God of War (2018 video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  God of War, the 2018 PlayStation 4 game from Santa Monica Studio, was formally announced at the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo with a short gameplay demo. In it, a fully bearded Kratos taught his young son how to hunt. Soon afterward the pair fought a troll together. For the studio's most famous hero, a patient father in a quiet forest lesson was a genuine surprise.

  The demo raised questions that the finished game would have to answer. Why would a studio rebuild nearly everything about its best-known series? What does a war god owe a child who does not know what his father is? And how did a design this different win both critical devotion and millions of players?

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• 2. Rebuilding Kratos

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  On the 6th of December 2014, at the first PlayStation Experience, Santa Monica Studio's creative director Cory Barlog said the next God of War was in very early development. It would not be a prequel, he said, but possibly a reboot. By then the project had been underway for months, and it would take until 2016 for the public to see more.

  In April 2016, concept art leaked that placed Kratos in a Norse landscape. The idea was an old one. Series creator David Jaffe had once considered it after Kratos finished off the Greek gods. Jaffe was also considered to lead the new game but was unavailable.

  Studio head Shannon Studstill and Barlog said Sony had to be persuaded to make another God of War at all. Many people there wanted the series to "sleep and rest" after the lackluster response to Ascension. Studstill explained that Barlog knew the series very well, and that hiring someone who understood its history was the respect the franchise deserved. Barlog put it this way: "You gotta know the rules to break the rules". The game was his fifth in the series. He had directed God of War II in 2007 and contributed since the original 2005 game.

  The new game carries no numeral and no subtitle. Barlog said that although it continued the series, "we... reimagined everything". Studstill described the same urge in her own terms. To reinvent the series, she felt, the team had to turn a lot of things around.

  The move from Greek to Norse mythology was framed as a fresh start. Barlog compared it to the changeover from BC to AD, a restart from zero with the story moving forward from there. The writing team read the Prose Edda to see how the myths had been translated and told, because translations and interpretations vary widely. As they had done with Greek myth in earlier games, they found ways to run parallel paths from the Norse tales to fit their own story.

  Egyptian mythology was also considered, and Barlog said half the team favored it. He chose the Norse world instead because Egypt offers far more civilization, and it is less isolated and less barren. In his words, "Having too much around distracts from that central theme of a stranger in a strange land".

  Barlog explained Kratos's new home with a simple idea. Different cultures' belief systems coexisted but were separated by geography, so Kratos traveled from Greece to Norway after the events of God of War III. He also clarified that Kratos had not destroyed the entire world, only the portion ruled by the Greek pantheon. The story is set before the Vikings, in an age when their gods walked the Earth.

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• 3. One Shot, One Axe

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  About forty percent of Barlog's team disagreed at first with his plan to play the entire game as one continuous shot. The approach meant no camera cuts, no loading screens and no fades to black between play and cutscenes. It would also be the first time a three-dimensional AAA game had tried the technique, so Barlog had no examples to show his doubters. After the team finished and played through the game, they understood his vision and said they should use it from then on.

  Barlog had pitched a one-shot camera years earlier, while at Crystal Dynamics working on Tomb Raider in 2013, and been turned down. Sony proved far more supportive of his ideas. He and lead level designer Rob Davis also drew on the Resident Evil series. They admired the mix of poised camera exploration and scavenging in Resident Evil 4 from 2005. They also admired the strong vision of the team behind Resident Evil 7 in 2017.

  Camera distance was a real argument. Barlog wanted the view close to Kratos for a more intimate, player-controlled feeling. The combat team preferred a farther view, like the one in the Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham games. Barlog eventually convinced them to go close.

  That closeness had costs. Swimming, free jumping and the instant-death platforming challenges of earlier games were cut. Jumping now works only at designated spots such as a rock face or ledge, and a boat crosses the water. Multiplayer, introduced in Ascension, was dropped to concentrate on a single-player experience. In exchange, the engine could handle up to 100 enemies on screen, double the 50 of God of War III and Ascension, though no fight comes near that limit.

  The world itself is shaped carefully. Barlog said of the level structure, "it's open, but it is not an open world." A fast travel feature opens up only later in the game.

  Lead gameplay designer Jason McDonald, who had worked on the series since the original game, explained the choice of a Norse axe. The team wanted a more grounded direction, but at first did not know how to make an axe feel distinctive. Once they came up with throwing it and calling it back to Kratos's hand, he said, "things started to fall into place". The Leviathan Axe is infused with ice magic and returns to his grip much like Thor's hammer Mjölnir. Hitting precision targets on large enemies stuns them, and the axe can also freeze or move mechanisms in the world. McDonald admitted that axe combat is a little slower than combat with the Blades of Chaos, "but it's just as fluid and just as brutal as it's ever been".

  Kratos also carries the Guardian Shield, which folds into a vambrace on his left forearm. The fire-infused Blades of Chaos return later in the story. A Spartan Rage meter fills during combat and unleashes bare-handed attacks. Each enemy shows a health bar and a stun bar, and filling the stun bar triggers a grab prompt. Depending on the foe, Kratos may rip it in half or hurl it into other enemies.

  Role-playing elements give the fighting a long arc. Players craft and upgrade armor, spend a currency called Hacksilver, and use experience points to learn skills. Iðunn's Apples raise maximum health, and horns of Blood Mead raise maximum Rage. Magical runic attacks run on cooldown timers rather than the blue orbs of older games.

  Barlog took inspiration from Dark Souls, released in 2011, for the game's combat loop, strategic decisions and approach to storytelling. Designers Anthony DiMento and Luis Sanchez said level design and exploration owed a debt to Bloodborne, from 2015. They wanted the world to breathe, with "micro-loops where you're unlocking paths, unlocking shortcuts" that gave exploration purpose.

  One problem was how to give out quests in a world with no non-playable characters outside the core story. DiMento's answer was the wayward spirits, ghosts with ties to the land whose stories made the world feel more alive. Side quests ended up in four tiers. Quests from the dwarves Brok and Sindri sat at the top and became dungeons. Wayward spirits came next, then treasure maps and artifacts. Milestones such as killing all of Odin's ravens sat at the bottom.

  Each tier needed a reason for Kratos to bother. For Brok and Sindri it was better gear. For the spirits it was his son's kind-hearted naivete, and the chance to teach the boy a life lesson.

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• 4. Nine Realms, One Journey

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  At least 150 years pass between 2010's God of War III and this story, which unfolds mostly in Midgard, the realm of humans. Midgard is the same realm where the Greek world once existed. As more dangerous creatures began appearing there, many humans fled.

  Six of the nine realms of Norse mythology can be explored. Alfheim is the mystical home of the light and dark elves. Helheim is the icy land of the dead, and Jötunheim is the mountainous land of the Giants. Optional visits include Niflheim, a realm of poisonous fog hiding a maze of rewards, and the fire realm Muspelheim. There, six trials lead up a great volcano to a fight with Göndul, one of the nine Valkyries.

  The other three realms are sealed. Odin, ruler of Asgard, has blocked access to Asgard, to Vanaheim, home of the Vanir gods, and to Svartalfheim, home of the dwarves. The tree Yggdrasil joins all the realms, which exist at once in the same space. Travel runs through the Bifröst from a root of Yggdrasil inside Týr's Temple, which stands at the center of the Lake of the Nine. Týr was a peaceful God of War who traveled to other lands and learned their mythologies. Odin had him killed, believing he secretly aided the Giants and would try to overthrow him.

  Faye, whose given name was Laufey, died of an unknown cause shortly before the game begins. Kratos, the son of Zeus and a warrior from Sparta, had met her after ending up in ancient Scandinavia once his war against Olympus was over. Their son Atreus can hear the thoughts of other beings, but he knows nothing of his father's past or divine nature. After Kratos cremates her body, a stranger with godly powers confronts him. They fight, and Kratos seemingly kills the stranger. Then father and son set out to honor Faye's last request, which was to scatter her ashes from the highest peak of the nine realms.

  On the road they meet the dwarves Brok and Sindri, known as the Huldra Brothers, who forge gear for them. They meet the kindly Witch of the Woods and the World Serpent, Jörmungandr. A black mist blocks their path until the Witch sends them to Alfheim to seize its light. At Midgard's peak they overhear the stranger, now revealed as the god Baldur, speaking with his nephews Modi and Magni. The imprisoned Mímir, who claims to be the smartest man alive, tells them the true peak lies in Jötunheim. He instructs Kratos to behead him so the Witch can revive his head. On reviving, he reveals that the Witch is the goddess Freya.

  Freya's own story explains Baldur. A Vanir goddess and the former Queen of the Valkyries, she tried to leave Odin after he began corrupting her magic. In return he stripped her of her Valkyrie wings and banished her to Midgard. A spell stops her from harming others or leaving the realm, so she hid behind her alias. To shield her son from a prophecy of his death, she made Baldur immortal. The spell also kept him from feeling pain or pleasure, and he came to resent her. Only mistletoe could hurt him, a secret she kept.

  The story then turns on a series of costly choices. Atreus falls ill, overcome by the contradiction of a god who believes himself mortal. To save him, Kratos must fetch a troll's heart from Helheim, where his frost-based axe is useless. He unearths his old weapons, and he is haunted by the spirit of the goddess Athena and a vision of Zeus. Once Atreus is revived, Kratos tells him they are gods. Atreus grows arrogant and murders a weakened Modi against his father's orders.

  Baldur ambushes them at Midgard's peak and destroys the portal to Jötunheim. Later Freya steps in to protect her son, but an arrow of mistletoe from Atreus breaks her spell. Kratos spares the beaten Baldur on condition that he leave them and Freya alone. When Baldur tries to strangle Freya, Kratos kills him. Freya vows revenge and leaves with the body, but first she taunts Kratos about the past he still has not told his son.

  Kratos finally confesses that he has killed many people, including his own father. Atreus laments the cycle of violence, and Kratos says they must not repeat the mistakes of those before them. In Jötunheim they find a temple mural of their own adventures, proof that the Giants had foretold the journey. Faye, they learn, was a Giant who chose to stay in Midgard, making Atreus half Giant, one-quarter god and one-quarter mortal. The Giants and his mother called him Loki. Baldur had been hunting Faye all along on Odin's orders, unaware she was dead. Kratos chooses to ignore a covered mural that seems to show him dying in his son's arms. They scatter the ashes, and Kratos reveals that his own name came from a compassionate Spartan comrade.

  Back in Midgard, Mímir warns that Baldur's death has started the three-year Fimbulwinter nearly a century earlier than prophesied, which means Ragnarök will follow soon. As the pair sleep, Atreus dreams of Thor arriving at the end of that winter to confront them.

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• 5. Father and Son

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  Some members of the early team called Kratos "annoying" and felt his story had run its course. Talk of a different protagonist circulated, and Barlog said it took a lot of convincing to keep him. Citing Mario, he argued that Kratos is intrinsically tied to the God of War series, just as the plumber is to his.

  Barlog said he did not want a simple reboot that retold the origin story. He wanted to see what would happen if Kratos, who had made many bad decisions that destroyed Olympus, finally made a good one. The birth of Barlog's own son shaped that idea. Another influence was the canceled live-action Star Wars series that George Lucas developed in the 2000s. While at LucasArts, Barlog had visited Skywalker Ranch and read scripts by writers from The Shield and 24, including an origin story that gave Emperor Palpatine an emotional, sympathetic fall.

  Barlog boiled the game down to a single line: "This game is about Kratos teaching his son how to be a god, and his son teaching Kratos how to be human again". Referring to the Marvel character, he added, "We've already told the story of The Hulk. We want to tell the story of Bruce Banner now". Studstill said the franchise needed to evolve emotionally into something meatier for an older generation of gamers.

  The boy's name leaked by accident. At E3 2016, GameSpot mistakenly reported that Kratos's son was called Charlie, which Barlog laughingly denied. The giant turtle above Freya's house is named Chaurli as a nod to the slip. In January 2017 a fan downloaded the game's overture and spotted the track description, "An introduction to Kratos and Atreus", and Barlog confirmed the name on Twitter. Details of the boy's mother stayed hidden until release because she was so central to the plot.

  Early in development, the many challenges and costs of Atreus led to a suggestion that he be cut or sharply reduced. Barlog argued that the game could have worked without him, but it would have been like the 2013 film All Is Lost. Kratos would be a character who occasionally talks to himself, in a mostly silent game where everyone speaks old Norse. After hearing the case, Sony gave Barlog the freedom to keep the boy. Rob Davis added that Atreus opened gameplay and storytelling options that would not otherwise have been possible.

  The team worked hard to make Atreus useful rather than a burden. Barlog did not want an escort mission in which artificial intelligence causes problems for the player. Atreus acts on his own until the player presses one button to issue a command, such as shooting an arrow at a targeted enemy. He calls out enemy positions, which matters because the close camera hides some foes. He distracts weaker enemies while Kratos fights the stronger ones, and if he is overwhelmed he is only stunned. He cannot be killed. His runic attacks summon spectral animals, such as a wolf pack or the squirrel Ratatoskr, who digs up health and rage orbs. Jason McDonald said it took many iterations to make the enemies and Atreus work together.

  After the reveal, comparisons to Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, with its own father-and-child story, came quickly. Barlog found the comparison fantastic and puzzling as a criticism. He did not claim it as a direct influence, but said, "I think we're all inspired by each other". He also used The Last of Us to show his team how a companion could work without turning into an escort mission.

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• 6. Voices and Music

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  Christopher Judge, best known as Teal'c on Stargate SG-1, replaced Terrence C. Carson as the voice of Kratos. Carson had played the role since the original God of War. He said, "Sony went in a new direction". He understood the reasoning and accepted that losing jobs is part of the business, but he felt a lack of respect because nobody at Sony told him of the change.

  Barlog explained that earlier games let someone other than the voice actor handle motion capture. The new camera work required a performer close to Kratos's size, working alongside a child. Carson was much shorter, and Barlog said adjusting for a child's height would have made reshooting animations nearly impossible. Judge stood 6 ft 3 in and had the build of a professional football player. He also had real chemistry with his then-10-year-old co-star Sunny Suljic, whose opinion the team sought. Suljic liked Judge best of all the auditions, and Judge described their time together as time he had missed with his own children.

  Judge researched Carson's performance but chose not to imitate it. What won him over was the script, which he said was a real script and not just a way to get into battles. In his words, it was a great story of a relationship and a crazy mythology. He performed Kratos's cinematic motion capture, while stuntman Eric Jacobus handled combat. Animators found Jacobus on YouTube, and he was hired immediately after sending an audition tape. Former WWE wrestler Shad Gaspard also performed some of the motion capture.

  In November 2014, composer Bear McCreary, known for Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead, was called into Santa Monica Studio. Music producers Peter Scaturro and Keith Leary wanted to discuss a secret project. They had worked with him before on SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs in 2011. The talk of folk music, mythology and Nordic instruments let McCreary guess it was a new God of War. After meeting Barlog he felt the series was in good hands, since God of War II was his favorite installment.

  McCreary decided to write entirely new music. He did not call the earlier scores emotionally dynamic, but he kept their remembered flavor of deep choirs, pounding drums and shrieking brass and recast it for a northern setting. He spent months studying Viking folk music and used exotic instruments and languages from Northern European folk traditions. The main Kratos theme combines low orchestra, an Icelandic choir, deep male voices, and the Faroese singer Eivør Pálsdóttir. It also uses folk percussion and the nyckelharpa and hurdy gurdy. The track "Witch of the Woods" features a viola da gamba, an ancestor of the modern cello. The Stranger's theme, in the track "Deliverance", uses a Hardanger fiddle.

  The first theme McCreary wrote was "Memories of Mother", which he originally meant for Kratos himself. Once the game was in full production, the team felt it was too sad and lyrical for him. McCreary spent several months with Barlog, Scaturro, Leary and Sony music director Chuck Doud on a replacement he called masculine, relentless and badass. The three-note result is most obvious in the title track. Only later did he see that Faye needed a theme, and his rejected melody was exactly what she needed. It was woven through many scenes and is featured about as prominently as Kratos's own.

  Sony asked McCreary to perform with a live orchestra at the E3 2016 press conference. He opened the show with the main theme and played the gameplay demo's music live. On the 13th of January 2017 a recording of the overture was released free for a limited time. Barlog gave it away to thank fans for pushing the trailer past fifteen million views on YouTube.

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• 7. Editions and Expansions

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  God of War went gold on the 22nd of March 2018 and reached shelves on the 20th of April 2018. The Stone Mason Edition, sold only in the United States and Canada, packed in a SteelBook case, a 9 in statue of Kratos and Atreus by Gentle Giant, small carvings and a cloth map. It also held a stonemason's ring and a talking keychain of Mímir's head. A Collector's Edition and a Digital Deluxe Edition offered lighter bundles. A limited-edition PlayStation 4 Pro console etched with the runes from Kratos's axe launched the same day.

  Barlog promised before launch that there would be no microtransactions and no post-release expansion pack. He had pitched a story expansion, but it was too ambitious. It resembled The Last of Us: Left Behind and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which were large standalone releases. Instead, Santa Monica added free features through patches. Photo Mode arrived with update 1.20 on the 9th of May 2018, letting players adjust field of view, filters and the facial expressions of Kratos and Atreus. New Game Plus came with update 1.30 on the 20th of August 2018, along with the option to skip cutscenes.

  On the 2nd of February 2021, an enhancement update let the game run at 60 frames per second on the PlayStation 5 with checkerboard-rendered 4K. A Windows version followed on the 14th of January 2022, handled by Jetpack Interactive under Santa Monica's supervision. It added Nvidia's DLSS and ultra-widescreen support and made this the first main entry in the series on a non-PlayStation platform.

  The story spilled well beyond the console. On the 1st of February 2018, Sony and Facebook released A Call from the Wilds, a text game played through Messenger that follows Atreus on his first adventure. A smartphone companion app, Mímir's Vision, followed on the 17th of April 2018 with background on the Norse setting.

  On the 28th of August 2018, Titan Books published an official novelization written by Cory Barlog's father, James M. Barlog. Alastair Duncan, the voice of Mímir, narrates the audiobook. Dark Horse Comics published a four-issue prequel series by Chris Roberson and Tony Parker between November 2018 and February 2019. A second series, Fallen God, ran from March to June 2021. The studio's five-year effort was recorded in the YouTube documentary Raising Kratos, released on the 10th of May 2019. A live-action television series is in development for Amazon Prime Video.

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• 8. Acclaim and Sales

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  Metacritic labeled the reception "universal acclaim" and gave God of War a score that ties the original game for the highest in the franchise. It has the fourth-highest score ever for a PlayStation 4 game and the highest for an original, non-remastered PlayStation 4 exclusive. It was the top-rated PlayStation 4 game of 2018 until Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived that October and pushed it to second.

  Reviewers praised the story, art direction, music, combat and characters, and many felt the series had been revitalized without losing its identity. Nick Plessas of Electronic Gaming Monthly singled out the exchanges between Kratos and Atreus, noting that the rage and pain of the father's past clash with his wish to protect his son. Game Informer's Joe Juba said the Leviathan Axe turns the player into a tactician rather than a combo-driven brawler. GameSpot's Peter Brown felt Mímir stole the show, and called the game one of the best-looking console games ever released.

  The camera drew praise as well. Chris Plante of Polygon called it a technical marvel because of the seamless shifts between cinematic and gameplay. IGN's Jonathon Dornbush said the intimacy of the view makes the emotion more real and impactful. Jason Faulkner of Game Revolution agreed in part but found it hard at times to control the camera and keep track of enemies.

  Criticism was gentler than the praise. Chris Carter of Destructoid felt that recalling the axe got old after a while. Dan Ryckert of Giant Bomb found the crafting presentation half-baked and the use of some materials confusing. Juba called the fast-travel system weirdly cumbersome and found the map hard to read. Brown thought the final fight against Baldur, though narratively strong, played things a little safe.

  In 2025, Rolling Stone ranked the game number 39 on its list of the 50 greatest video games of all time.

  Sales kept pace with the reviews. In its first week in the United Kingdom it sold 35% more physical units than God of War III, making it the fastest-selling entry in the franchise. It then held the top spot on the all-format chart for six consecutive weeks, a record for a PlayStation 4 exclusive. In Japan it sold 46,091 units in its first week and took second place on the chart. Worldwide, it sold over 3.1 million units within three days, which was the fastest for a PlayStation 4 exclusive at the time. It passed 5 million within a month of release, and by November 2022 it had sold 23 million, the best total in the series. A sequel, God of War Ragnarök, arrived that same month for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, with a Windows release in 2024.

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