If yes do you think he would kill her or spare her when Freya pursues him afterwards?

After watching the trailer for GoW Laufey i wanted to make something cool. The other day i just finished making this plaque to hang up the Mjolnir I got with the Collectors Edition of Ragnarok and wanted to share my progress and the finished product with anyone who might appreciate it.

Apologising beforehand for the long post.

God of War: Laufey can answer so many questions about the mechanics of this universe. We could finally get a clearer idea of how the different pantheons actually coexist, how Greece links geographically and metaphysically with places like Egypt and the Norse realms, how Kratos ultimately went from wandering through Egypt to ending up in Midgard, and whether Everywhen is connected to whatever “higher existence” Athena reached after her death.

There are so many interesting questions about how all this works. The Greek gods were intrinsically tied to their world in ways the Norse gods seemingly weren't. Poseidon dies and Greece floods. Helios dies and the sun disappears. Yet none of that affects Midgard. And yet when the Aesir die, that cataclysmic shit doesn't happens to the nine realms. So how different and separate are these pantheons really? What are there boundaries between the systems? How much did the gods of one pantheon actually know about the others?

Laufey feels like the perfect game to start answering some of that because Faye is one of the biggest missing pieces of the story we've already been following. She knew far more than Kratos did, understood prophecy, knew what Atreus would become, helped set the events of the Norse saga in motion and somehow planned around her own death. Exploring her story and the Everywhen could actually make the existing saga/lore feel more cohesive. That's why I'm genuinely very excited for this game, and I'm also excited about what comes immediately afterwards.

Kratos has reached such an interesting point in his development. He's such a different man from Chains of Olympus/Ascension to the final cutscene in the Valhalla DLC. Does he actually become the kind of god he didn't believe could exist? Does he eventually receive the admiration shown in the prophecy?

Atreus feels nowhere near finished. He's only just started becoming his own person with some separation from Kratos. He's gone searching for the Giants, his relationship with Angrboda is only beginning, his relationship with Sindri is unresolved, and he's still figuring out what being Loki actually means. There's still plenty of meaningful story left for both of them.

The question I keep coming back to is: how does it end? Because I really hope it does end.

What I don't want is Kratos and Atreus endlessly moving from pantheon to pantheon because there will always be another mythology around the corner. Thousands of mythologies/religions have existed. Santa Monica could theoretically keep doing this forever for as long as it's profitable. That's what worries me.

I don't want to be six games further down the line thinking, “I don't really care what happens next anymore. This story should have ended three games ago.”

The thing that's made the franchise work up until now is the character development. Kratos is the story. Scandinavia or Greece were cool backdrops, but without the characters, these games would have been hollow.

My biggest fear is that God of War eventually becomes something like Assassin's Creed. I cared deeply about Altair and Ezio. There was a narrative backbone connecting those early games. I was invested. Eager to see how the story played out. The historical settings were fascinating, but there was also a larger story developing between installments and some sense that it was going somewhere.

Eventually, for me at least, Assassin's Creed became much more like a historical world tour. Here's Victorian London. Here's Ancient Greece. Here's the Vikings. Here's Baghdad. One protagonist and one setting gets replaced by another, while the overarching narrative becomes increasingly unimportant. Some of those games are still good individually, but I stopped caring about where the franchise itself was going.

I really don't want that to happen to God of War. I don't want to see the series flip from being centered around Kratos/Atreus, to them just being secondary to whatever pantheon or realm they're visiting. I don't want Kratos to explore pantheons indefinitely because he's too commercially valuable to retire, long after his meaningful character development has run its course.

There are probably another few fantastic games worth of story here. There are enormous unresolved questions and lots of potential character development of the core protagonists. I'd love to see that. But then I want an actual conclusion. Kratos doesn't even have to necessarily die. He could just decide to fuck it all off, be a source of wise council for anyone still interested and just, I dunno, learn how to fish better than Faye or something. Or a thousand other possible endings.

Whatever the ending is, I want Santa Monica to eventually be able to say "this is the end of Kratos and Atreus's story."

So I'm in this weird position where I'm probably more excited about the franchise than I've ever been, particularly because Laufey seems capable of answering some massive questions. But I'm also nervous about what happens if the universe becomes too expandable.

Does anyone else have that fear? I just hope Sony and Santa Monica have enough creative restraint to eventually give this story the conclusion it deserves and leave it there.

Finally caved and got their Ragnarok axe. And it’s a work of art! It’s about 12lbs and it came axe splitting sharp. Very happy with it!

I noticed a thing...

Some characters and almost all enemies in the game, except for the main enemies. Like Thor. Valkyries etc

When they die they just...they disappear into thin air?

And some other characters" Heimdell or Baldur

Their bodies remain.

I'm only asking because I finished the game today and noticed this a week ago. After Thor was killed and Oden died... I noticed it and decided to ask.

why not focus on the stuff that is more fun like beating the crap out of people with a fluid combat system and get rid of all the unnecessary bullsht ?

Not sure why this game gets so much hate but whatever I like it haha

By ArtistWilkins

After countless crashes...

I made a post about 3 months back asking for the best order to play god of war again. And it was the first time I was about to play gow3. I had played the later norse saga. One question I had in my mind is that, kratos used the blade of Olympus to kill himself at the last after killing zeus, so how does the Norse saga exist !? Am I missing on something !?.

I am wondering if other people can relate to this: i recently played every god of war game and i loved Them very much. Now i started playing the 2018 game a few days ago and really couldnt get my head around the axe. In my opinion the fighting in this game was too clunky compared to the other games and i was thinking about dropping the game. But then when you get the blades again...it all Changed for me, now i really enjoy the combat and have so much fun.. its different than the games that came before, but still sooo much fun and so much better than the axe..

Can other people relate to this?

I'm playing 2018 and I wanna grind resources. I'm not going for anything specific, I just want loot to stock up on and upgrade everything. The only thing I gotta do is beat sigrun, find a shrine, and like 2 treasures before I 100%, so I've got most. I assume the maze and trials are good for grinding?

The Leviathan Axe is amazing, but GoW doesn't give you enough reason to actually master it

(this rant goes foe both gow 2018 and ragnarok)

I was one of those people who watched GoW 2018 gameplay on YouTube and thought the Leviathan Axe looked incredible.

The throw → recall → catch animations, the impact, the sound design, the way the axe sticks into enemies... all of it looks incredibly satisfying. It makes you want to play the game immediately.

But after actually playing it, I feel like Santa Monica is seriously wasting what they built.

The problem isn't that the combat looks bad. Quite the opposite. The animations, hit reactions, sound effects, visuals, etc. are some of the best in the industry.

The problem is that once you look past all that presentation, the actual enemies aren't interesting enough to justify the combat system.

You have this awesome weapon with all these mechanics, but what are you actually using them against?

A lot of encounters basically boil down to fighting variations of the same enemies over and over.

And that's what frustrates me the most.

Imagine if they went all-in on the combat

Give us encounters where you can actually style on enemies because you've mastered the mechanics. Also the camera being too close to kratos ruins it for me . And idk why they went for that camera with no accessibily setting to further it a little bit. It gives me headaches.

Instead, so much of the game is:

walk → dialogue → walk → exposition → puzzle → dialogue → small combat encounter → cinematic → walk → dialogue

And I think that's where the games lose me.

It feels like the combat is constantly competing with the game's obsession with its cinematic story formula.

I'm not saying the story is bad or that games shouldn't have stories. I'm saying that GoW has an incredibly cool combat foundation, and I wish the games were more willing to let the gameplay itself be the main attraction.

Because when you strip away the graphics, animations, sound design and cinematic presentation, I don't think the enemy/encounter design is nearly as impressive as the game initially makes it seem.

I don't want another beautiful cutscene. Give me something interesting to kill with that Leviathan Axe.

Also the puzzles, whats the point of them ? And those annoying npcs telling you what to do 10 seconds in.

Its a game trying too hard to be a story while also focusing ln stuff that doesnt matter (puzzles).

You have 3 weapons. there is no reason not to give big hordes of enemies that i can style on just to get the feel of the weapons , i wouldnt mind some sections where you literally hack and slash through enemies .

Instead , the world feels empty. You are bound to fight dull very tanky enemies for no reason every time.

Dont even get me started on the "RPG" aspect of the game, They just said why not, you cant even traverse in the world you have to interact with everything to play an animation. But somehow they thought forcing a bit of fake "open wordlness" could work

I have never seen Ryan Hurst act in anything from what I could recall in my memory so I had no opinion about him when he was cast as Kratos. But in my head I also thought that he’ll be fine and producers might have thought about something before casting him. The producers wouldn’t want to cast anyone bad since they would want to make their money back.

Yesterday, I finally saw The Odyssey and felt that Ryan Hurst was great in it. A lot of people judged him too soon. He was in great shape in the movie and acted really well. He would have pulled off Kratos in my opinion. It’s a shame that he won’t be able to. I would have liked to see a less familiar face pull it off and succeed.

Dave Batista is a beast is a casting for Kratos. He’s a great actor and an amazing choice non the less. But seeing Ryan Hurst made me feel that we could have gotten something really interesting.

I am surprised to see that while everyone is focused on who Phranque and Rue are, I am curious just as to why they were imprisoned in the first place.

I know this is just a theory, but it would be fun to break down the reason for their imprisonment, and I'd like to hear some opinions because it is a paradox.

When Begste throws Faye into the bone cage, we see Phranque and Rue imprisoned in a sort of magical cage with a cask. But most importantly, they were covering themselves with a blanket. Why? If they were already imprisoned, why would they hide themselves from their own captors if they already knew where they are? Could they be the ones who imprisoned themselves? I wouldn't think so, because Rue explicitly said they tried to escape but couldn't, so the only plausible explanation is that Begste and Sekhmet imprisoned them.

But why? More importantly, Begste was shown to fear the sword Phranque and Rue were keeping. Could the sword be powerful enough to kill him, despite dying in the everywhen being explicitly known as near impossible? Could it subjugate him? If it could, why would he imprison them rather than just take that sword and subjugate whoever stands in his way? Again, this is a theory; we practically know nothing about the sword. The only theories we have are that it could most likely be Excalibur, the sword wielded by King Arthur, and that Rue could be holding it until he returns it to its rightful owner.