2018’s God of War is getting a sequel with the tagline “Ragnarok is coming.” Descriptions of the Ragnarok prophecy and even Zeus and Atreus’ role in it appeared in the last game as dialog from Mimir and on the Jotunheim mural, leaving fans to wonder how the events of the Twilight of the Gods will unfold in the upcoming title.
The story of God of War has an interesting relationship with one trope which features most heavily in 2007’s God of War 2. There are reasons a return to this trope, time travel specifically, may well be very tempting to the developer of the upcoming God of War Ragnarok game. However, there are also some problems with the trope, and reasons it should be left behind as the franchise forges its path into the future.
God of War 2 begins with an act of betrayal. The first God of War saw Kratos, a Spartan demigod born to Zeus and a mortal mother, seek revenge on Ares for tricking him into killing his own family. After Ares’ death in God of War, Kratos became the new god of war. However, after opening Pandora’s Box, Kratos unwittingly released forces which would come to drive Zeus to paranoia. The patriarch of the Greek pantheon began to believe that Kratos was destined to kill him. Zeus had originally received a prophecy that a marked child of his would meet his end, killing Kratos’ birthmarked brother as a result, the event leading Kratos himself to tattoo himself with red.
At the start of God of War 2, Zeus kills Kratos with the Blade of Olympus and decimates his Spartan army after his son refuses to swear fealty to the gods. However, as Kratos is being dragged to the underworld, he is saved by the Titan Gaia who tells him to seek out the Sisters of Fate. After many battles Kratos rides a phoenix to the Sisters’ abode where he finds two of the three fates. When the sisters won’t change Kratos’ past, things turn ugly, and when they try to reverse the outcome of Kratos’ battle with Ares, he kills them.
Kratos takes control of the Loom of Fate, which holds the threads of fates including his own. He also finds the Mirrors of Destiny, which show the events of his life. Using the thread, Kratos was able to turn back the events of his life in the mirror and return to the point when Zeus betrayed him. Kratos attempts to go back to that point to gain revenge on his father, but when Zeus flees after the death of Athena, Kratos returns to the Mirrors of Destiny. Kratos then rewinds time to events which took place before his birth, the defeat of the Titans, who he brings forward to the present to help defeat Zeus in God of War 3.
There are a few big questions raised by this, however. If Kratos can turn back time, why didn’t he turn it back to the point when Ares tricked him into killing his family and try to stop it? Kratos’ two big motivators in life appear to be the death of his brother as a child and the death of his family, but instead of saving either of them Kratos only goes back to get revenge. Perhaps Santa Monica Studio is making a point about Kratos’ priorities at this point, but overall, the Loom of Fate and the Mirrors of Destiny feel like objects which are too powerful to fit well into the story.
There are some reasons that time travel could return in the God of War Ragnarok sequel. The first has to do with explaining Kratos presence in Midgard to begin with, which may be explained by time travel or simply Kratos’ own supernaturally long lifespan. The other main reason to bring time travel into the plot of the next God of War has to do with Atreus.
There are a few things in the Ragnarok prophecy as it exists in the myth which don’t quite makes sense in the story of the soft reboot. Atreus is revealed to be Loki, the Norse god of mischief. However, Atreus is still only a child, while Loki’s children from the mythology already exist in God of War. The most notable of these is the World Serpent, who is the child of Loki and the jotunn Angrboda.
One of Loki’s other children, Fenrir, is the wolf destined to eat Odin at the end of Ragnarok. While some details of the Norse mythology have been adapted and left behind in God of War, there are thematic reasons for the developer to want to explicitly make the World Serpent and Fenrir Loki’s children: the God of War games are deeply invested in a cycle of patricide, and father-child relationships.
This could make reusing the time travel trope very tempting, with Atreus, AKA Loki, going back in time to gain his full power as Loki before returning to Ragnarok. The Norse myths themselves tend to treat Ragnarok as a potentially circular event, meaning time travel would also fit quite neatly into the Norse setting.
However, if the upcoming sequel to 2018’s God of War is going to avoid the same pitfalls as the plot of the original trilogy, then the story needs to steer clear of time travel all together. Just as Kratos’ use of time travel raised far more questions than it answered, it’s likely any use of time travel in the upcoming God of War sequel would work to confuse the plot more than clarify it. Instead, the game should pick up where the last one left off, and see how it can incorporate the mythology into its preexisting narrative, rather than using time travel to incorporate its narrative into preexisting mythology.
The God of War sequel is planned to release in 2021 for PS5.
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