God of War Director Talks Norse Mythology & Kratos

Sony opened their E3 2016 press conference with the gameplay footage of the next God of War installment. Fans were blown away by the reveal and it left us wondering just what the story would be based around. Now a little more information was given to GameSpot from the game director Cory Barlog. During their talk, we learned a bit more about the upcoming Norse mythology and Kratos.

Gamers may have been a bit surprised about the reveal of Norse gods playing a role in the upcoming God of War video game, but it shouldn’t. According to Cory Barlog, various beliefs coexisted with one another, it was merely separated by geographical locations. Because of this, Norse mythological completely works with Kratos as he is simply moving on to a new territory.

Another big misconception with the upcoming God of War video game is that Kratos will not be settled within the Viking age. During the Viking age, gods and monsters had abandoned the planet thus Cory Barlong confirmed that Kratos would be present in the pre-Viking era where both gods and monsters freely roam the world.

“A lot of people think Norse, they think viking, but there’s really this amazing prehistory–the migration, and then prior to that, the pre-migration era,” Barlog explained. “In the viking era, they always talked about, ‘The gods have abandoned us.’ Thor and Loki and Odin all walked the Earth at one point, but they’re not around any more. [The vikings] fight for them, but they’re not there. This idea that we’re at is saying, ‘We’re at a prehisory point, where gods did walk the Earth, when monsters were real, before they became extinct.”

Cory Barlog also talks about how Kratos could be different than before as he now has a second chance with raising a child. However, the game director did not go into detail about that quite yet. So far a specific release date has yet to be released for the upcoming God of War installment other than sometime next year, 2017.