When you’re making a game like God of War Ragnarok, one of the biggest questions you have to answer upfront is, “How many gods are going to die in the game?” The PS4 title that kicked off the soft reboot of the franchise didn’t have too many gods die. But with the sequel, that had to change, and it did. Kratos and his son Atreus were going to war with Odin, Thor, and others in an attempt to stop Ragnarok. That wasn’t going to be an easy task. So many characters had to die. But throughout the process of making the game, one character was going to be bulletproof.

While it may sound obvious, that character was Kratos. But when you dig deeper into things, you can see why some wondered if there were plans to kill him in the game. First, the title was slated to end the Norse saga. That meant there had to be closure on all the things that were built in the first title. Second, with Atreus being older and trying to “be his own man,” that could give the team a reason to “pass the torch” to him so that Kratos could finally have peace in the afterlife.

However, the director of the game, Eric Williams, said that killing Kratos was never an option due to what the point of the story was:

“The main one was that that’s not the story we’re trying to tell. The story that we wanted to tell was this idea of this parent-child unit coming together and then becoming strong enough that they know each other, and they know that they made each other better, and that if you were to break them apart, you’d still feel like they’d be okay.”

The keywords there are “break them apart,” not “kill one of them off. There’s little doubt that while Atreus has grown from one game to the next if Kratos were to die right now, he wouldn’t be in a good place. At the end of God of War Ragnarok, Atreus embarks on his own journey with Kratos’s blessing, giving both characters a true moment of growth.

The future of the franchise is up for debate. We know that the newest title sold incredibly well, and the post-game content teased that the stories of Kratos and Atreus aren’t done. But when we see that story continue, and where that story would go is anyone’s guess.

Source: The Washington Post