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God of War Ragnarok is Last in Norse Story As Developer 'Didn't Want to Spend 15 Years on a Trilogy'

God of War Ragnarok is Last in Norse Story As Developer 'Didn't Want to Spend 15 Years on a Trilogy' - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2021 / 1,984 Views

God of War director Cory Barlog in an interview with YouTube channel Kaptain Kuba explained why God of War Ragnarok will be the last in the Norse story line for the franchise. 

Barlog explained the developer did not want players to spend 15 years on a single story line as that is stretched out too much.

"I think one of the most important reasons is the first game took five years, the second game, I don’t know how long it’s going to take but I’m just going to throw out that it’s going to take close to a similar time to do this, right, and then if you think, wow a third one in that same [amount of time], we’re talking like a span of close to 15 years of a single story and I feel like that’s just too stretched out," said Barlog.

"I feel like we’re asking too much, to say the actual completion of that story taking that long just feels too long, and given sort of where the team was at and where Erik was at with what he wanted to do, I was like look, I think we can actually do this in the second story.

"Because most of what we were trying to do from the beginning was to tell something about Kratos and Atreus, that the core of the story’s engine is really the relationship between these two characters and the complexity radiates out like ripples in a pond.

"And we could make it an ocean and make those ripples go for thousands of miles, but is that necessary and is that beneficial, or are we feeling like it’s just spreading it too far apart, the ripples get too far apart, and you sort of lose the plot a little bit."

God of War Ragnarok will launch for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 in 2022.


A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.


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12 Comments
LivncA_Dis3 (on 17 September 2021)

santa monica might wanna make a new i.p and thats ok they can come back to GoW mayanz/aztec/egyptian haha

  • +5
mjk45 (on 16 September 2021)

The second and third games in a successful series benefit from the labour of the first game and in this case with it being a retelling of the norse saga through the lense of Kratos and the God of War mythology with all that source material laying out the general story,I reckon you could have shaved off a year for each game after the original so 2018 -22 -25

  • +4
Dante9 (on 17 September 2021)

I think two games in the same pantheon is enough. It's time for the big guns, Thor and Odin and besides them, is there really anything major left to address at this point? It's Ragnarök time.

  • +2
Mr Puggsly (on 16 September 2021)

News like that makes me more interested in this game. I figured it was gonna be a long game and just the middle of the story.

Guess that means he will beat up Egyptian gods next.

  • +2
m0ney (on 17 September 2021)
  • -13
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VAMatt shikamaru317 (on 16 September 2021)

Considering that he spoke exclusively about not wanting to stretch out the Norse storyline, and not about boredom with the franchise, it seems to me that they're not looking to take a break from God of War.

  • +12
Hynad shikamaru317 (on 17 September 2021)

You should ask yourself why you believe the idea of a trilogy is an important, meaningful or an objective benefit to such projects.

  • +4
Dante9 Hynad (on 17 September 2021)

Yeah, three is just an arbitrary number that for some reason has become a thing in movies and such. Everything has to be a trilogy. Think of The Hobbit, for example, how it was stretched and padded needlessly in order to get a trilogy out of it.

  • +2
Jumpin Dante9 (on 20 September 2021)

The Hobbit trilogy is pretty much the same as the book. They merely added in the bits from the appendices of Lord of the Rings, plus 17 extra characters, and an extra 470 minutes of action footage.

  • -4
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Koragg shikamaru317 (on 18 September 2021)

Well considering it's Ragnarok, this one has to be the end of the Norse saga.

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