God of War Ragnarok almost killed its protagonist

A new interview with God of War Ragnarok’s narrative director has revealed that the game’s main character Kratos almost suffered a very different fate.

The protagonist of the God of War series, Kratos, was originally going to die at the start of the latest game in the series, Ragnarok.

Narrative director for the series Matt Sophos said in an interview that the original plan for the game’s script was very different from the end result, and at one point had Kratos killed off at the start of the game.

In 2018’s God of War, Kratos sees a mural in-game that depicts his death, which is said to be a prophecy of things to come for the Greek god of war. The development team at Sony Santa Monica had intended to follow through with this prophecy, but changed their minds after looking back at previous games in the series.

“Kratos died in the Thor fight at the very beginning of the game,” Sophos told MinnMax (as transcribed by VGC), “This was the earliest, earliest draft of an outline that we had come up with, that we took to [director Eric Williams]”.

God of War series started on the PlayStation 2, but was rebooted in 2018 for the PS4. Picture: Sony Interactive Entertainment

“He was gonna die, and then it wasn’t a permanent death,’ Sophos continued, “What was going to happen, he would get pulled out of Hell, essentially, by Atreus”.

However, this wouldn’t have been the first time Kratos died in the series. Prior to the 2018 game, the series had a longstanding tradition of the protagonist dying and having to crawl his way out of hell. Having become somewhat of a cliche in the series, the team decided against using it again.

“Eric was like, ‘I don’t want to do that’. Kratos has died and come back from it too many times, and it’ll feel a little bit too ‘oh, you said he was going to die’, and ‘oh, you just killed him, but he came right back,” Sophos said.

“The hook, the emotion, wasn’t really going to be there, and he was absolutely right, and so that’s why it didn’t last very long”.

God of War Ragnarok was received very well by press and fans alike. Picture: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony recently announced that God of War Ragnarok had sold 11 million units since it was released, thanking players on social media for their support. The previous game in the series sold about 5 million units in the same time frame.

A blind gamer helped make God of War Ragnarok accessible, with Sony Santa Monica working with accessibility consultants to make the game almost entirely playable without site, alongside a host of other accessibility options.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.