Sony Santa Monica has revealed their next project, and the next chapter in the God of War saga, taking the rather unexpected direction of letting you play as someone other than Kratos. How about… Kratos’ dead wife?

That’s right, the rumours were true and the next God of War game lets you play as Kratos’ dead wife, Faye, aka Laufey the Just (portrayed once more by Deborah Ann Woll), who is surprisingly nimble for someone we last saw being barbecued. In fact, it opens with Kratos and Atreus laying her to rest in the woods, but as her spirit floats off, she awakens not within the Norse afterlife, but somewhere completely different. This is the Everywhen, the afterlife of the gods, where all magic comes from and where it returns to.

But she doesn’t get a greeting befitting of a god. No, the plantlife starts to attack her, and she soon comes face to face with Sekmet from the Egyptian pantheon of gods, and Begtse, the god of war from Tibetan mythology, who have her thrown into captivity. There she meets a talking gelatinous cube called Phranque (Jack Quaid), and the ribbons of a sword called Rue (Perlina Lau), which is a turn for the even more bizarre. They are the ones who reveal that this is the afterlife of the gods, as opposed to one specific mythology, and spur Faye on to rediscovering control of her powers and breaking out.

Wwith Rue’s sword in grasp – for better or worse, given the repeated warnings about this – she unleashes some fantastic fighting abilities, including a ribbon-whipping move, the ability to punch someone’s soul of their body with the Golden Hand of the Jötnar, and then stab that a bit instead, and great finishers. She’s fast and nimble, able to combine ground attacks with aerial ones.

Here’s more on how Santa Monica has created the character of Faye for her very own game.

There’s some truly titanic battling from this point in the reveal, really showing the scale and scope of what the PS5 can achieve in the battle with Begtse.

It looks excellent and we can’t wait to see more!

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New details on God of War Ragnarök have been revealed by its writers, including that an early version that had Kratos end up in Hel early within the game.

Narrative director Matt Sophos and story lead Richard Gaubert were interviewed on the MinnMax podcast about their work on the game, including Kratos’ fate and the amount of puzzle assistance from side characters.

Be aware, God of War Ragnarök story spoilers follow.

Most interesting is Sophos’ discussion on the possibility of Kratos dying. Players of the previous game will be aware of a prophecy that Kratos will die, and yet this is ultimately something he overcomes.

“The earliest, earliest draft of an outline that we had come up with that we took to Eric [Williams, director]… Kratos died in the Thor fight at the very beginning of the game,” said Sophos.

“He was going to die and it wasn’t a permanent death… [but] he would get pulled out of Hel essentially by Atreus but now 20 years have passed. There was going to be a big time jump.

“That was a version of it, but it didn’t ultimately feel right.”

That’s partly due to its similarity to previous games, where Kratos dies and must escape the underworld.

“As we were developing the story, we knew that we wanted the story to be one about letting go and changing,” Sophos continued. “Knowing that Norse mythology is all about fate and prophecy, we wanted to say ‘that’s bullshit, nothing is written that can’t be unwritten, as long as you’re willing to change or make changes in your life then you’re not bound to fate’.

“When we landed on that and we knew that that was the story we wanted to tell, we knew that Kratos couldn’t die because then it would be like ‘are we just going to say that Kratos couldn’t change?’ and then that would suck.”

Of course, Thor does kill Kratos in that battle but immediately brings him back to life in a fun gameplay twist. This, however, was not related.

Elsewhere the pair discussed the amount of puzzle assistance provided by side characters, something that was widely criticised after release. However, the team was not aware of this until the game shipped.

“We just didn’t get it tuned well enough,” admitted Sophos. “And it didn’t get exposed to us really until the game came out, because even when we had playtests we never saw feedback about the characters talking too much.”

“It wasn’t until the game came out and it was like ‘shit, if we’d known that we would’ve responded’,” added Gaubert.

It doesn’t seem like a patch is in the works to address this.

You can watch the full interview with Sophos and Gaubert below to hear more about cut content and a possible romance between Kratos and Freya.

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