During yesterday’s State of Play showcase, Santa Monica Studio revealed God of War Laufey, a new spin-off starring Kratos’ wife Faye as she fights her way through the afterlife. The game runs parallel to the 2018 reboot, and is the first time a God of War game hasn’t featured the titular god as the primary playable character. However, it sounds like the team wants to make it clear to fans that even as it explores other characters in the series, Kratos will remain the heart and soul of the games in the future.
After the showcase yesterday, Sony uploaded several behind-the-scenes videos from the development of Laufey, including interviews with the cast and footage of actor Jack Quaid doing motion capture for Phranque, the new gelatinous cube character that will accompany Faye on her quest in the afterlife. Also in the mix is a conversation between Laufey director Ariel Lawrence and Santa Monica Studio Head of Creative Cory Barlog. In it, the two discuss the original pitch for a Faye-centric God of War game and the studio’s desire to expand the series’ point of view beyond Kratos now that the Norse storyline has created a much larger cast of characters. However, they were also clear that Kratos is still the center of the universe.
“For me, it’s really exciting because Kratos is sort of the ‘tree,’ and he sort of drives the franchise forward, and we want to follow him, but there are so many interesting characters that we created along the way,” Barlog says.
Barlog says that, for him, Faye and the dwarven blacksmith Sindri are two of the more interesting characters he’d like to further explore. Faye is obviously getting her own game, but this does imply Sindri may have more story to tell in a future entry. Given that he and Kratos are on the outs at the end of Ragnarok, it’s unclear what form that exploration would take. I’d be surprised if there was a Sindri-led game down the line, but I’d welcome it if it happens. Alternatively, Sindri was a supporting character in Ragnarok, accompanying the player on some quests, so he might do that again in a future sequel.
Elsewhere in an interview with IGN, Barlog reiterated that more Kratos stories are on the way, even as the team expands the scope to other characters.
“We’ll always tell stories about Kratos, but I think for us, it was just a chance to talk about somebody who was so pivotal to the beginning and get to know them and push beyond into this new world and give us some place to be surprised and see how things connect,” he said. “So for us, it’s not a departure; it’s more of an expansion.”
For now, we still don’t really know what the future holds for Kratos. Ragnarok’s Valhalla DLC made him the God of War in the Norse pantheon and had him confront all his demons in a playable therapy session, but what that means for him in the next game is unclear. Atreus, Faye and Kratos’ son, has a much more defined future in place as he left his father’s company to search for the remnants of the Giants alongside Angrboda. Will Atreus get his own game, or will Santa Monica Studio cross the paths of the father and son once more?
God of War’s Norse games have also hinted at the presence of the Egyptian god pantheon in subtle ways, and Laufey seems to be introducing them properly as the game’s big reveal shows Faye facing Sekhmet, the goddess of war in Egyptian mythology, and Begtse, the Mongolian god of war, in the afterlife. It’s entirely possible that Laufey may give players a clear idea of where the series is headed next, whenever it comes to PlayStation 5 in the coming years.