This article contains heavy spoilers for God of War: Ragnarok.
Sony Santa Monicarevitalized theGod of Warseries with 2018’s soft reboot and achieved massive success. It enthralled gamers with the exciting premise of exploring multiple mythologies, and has set the series on a path to long life as a result of the interconnected nature of the mythical worlds. What does Kratos do after he brings upon the destruction of the Greek world in pursuit of vengeance? He moves on to the Norse realms to inadvertently set events in motion that cause the prophesied apocalypse to occur 100 years earlier.
Kratos’s story in Greece was fleshed out over three mainline entries and multiple spin-offs. But for the Norse setting, Sony Santa Monica decided to cap off the saga in just two installments. The team reasoned (viaIGN) that with each game amounting to five years' worth of development time, a trilogy would’ve taken 15 years to complete, which was deemed too long and budget-intensive. But could an additional installment within Norse mythology have resulted in a more cohesive and comprehensive narrative?
A lot of time has passed since Kratos left Greece. He traveled across the world and finally decided on the Norse realm of Midgard. God of War 2018 introduced a significantly changed Kratos from his vindictive and raging younger years– a stoic, measured, and mellowed individual, with a son to raise and care for. The Norse games omit the details of his arrival into the Norse realms and his early life in Midgard except for the flashbacks with Kratos and Faye inGod of War: Ragnarok. Kratos’s profound character transformation is never elaborated upon, and the plot leaves it to the audience to fill in the gaps.
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But to the games' credit, the character journeys of Kratos and Atreus are some of the most poignant portrayals in the medium of video games. However, quite a few of the main characters come across as underdeveloped, as they are not provided with adequate screen time. There is a stark inconsistency between how Thor was described in God of War (2018), for instance, and his actual character in Ragnarok. Thor is made out to be extremely violent, merciless, and destructive in the stories told by Mimir. He also sports a muscular physique in the statue and Atreus’s dream sequence in the first game. But for most of his screen time in Ragnarok, Thor appears miserable, broken, drunk, pot-bellied, and wallowing in self-pity. What caused the physical and psychological change in Thor between the two games? Mimir mentioned that Odin had the statue made in Thor’s honor, which doesn’t align with Odin’s ill-treatment ofThor in GoW: Ragnarok.
Thor, Thrud, and Sif could have used a more fleshed-out family dynamic, as the dysfunctions that beset them were only touched upon superficially. The character progression for them could’ve been much more organic had the story gone deeper into exploring interactions within the family.
Instead, those dynamics mainly exist to stir up tension with Atreus from time to time, with the motivations and convictions of the Norse gods shifting and changing quite whimsically. For example, Sif is quite antagonistic towards Atreus and Kratos for a long time in the game. But she also defends Atreus when Thrud threatens to hurt him for heralding Ragnarok near the end of the game, as if suddenly realizing that Atreus wasn’t to blame for the pitiable state of her family and thatOdinwould sacrifice anyone to have his way. In one scene, Sif reminds Thor of some fond memories with their sons, Magni and Modi. Did she just forget that Thor had beaten Modi to near-death for not being able to save Magni from being killed by Kratos? Similarly, it is never explained why Thrud fails to recognize the evil nature of her grandfather all this time.
By the end of the game, Thor is depicted as more of a sympathetic character when he finally refuses to fight for Odin. But he is the same barbarian who committed countless atrocities, chief of them being Giant genocide. There is a palpable disconnect between the two games in some of the story and character arcs.
Grand and glorious boss fights with Gods and mythical beasts are the hallmark of the God of War games. But for the Norse saga, Kratos fights very few Gods and unique boss enemies compared to his Greek outing. Granted, the multitude of Valkyries, Berserkers,Trolls, and Dragons serve as a fun challenge, but there’s a distinct lack of battles against key figures from the mythology with detailed characterization.
Many figures from Norse mythology, like Hoenir, Hodr, Ve, Vili, Vidar, Njord, and more, don’t appear in the games even though they are mentioned in the various forms of lore in the game and other God of War media. Vili and Ve were brothers of Odin, and the three brothers collectively slayed the primordial giant, Ymir. There are plenty of such characters that could have provided great opportunities for excitingboss fightslike Lodurr, Vidar, Hoenir, Hel, and more. Also, leaning a little more into adjacent mythologies like Scottish, Irish and Celtic could have also had interesting implications, like how Kelpie from Celtic mythology makes an appearance in GoW Ragnarok (which isn’t fully fleshed out).
Ragnarok also does not address some unresolved story threads; the magical mask and the rift between worlds, Faye’s death, Atreus' sleep-induced teleportation to Jotunheim, and the fate of the giants all go by largely without exposition or proper resolution. Some of these topics might be explored in future games, but the discontinuation of the Norse saga will inevitably lock us out of some answers.
Most fans are content with how the game concludes the saga, but there’s no question that Norse mythology had much more to offer.
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