With 2018’s “God of War,” a reinvention of the long-running mythical action series for Sony’s PlayStation consoles, the hero, Kratos, was transformed. While Kratos was once a man of more fury than words, Sony’s Santa Monica Studio’s’ “God of War” turned him into one of the video game medium’s most famous dads.
It also planted a seed that Kratos could eventually evolve, though that would be more than a decade in the making. “We were really excited about what we could do in the game,” Barlog says. “We make games. And it’s really neat and fun to do cinematic things, but how can you actually feel like the player has agency?”
“So much of Norse mythology is built around the prophecy of Ragnarök. It’s the only mythology where the gods not only know when they’re going to die, they know who is going to kill them,” says narrative director Matt Sophos. “But the more we started to focus on that, the more we kept going, ‘We’re off the path.’ ...