes are exactly the same, including Kratos; but your new character carries something that looks somewhat like a Plasma Sword (instead of the Blades of Exile) which is equipped with a special ‘Light of the Covenant’ attack (as seen in action above).

“Sony went nuts.” says our source. “They knew about the Master Chief thing, but they thought it had been buried in the source code. As soon as they found out it was accessible in the retail package, they had a patch out within 48 hours; thousands of discs have been recalled and replaced. Heads have rolled, trust me.”

UPDATE: April Fool!