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The latest God of War Ragnarok dev diary is all about character and creature design, and these two elements come together beautifully with the dynamic duo of Durlin and Dinner, respectively a dwarf librarian and his pet "squidopus."
The 7-minute behind-the-scenes video goes into environments and enemies and all that good video game stuff, but I want to talk about these two instead, because they are unquestionably the stars of the show. Kratos and Atreus are now background characters in the story of Durlin and Dinner.
"In the example of Durlin, his design was really tailored to convey his own personality," explains senior character artist Angela Rico. "He's a bookkeeper from Svartalfheim, and because his job demands, he's very organized, very rigid. He's a very play-by-the-rules kind of guy. But then in contrast you have his friend. When you see Durlin connect with his pet, we see he's not always just this rigid librarian guy, but that he's got a softer side to him."
Crazy idea, hear me out. We're all trying to get Kratos to open up, right? Express his emotions in a way that doesn't involve evisceration? Marriage and fatherhood have helped, obviously, but have we tried getting him a pet squidopus? You know how it goes. Dad stubbornly insists he doesn't want a squidopus, then two weeks after you adopt the thing he's teaching it to wear tiny squidopus socks on each of its tentacles. I'm just saying, it could happen.
And if you're wondering how I know this little guy is actually a squidopus named Dinner, you need only reference this tweet from Sony Santa Monica, which told us precious little about Ragnarok's D&D way back in September 2021. After today's formal introduction, I'm more eager than ever to dive into Ragnarok later this month. I need to meet these two ASAP.
The last Ragnarok deep-dive explored the sequel's updated combat system through a surprising comparison to chess.
