Cyclops

The Cyclopes were a species of burly, one-eyed giants seen throughout the Greek world. In the games they are beasts of war in the armies of the gods and their enemies, and one of the most frequent big foes of Kratos, turning up in almost every Greek-era game. (God of War (2005); God of War II; God of War III)

From herders to war beasts#

The games give the Cyclopes little backstory of their own, so their history comes from the myth the series draws on. In Hesiod's telling the first Cyclopes were sons of the Sky-father Ouranos and Gaia, master craftsmen who were kept bound beneath the earth for ages, never allowed to walk free. (Theogony)

During the war between the gods and the Titans, Zeus freed the Cyclopes, and in return they gave him thunder and lightning, the weapons that won him the war. In the games the brutes have long since become weapons themselves, set loose in battle by gods and kings alike. (Theogony)

The bloodline of Poseidon#

Myth also tells of a second kind of Cyclops, the shepherd giants of Homer's Odyssey. The most famous of them, Polyphemus, was a son of Poseidon, the Sea God, who trapped Odysseus and his men in his cave until they blinded him and escaped. In the games, whatever their ancestry, the Cyclopes are wholly creatures of war, strong enough to scatter whole squads of soldiers. (Odyssey)

Servants of the gods#

The Cyclopes appeared in the armies and strongholds of Greece wherever the gods loosed them. When Ares besieged Athens, Cyclopes served as shock infantry in his ranks and stood guard over parts of Pandora's Temple, where Kratos faced the armored, siege-equipped Cyclops Enforcers and the feral Cyclops Desert Kings. Even there they were not invincible. In the novelisation of the siege, Artemis turned the beasts of the wild against Ares, and her venomous vipers made easy prey of the mighty Cyclopes among his legions. (God of War (2005); God of War (novel))

In the wars of Attica, Cyclopes were enslaved by the Persian king and driven against the city alongside a great Basilisk, and Kratos fought many more of them in the Underworld, including some clad in golden armor that resisted all but his fiercest blows. The brutes also rose again in the final fall of Olympus, serving as powerful minions of the gods in the last days of the Greek world. (God of War: Chains of Olympus; God of War III)