The showstopper at PlayStation’s State of Play was a new entry in the God of War franchise. However, instead of introducing Kratos’s newest adventure, Santa Monica Studio revealed God of War Laufey, which, as indicated by the title, shifts its focus to Faye, a hero and warrior in her own right, to tell a tale that runs parallel to the events of the 2018 God of War reboot.
Somewhat expectedly, there has been everything from excitement to anger at the new direction. But to Santa Monica Studio, Laufey has long represented an exciting way to branch out, and to tell new and different stories that enrich the God of War we know. We spoke to the game’s director, Ariel Lawrence, about the announcement of the game, the response, and what the studio hopes to achieve with its latest game.
GameSpot: God of War’s identity has changed so many times and Laufey is probably the most drastic. What is God of War to you and Santa Monica Studio?
Ariel Lawrence: Having worked on the franchise for a long time [and] been through a lot of those evolutions, I think it’s telling an epic story that has tons of fantasy and violence, but at the heart of it still is a really human personal story.
A lot of people think of Kratos one way, as rage-filled, but there was a real person underneath that. And for us, seeing that evolution over time with the different consoles and thinking about what new things can we bring to that storytelling, what new things can we bring to that combat experience. And being able to show a mythological world that people maybe haven’t seen and deliver on that surprise and delight kind of feel.
There’s been a feeling that Laufey is taking the franchise away from what it used to be, which for many is that violence and a bit of machismo too. How do you feel about that assessment and what would you say to potentially assuage those fears?
I mean, I know a little bit more than what we’ve shown for the reveal, so for me, Faye definitely has violence in it and is capable of that. I think it’s just more, what does a warrior look like in Faye? And it’s a little different than what a warrior looks like in Kratos. They’re different size and shaped people, but I think they’re still both as strong and capable. For me, the level of violence for Faye is really like, ‘what is going to get the job done?’ And so when she’s going to take somebody out it’s, ‘what is the way to get that done as quickly, as cleanly as possible?’ There’s still some more violence to come.
Kratos was a Spartan general. He’s still a tactician and things like that, but I think where he has more of the ability to be a brick wall, Faye is going to take on monsters and gods that are of different sizes and shapes, so she’s going to use her physicality differently. And so I think that’s really just playing to the strengths of both of those.
Faye wants to help Kratos and Atreus as quickly as she can, so to get through the world and those encounters to get [to] what she needs, she’s going to try to go the best way possible. Faye, she’s a little quicker on her feet.
Faye is a giant, she was the protector of her people, she wielded the Leviathan axe before Kratos and she, essentially, tamed the beast [that Kratos was]. Why do you think there’s still skepticism around Faye’s ability?
Everybody comes at their stories with their own worldview, so I’m not sure what drives a lot of people to say that, but I definitely think Faye is as qualified as you said. We know that Faye and Kratos stood toe-to-toe and were partners in their life together and they cared about each other. He saw her as a capable warrior and she saw in him also that capability for change. I’m not sure what drives other folks to make assumptions on that, but I know her to be quite capable.
Grief and revenge and cycles of violence have been a key part of Kratos’ story thematically but this game feels like it could be different. What is the thematic journey that you want to take Faye on?
I think both Faye and Kratos have had things happen in their past that they wish maybe could have gone differently. Faye was the protector of the Giants, but that didn’t quite work out as well for the Giants. And so I think part of Faye’s journey is processing all of those things along the way, and how can she help Kratos and Atreus? And what’s the next step of her becoming and how do you come to terms with that?
We saw a lot of that with Kratos; what is he coming into? What is holding him back from doing those things? And he’s had to process his rage and his grief, his relationship with his family and who he was to who he is now. I think Faye, as a warrior, has a similar journey in front of her, maybe with slightly different beginnings. But still, I think [that’s] a person we can keep telling stories about.
Kratos has been the embodiment of rage that has been for a lot of his life. I think a lot of people feel that in themselves through him, so that is a big reason why people have such a visceral reaction to him not being there. There is the potential to not be able to channel those emotions through a character that has been there for them to do that. But there are perhaps to channel other emotions through Faye. What is the emotion you think that Faye represents the most, that could be a point of relation for people who come to this franchise for the ability to express themselves?
I think for Faye it’s really about understanding what is holding us back from becoming the best, most powerful version of ourselves, and coming to terms with what it is that that’s holding you back? But also I don’t think people should be afraid that Kratos isn’t going to be there for them. We’ve got the remakes coming, there’s plenty more stories to tell for Kratos, and I hope that everybody allows him to also continue the growth that he’s had for the couple of games. He’ll always have a certain part of that in him that he’s dealing with, but we all grow and tell new stories as well.
Do you feel pressure of being at the front of the first major revolution? game-changing moment in the God of War franchise and do you think about how your success could pave the way for what happens to the franchise going forward?
On the inside and making these games, every time somebody has said, “Oh, you shouldn’t do that because that’s not how games do things,” even from the very first God of War–at a time when a lot of the great action games were coming out of Japan. It [was] like, “An American studio is not going to be able to do that.” And I think every time we’ve tried something new, somebody has internally, externally, etc, said, “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and that becomes a personal challenge for the team to be able to push forward and experiment;
When they were like, “Oh, you can’t go to a single camera. You can’t have the son come in. You can’t do any of these things,” that’s the challenge, that’s part of the fun.
But also most of the time we’re just thinking about how we tell the best story, make the best, most fun experience for players. When we have these moments where we announce something, I guess maybe it gives us [the chance to give] a little bit more reflection on that, but a lot of times we’re just heads down on, “How do we make this the best experience we can? What do we need to do to tell the story better?” And each one of those evolutions really drives what are the storytelling tools, gameplay tools, et cetera, that allow us to make this experience the way that we want players to have this experience.
The tools from the reboot to Ragnarok are largely the same there, right? Do you think that a game like Laufey creates the ability to introduce new tools in a safe, different way that then you can bring back [in the future]?
I think for Laufey, especially with the Everywhen as a concept, bringing mythologies together, and kind of exploring this world beyond for the gods, it was… not restriction, but a lot of ways of doing things that we had. We could start fresh in some places, and so I think that was a great place for the team to take on that creative risk and feel safe about exploring.
Because with Kratos, we’ve got 20 years of our explorations with him, and they kind of gently point us in a certain direction and we can evolve with him. But I think for Faye just going somewhere new, it was like opening a window and being able to jump into something and see where it goes.
But a lot of Laufey is really built on all of the experience from the Greek saga. You can see the evidence of Greek saga and Norse saga both coming together; it’s not baby out with the bath water. But just having a different physique to work with in terms of combat, animation, and then just thinking about that allowed us some distance basically to be able to look at all the stuff that we’ve done and say, “Is this a tool that would help us tell Laufey’s story?”
The Everywhen is the first entirely original setting for th eseries. How did you get to the point where you made something instead of using existing mythology as foundational and go from there? A lot of people think of God of War as a retelling of mythology, whereas this is creating mythology.
Well, I hope folks aren’t failing Greek mythology exams by using Kratos [laughs].
I think it’s always been like an expansion of mythology for us or a retelling [and we’ve said], ‘this is what we know, but you didn’t know this other stuff.’ So for Kratos, that’s always been there. For Faye and the Everywhen, we get to do that same thing where now we can get to know different mythologies coming together, but we get to know those characters. They’re still going to have the same mythological background and grow from that, but now we can actually see how some of those characters would interact as full people in there.
Why is it called Everywhen? It feels like time might be a bit funny there.
I won’t spoil any of the surprises of things, but I think for us [the Everywhen] gave this concept of all time and no time and a place beyond the mortal realms. So it was kind of an internal kind of idea that just kind of stuck after a while.
Do you feel like this is a kind of crucial piece to put in place to further explore different territories and give the series longevity?
Yeah. I think this concept of the place beyond has been in Cory [Barlog]’s brain for a long, long time. We’ve gone to mortal afterlives–hades, and we’ve gone to Helheim. But this idea of for the gods, where do they go? Because we’ve killed gods. They’ve disappeared. What happens to them? They’re not in any of their underworlds, so where does that happen? That question has really been bouncing around for a long time.
And I think this idea of locking ourselves into potentially maybe like one mythology [led us to], “Well, maybe actually these mythologies all touch.” Everybody’s got an idea about a magical place. That’s so common in a lot of different kinds of mythologies that maybe they’re the same place. And so once we started talking about that idea, it really kind of grew from there and the opportunity was just so exciting that I think it just really stuck.
There’s the question of where do Gods go that exists within the current God of War saga, with it being Odin’s obsession. But Athena in God of War III also mentions that she’s transcended beyond into a new place. Is it the same place?
I won’t go into all the details, but I can tell you we’ve been killing gods for a really long time. So we’ve been thinking about this question. Since Aries died, we were like, “Okay, great. Does he go to the underworld?” We asked that question. Where did he show up after Kratos killed him?” I think this has been really bubbling around for like 20 years.
Laufey isn’t technically a God, right?
For us, this [place] is a return for all magic. So it’s not just gods, but magical creatures and all sorts of things. Magic is pulled to this place.
Will this game move forward the discussion around who blew the horn?
That is a very good question. I am not at liberty to discuss.
Unsurprisingly, that’s what everyone else that worked on God of War games said as well.
I think that’s a very exciting question for folks to dig into.
Do you feel a pressure to answer that question now way more?
I don’t think people understand how stubborn Cory Barlog can be, so we may be waiting a while.
Deborah Ann Woll is the actor behind Laufey. When did she find out that there was more to this character?
Oh, I’m pretty sure Cory told her in Ragnarok [development]. Deborah and I have talked about that and she was like, “I’ve had to keep this under wraps for, I don’t know, what is it, 8, 10 years at this point.”
Cory always knew how important Faye was to the kind of next evolution of God for storytelling. And so when he made Faye as a character in 2018, that importance and the gravitas was there. And then when he was like, “We need to find somebody to be Faye,” he was incredibly intentional about that. I don’t know what the conversation was between Cory and Deborah, but that has been a twinkle in his eye for a while.
We saw a moment where Kratos appears and he physically interacts with Faye so he’s not a magical construct. As a concept in the narrative, how important is the idea of converging [Laufey’s story] with Kratos.
Well, I think for us it’s kind of a reverse of the Ragnarok perspective. In Ragnarok, Faye was present and on Kratos’ mind pretty heavily. And [we are] able to show the other side of that story, because Faye meant as much to Kratos as Kratos means to Faye. And so being able to kind of continue that understanding, the conversation.
I’ve been watching those videos where people have tried to match up where Kratos dies in Ragnarok with something that happens in Laufey’s journey.
I look forward to all of the fan theories about this topic.
What’s up with the cube and the sword?
So Phranque has always been a character. I was with the team for two years on the reboot, working up to 2018, and then when I came back to the studio in 2021, the two characters that were whole and in the pre-production of Laufey were Faye and Phranque. Cory and I have talked about it a lot and the challenge of taking something that could be interpreted as a non-personality and inanimate object, and really just driving a human connection with that and caring about it. As a companion, Phranque offers, mechanically, some interesting ideas. That’s always been Phranque. And then for Rue, we knew we wanted Faye to have a legendary weapon.The Leviathan Axe really is Kratos’s now–she gave it to him. She’s not taking it back.
So for us, [we wanted] to find a weapon that could really play to Faye’s strengths, that nimbleness but still being deadly, that kind of flexibility and speed. As we were doing a lot of development, the ribbons started to take form in there and we were kind of thinking about the caretaker [of the sword] in there. [We thought about], if Faye comes to this world, who is it that is holding the sword when she gets there, and Rue was born.
Is it an original sword for God of War or is it something people will know, like Excalibur or something like that.
It’s an Epic sword. It has a story.
Understood. Coming back to Phranque. The good faith discussion around Phranque that some are having relates to the question of what impact does he have on the tone of the game, the way it’s written and the way it emotionally plays out. The worry is around the Marvelification or the Joss Whedonification of God of War. Is there anything you can say to perhaps give people a better understanding of what Phranque is there for and what the potential impact he will have is?
Phranque has probably got six or seven lines in the reveal, so it’s not a fully developed personality present [there] because we’re just not having as much conversation. So I would say as we are still in development on all of these things, we’re treating Phranque as we would any companion character. His earnestness, his honesty about being in the moment is kind of integral to his character, but that doesn’t make him completely unserious. For us, we want to find his humanity. And as we’ll discover, in the world of Everywhen things are not great right now. So for him, I think it’s really about helping Faye see the world as it is. So he’s not meant to be a joke in that kind of capacity.
I thought it was interesting that he was so immediately trusting of Faye.
Yeah. And I think that is a component to his personality. But there’s a little bit more depth to why he is like that.
Does he need to be that way when you’re depicting a world that is so brutal as what we saw? Do you need that kind of character to stop it from being a bit much? Mimir at times had that function.
Yeah. I think all the characters… Kratos is pretty serious a lot of the time, and so the levity of other people stands in contrast to that a lot. We have characters that can go across the spectrum of that, so it’s not that we have to be very serious and very light. I think we have real people as much as we can, but I think the reveal is just a very small section of the Everywhen, and so as we kind of open up the world to see the next things, Phranque fits into that part.
Everyone has been fixated on Kratos and his role in Laufey’s story. You’ve indicated he will play a part. I’m more interested in how much of a presence Atreus has. The first thing Laufey expresses is that she didn’t get to say goodbye, and it’s easy to forget that means to Atreus as well as Kratos. Is that an important part [to her story]?
Oh, I think definitely. Faye has left Kratos and Atreus, but Atreus [she left] is not the Atreus of Ragnarok, it’s the Atreus of 2018, so much younger. And so I think her instinct is, ‘my husband, my partner, this is the person I want to make sure that they’re taking care of Atreus.’ I don’t think she sees Atreus as the young man he’s become in Ragnarok. She’s striving to get back to both of them, but the connection I think is really the one of her and Kratos first. They both have an impact in there, but I think she’s hoping to connect with Kratos, because he’s the one who’s still with Atreus, taking care of him.
With Kratos and Atreus [their quest] was to get to the top of the highest point in the realm and spread her ashes. What is Laufey’s goal?
Well, I think that she is trying to get back to Kratos and Atreus, and we’ll see how she goes.
Get back to them?
Yeah. Or to help them.
Okay. That’s interesting… The idea of her returning is not something that I thought about.
Well, what she wants and what she needs are probably two different things.
She wants to say goodbye. In terms of the gameplay, how difficult was it to shift from a heavy character into one that is more lithe?
I think that because we started with the idea, like we knew it was going to be a Faye game, we had a Faye model. We couldn’t just put Kratos animations on her. It just wouldn’t make sense. Her body wouldn’t move that way.
But I think being able to look back to the Greek era [where] Kratos had a little bit more of an acrobatic nature [helped]. We still have folks in the studio who’ve worked on those games, so I think this was, “What if we did this, but this is the person we have executing this, and how would that work and what things could we borrow, what things could we expand on?” That’s the fun part of development–just seeing where it can go.
We talked to Cory about the late introduction of the Blades of Chaos and he recounted that it was almost his upending moment for the team where they were like, how do we figure this out? Was it easier to move to the new weapons because of that work done there?
Yes and no. I think that just having a Faye model rig to move with, because we do so much pre-vis work and kind of experiment, we have a ton of time for the animators and combat designers to experiment with what’s going to come out, what’s going to bubble up from the tools that we have, what weapon that she would match with. So I don’t think it’s necessarily harder to go to a new thing. It was probably harder for Kratos in that moment because the team was so set on the Leviathan Axe. That’s all they were thinking about, so then to make the switch it’s like, “how do we do this?” But they figured it out.
One of the things that a lot of old school God of War fans are missing is platforming. Now that Faye has the ability to hop around in a way that Kratos couldn’t, is [platforming] something that you want to reintroduce or emphasize a bit more?
Laufey lends herself a lot to new and different traversal mechanics. Absolutely. So I hope to show you guys more about that soon. But I think that for us, yeah, it’s not just about how she moves in combat, but how she explores the world. And the jump allows verticality in spaces and her speed and agility [lets her] get to places that maybe Kratos wouldn’t have in the last games. But for us that expands the possibility for level design and for different kinds of systems and things.
There’s a lot of excitement around God of War Laufey, but also a lot of skepticism. What would you say to the people out there that are in either camp?
I want to be as truthful as I can to Faye’s experience and to really show her to be the warrior that Kratos fell in love with, that changed his life. I want to see who that person is and so I hope fans will come along on the journey with us. I’m so excited about the mythological possibilities of who we can meet and the magic that we can get ourselves into going forward. I understand the skepticism. I hope they will give it a chance and be excited to play.
I think for me it’s just, is it fun? Is it an adventure that I haven’t been on before? And I think the biggest thing is just, for us, is how can we hold onto the surprise? I think it’s just so hard to be surprised today. Everybody always knows exactly how it’s going to play out. So I’m hopeful that this is a place where we can still have some mystery.
For better or for worse, the Laufey reveal was a surprise to everyone, and it’s probably why people are reacting the way that they’re reacting, right?
I’m so thankful that we have the fans that we have. I’m so thankful that we have people who care. And whether or not they care, they’re upset, or they think we should do something that’s different, I would rather they care. So we’re arms open, ready to show them Faye’s journey and have them fall in love with her like we have. That’s the exciting part for us.
Do you take any power from the people who perhaps aren’t on board yet? Does it fuel you?
I don’t know if it fuels us. I think that it’s more of that challenge where people make assumptions about what we can do or what we can’t do and as a team, as a studio. Or what we should do. As a team, Santa Monica has always taken to doing what we want to do and showing people we can do it. So I hope they come along because I would love them to [experience] the fun and the adventure that we have in store for them.
I understand everybody’s reservations and hesitations and I know that it comes from a good place. They have been on that journey with Kratos as long as I have, right? And it means something to them and I hope that this is more of a “yes and” for expanding. We’re not leaving anybody behind. We’ve got plenty more Kratos coming. This is really just a place for adventure to go beyond what we had.
