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Kratos is taking a back seat in his own series, as God of War Laufey actually puts us in control of Faye, his former wife and the mother of Atreus. Although the spin-off is being led by a first-time director, she goes way back with the Greek warmonger, right back to when he was a very different man entirely.
Ariel Lawrence is the game director on God of War Laufey, but as she discusses with Cory Balrog, the head of creative at Santa Monica Studio, in a Sony interview, she's intimately familiar with the world of Kratos, helping put together a trailer for his first game ever. "That was back in the day when Kratos had a blue tattoo," she remembers.
"We were still calling him Dominus," she adds. "And the team was only 30, 35 people, maybe. Small." It was an entirely different era for all involved.
Coming fresh-faced from film school, as Lawrence recalls, she was initially hired at Sony Santa Monica to assist in cutting the aforementioned teaser in August 2003. Once she'd completed the assignment, she asked about getting any more work and started contributing to various other departments, yielding credits across multiple God of War installments over the years.
Then, in 2015, she went to Riot Games for a spell, working up through the ranks of the narrative team on League of Legends, before returning to Santa Monica Studio in 2021, which leads us to now. God of War Laufey may be her directorial debut, but it's an opportunity many years in the making.
Taking place in the Everywhen right after Kratos and Atreus hold Faye's funeral, the game follows her attempts to protect her son and widowed husband from the afterlife as she faces other gods in the deity afterlife. It looks like it's going to be another slobberknocker from the studio, and it's due to arrive in 2027. We'll let you know if anyone named Dominus happens to appear.
