When Sony unveiled God of War 4 at E3 2016, we were all surprised – not least because Kratos has grown a beard, moved into Norse mythology, and is now a dad.
Obviously then, Kratos has moved away from Greece and has decided to find something to kill in the land of trolls and facial hair (that’s a working title), but the God of War team took a while to decide on where they should take Kratos next.
Creative director Cory Barlog told Eurogamer during E3 that the team knew it wanted to tackle a new mythology, but they weren’t sure which Gods would make the most sense in terms of the story.
Barlog revealed that one other mythology appealed to them:
Egyptian mythology was the other one and half the team was way into that. All of them had great reasons. I think, for me, as I looked at both of those, Egyptian mythology is about the pharaohs as embodiments of the gods on earth and there’s a lot more about civilisation – it’s less isolated, less barren. I think at this time, we really wanted to focus on Kratos. Having too much around distracts from that central theme of a stranger in a strange land
There we have it then – God of War 4 by all accounts seems to be very much the story of Kratos and his son, and Barlog wanted to focus on that as much as possible.
It makes sense. From the nine minute reveal of the game, it’s obvious that this older Kratos is an entirely different protagonist than he used to be.
Giving one of the angriest, most murderous characters in videogames a little life to look after and protect is a fascinating new dynamic, and one that should be explored away from pesky side characters.
Barlog previously revealed that Kratos’ son is the only one of the two of them who understands the local language in this strange and hostile world, so it’d seem our bearded buddy will only have his kid to talk to.
Still, now we’ve seen that Kratos can clearly flit between mythologies, there’s no reason that he couldn’t go and punish the Egyptians somewhere down the line.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.