God of War Ragnarok kicks off 9-week behind-the-scenes series: "This game is bigger than what we initially envisioned"

(Image credit: Sony)

A new series of God of War Ragnarok behind-the-scenes videos is set to run over the next nine weeks, and the first release is already filled with fascinating details.

Much of this video, titled Shaping the Story, is focused on recapping the themes and events of God of War 2018 - so beware of spoilers if you're still working your way through that previous game. Other portions of the video focus on the challenges the pandemic brought on performance capture and voice recording sessions. Those sessions even went so long that Atreus actor Sunny Suljic's voice changed during production, prompting some important post-recording edits to the dialog.

While the devs have previously confirmed that Ragnarok will end the current storyline, this video also sheds some light on the decision to make this saga a duology rather than a trilogy. Ultimately, Cory Barlog - director of the previous game and producer on Ragnarok - made the decision to finish the story here.

"The consequence to that is, how do you wrap up the story and do Ragnarok justice?" senior producer Ariel Angelotti says. "How do we lead up to that and then have a big movement at the end of the game and wrap up all those threads? This game is bigger than what we initially envisioned. There's a lot of important story moments that we needed to cover. There are more characters that we follow the threads of, and ultimately it ends up feeling big and epic because there is a lot there for people to enjoy."

New entries in this video series will launch every Tuesday for nine weeks, marking one video for each of the nine realms. The next will take us to Alfheim for a big explainer on combat. Obviously, these videos will continue several weeks past Ragnarok's launch on November 9, so hopefully we can expect even greater insights to come.

Check out our God of War Ragnarok pre-order guide if you're looking to make an early purchase.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.