God of War Laufey is the next game in Santa Monica Studio’s god-slaying series, and unlike in previous entries, here you’ll play as Kratos’ wife Faye rather than the god of war himself. The story will run parallel to the 2018 reboot, as Faye fights through an afterlife full of gods from different mythologies, attempting to help her husband and their son Atreus from the great beyond. We’ve only seen 20 minutes of the game and don’t know when it’s coming out yet, but fans are already speculating that this game may solve a mystery that has plagued God of War for nearly a decade.
In the 2018 game, there’s a moment in which someone blows a horn that summons Jörmungandr, the giant World Serpent who lives in Midgard’s Lake of Nine. Kratos is carrying a sick Atreus to Freya’s hut when this happens and only hears the horn in the distance. Players have never known who it was that called the serpent, even after God of War Ragnarok ostensibly wrapped the series’ Norse storyline. As such, fans have been wondering what the hell this scene was even about and why the game called attention to it if we were never going to find out who called the beast and what they were trying to accomplish. However, Laufey may finally bridge this gap.
In the debut trailer, Faye wakes up in the Everwhen, which is essentially the afterlife of the gods. Just before her death, she set Kratos and Atreus on a journey to scatter her ashes in Jötunheim, but once she arrives in the Everwhen, she’s given reason to believe that the path she set them on may have been compromised. Though it’s not entirely clear how she’ll do it just yet, she says she has to do something from the other side to help them, lest they end up in danger. It’s possible Faye may have been the one to use the horn to call the serpent, and that this scene was a nod to whatever she was doing while Kratos and Atreus tried to reach Jötunheim.
Santa Monica Head of Creative Cory Barlog once teased that the answer to this mystery would come one day, and some fans have been theorizing that Faye could have been the culprit ever since. If Faye’s entire mission in Laufey is to ensure that Kratos and Atreus are able to complete their quest, who else would be manipulating things behind the scenes? Hopefully we’ll find out for sure when the game comes to PS5.
