God of War creator David Jaffe has revealed how he doesn’t like the character development of Kratos in the latest games. The ex-game developer turned commentator explained how he thought the father-and-son dynamic between the protagonist and Atreus and the storyline that developed didn’t befit the character that he created.
God of War’s Kratos is not a family man
God of War Ragnarok‘s animation director Bruno Velazquez once said in an interview that the game’s storyline reflected the studio’s personalities and personal experiences. The previous God of War games that took place during the Greek era reflected the team’s college years, but now the team has grown up and the developers have their own families. While Jaffe didn’t seem to mind this during the 2018 reboot of God of War, which he thought was “great,” Ragnarok turned out to be a different experience.
In his latest podcast, Jaffe went on to clarify that a story built around personal experiences like family relationships would have been perfectly fine for a new IP, or even a new character, but not for Kratos:
If you’re going to build a brand new IP or you’re going to build a character into the God of War lore and that character is struggling or dealing with your problems that a lot of you guys that have gotten older and girls at the studio have dealt with, that’s wonderful. Do that s*** all day long. But don’t take the character Kratos, or Indiana Jones, and go “you know what, […] I’m older now and I’m really into family and I want to tell stories about fathers and sons and God.” No […]. That’s not what this character is.
Despite Jaffe’s displeasure at the character’s development, plenty of people disagree and God of War Ragnarok recently hit a milestone of 15 million copies sold worldwide. The game’s senior writer Orion Walker has already teased that the recently-released Valhalla DLC was not the end of the story either, but whether this means more DLC or a whole new game remains to be seen.
