God of War preview: Kratos gets older, wiser and dadder

[BLANK_AUDIO] We have always seen Kratos as sort of one perspective, one dimension, right? Without realizing That there actually is a lot more when you see it from a different angle. We just only focused on that one part. I count myself in the camp of gamers pretty skeptical of a new installment in the God of War franchise. But now that I've played the first couple of hours of the new God of War, I was much more intrigued by this idea of making Kratos go from one note to a multilayered symphony. There is so much more to this character. And the fact that he's gone through what he's gone through creates this great sense of chapter one in his life. And this next chapter really is seeing him hit rock bottom, realize that he has to make a change. Change is something that That is very difficult. It takes a lot of work. Kregos, on his own, is going to go through a lot. He's gonna change a lot but he's gonna have to put a lot of work in. It was a very painful, very exhausting journey. Part of that painful process was convincing some of his own The team at Santa Monica Studios working on the game that this new story and design was the way forward. Something fans like myself could relate to. You have kind of half the team going cool, this sounds great, I wanna try something different. And the other half going, not my God of war, right? One of the things most polarizing, making Crados a dad. Again, considering it didn't exactly work out real well for his first family, even the development team wasn't entirely on board at fist. I think the initial reaction was definitely, what? His son, Altreus, is this sort of external motivation, this idea that I'm responsible for somebody else but I'm also unable to change myself, so perhaps By teaching him how to not be like me, I can maybe exhibit a little bit of change. I'm guessing the act of commanding Atreus to fire arrows at enemies while you're hacking and slashing to protect both yourself and your kid is a lot like being a real parent. Necessary, but maybe a little bit annoying when you're trying to focus on the task at hand. And if you were worried Kratos would return squishier than a dad bod in the dead of winter, well, he's still a ****, mostly. But that's part of his charm now. It was important to me that people can see the sort of idea that That vulnerability and strength are not opposing ideas. They are the things that support, and make the strong individual. Failure's hard, a lot of people don't like dealing with it, but it is human, it is a part of life. And it is something you can relate It's not very cool to watch a hero that is like, that's it, they're successful all the time. You're like, that's pretty boring. This'll be the eighth game in the God of War franchise. But since it dramatically shakes up the timeline by flashing forward an undisclosed amount of time, and shifts to a Norce mythology instead of a Greek one. It definitely felt like anyone could hop on the hype train. This is the on ramp for everybody, right? If you've played [UNKNOWN] before, you're gonna have this fantastic connection to a character that you know over a decade of experience, right? But if you've never played it, there's enough about his character that gets revealed in his relationship with his son that this being your first [UNKNOWN] game? This is a great way to start. For those people who are God of War fans who are still sceptical, I'd say I am part of the origin of this franchise, and there's no way I'm gonna do you guys wrong. And I'm saying you need to play it. God of War launches on April 20th exclusively for Play Station 4. [NOISE]