- God of War Ragnarok’s narrative director Matt Sophos revealed some details about the early draft of the game’s story.
- The early stages of the story had a much different fate for Kratos.
- Eventually, the early story draft was shot down for a different storyline.
God of War Ragnarok was one of the biggest, critically acclaimed, and fan-favourite games to come out last year. The game’s story followed Kratos and Atreus on a new adventure, similar to its predecessor. That said, God of War Ragnarok’s story originally had a much different fate for Kratos leading to a darker story. While speaking to MinnMax (via VGC), Ragnarok’s narrative director Matt Sophos revealed some key details about the early draft of the game’s story, which was eventually avoided for a much different storyline.
If you play God of War Ragnarok, Kratos fights against Thor early in the game. In the early draft of the story, Thor kills Kratos in the fight, being in line with a mural predicting Kratos’ death in 2018’s God of War. Sophos said, “There was the earliest, earliest draft of an outline that we had come up with, that we took to [director Eric Williams]. Kratos died in the Thor fight at the very beginning of the game.” Sophos added, “And so, he was gonna die, and then it wasn’t a permanent death. What was going to happen – and I don’t care, we can tell this, because it doesn’t happen any more so this is all fan fiction at this point – he would get pulled out of Hell, essentially, by Atreus.” Sophos further explained, “But it’s now been, like, 20 years have passed – it was going to be a big time jump-type thing. So that was a version of it.”
Williams eventually shot down the idea as story of Kratos dying and resurrected back to life has been done before and it didn’t have much emotional payoff. Sophos added that the current ending of God of War Ragnarok is much more hopeful for Kratos and conveys the message that characters’ fates aren’t really sealed. He said, “Nothing is written that can’t be unwritten, as long as you’re willing to make changes in your life then you’re not bound to fate. And so when we landed on that, when we know that was the story we wanted to tell, we knew that Kratos couldn’t die.”
