Eventually Kratos’s wife dies off-camera (seriously, never marry this man, all women of videogame antiquity), and he and the son he doesn’t really know have to take her ashes to the highest peak in videogameland, per her final request.
Eventually they’re joined by a son, Atreus ashamed of his bloodthirsty past, Kratos decides to never let his son know about his life in Greece, or that he’s a god, and in effect turns into a stern, emotionless dad that feels like an absent father even when the whole family is literally living in a one-room shack. Here’s the gist: after slaughtering the entire Greek pantheon, Kratos beats it far north, settling in a cabin deep in Norse territory with his new wife. There’s at least a bit more soul here than the name on the box would ever lead you to believe.
There’s definitely a lot of that to this game-early on it seems like Kratos is worried that his son won’t grow up into a merciless, rage-filled genocide machine if he shows him even the slightest bit of tenderness-but it isn’t entirely a po-faced paean to surly dads and their sad mama’s boy sons. I expected it to show one asshole’s journey into being a slightly different kind of asshole. I expected this new, serious, grown-up God of War to mistake misery for maturity-to think a Kratos that’s sullen instead of angry, that’s struggling to connect with his only living son rather than seeking vengeance for his dead family, would somehow make up for the adolescent angst that has defined all these games so far.