Faye is dead. Long live Faye. Santa Monica Studio's latest God of War project doesn't dwell in the past or sidestep the protagonist shift, it launches headfirst into it. The moment Kratos lights her funeral pyre in 2018's God of War, Faye finds herself transported to the Everywhen, a nightmarish afterlife where gods congregate in cages and bonfires burn endlessly. And she's going to fight her way through it.
The 20 minutes of footage revealed during State of Play shows a frost giant with foresight powers, a combat style built on speed and magic rather than brute force, and a personality that carries the weight of being the woman who shaped Kratos. Deborah Ann Woll, known for True Blood and Daredevil, voices Faye, a character so pivotal to the original God of War that even in death, she remains the emotional anchor of the story.
"We'll always tell stories about Kratos, but I think for us, it was just a chance to talk about somebody who was so pivotal to the beginning," says Ariel Lawrence, Game Director on God of War Laufey. "To get to know them and push beyond into this new world and give us some place to be surprised and see how things connect. So for us, it's not a departure, it's more of an expansion."
Faye wasn't some footnote in Kratos's story. She crafted the Leviathan Axe. She fought Thor. She gave the Ghost of Sparta his most unserious nickname: Grumbles. Now, separated from her husband and son at the moment of death, she faces a gauntlet of divine adversaries who have nothing but contempt for each other and everyone beneath them.
Gods Behaving Badly
The Everywhen isn't a welcoming realm. It's a fever dream collage of mythologies gone wrong, populated by deities who have no incentive to cooperate. Among them are two formidable enemies shown in the reveal: Sekhmet, the Egyptian plague goddess created by Ra to punish humanity, and Begtse, a colossal Mongolian god of war whose very name derives from the word for armor.
"They're all assholes," says Cory Barlog, Head of Creative at Santa Monica Studio. "Literally every god that exists in all of the mythologies has this really terrible relationship with power and how they abuse all of it. When you put all those people like a bunch of billionaires on an island, they think they're gonna have a happy life. No, they're all going to fight each other, they're all going to be in this strange sense of conflict because they're locked in a prison."
Sekhmet carries the weight of her mythology. She was too good at her job, nearly wiping out humanity before being reined in. Begtse is positioned as her afterlife enforcer, a brute presence that towers over the landscape. Together, they represent the kind of toe-to-toe combat spectacle that God of War excels at, but with Faye as the protagonist, the dynamic shifts entirely.
Unlike Kratos's brick-wall brutality, Faye moves with athletic precision. She relies on agility and speed, channeling the fluid combat that defined the original Greek God of War games while retaining the grittier Norse-era close-quarters approach. Her Jotun heritage grants her access to magic that runs deeper than Kratos's toolbelt approach to supernatural power.
"For Kratos, magic is a tool he wears on his belt. With Faye, magic is a part of her," Barlog explains. "When we get to the Everywhen, the density of magic is amplified by like a thousand."
The footage teases her power in a single moment: drawing a sword from an enchanted cube and extracting a soul in slow motion, revealing capabilities that extend far beyond what's immediately visible.
Faye's combat toolkit pulls from the entire God of War lineage. Lawrence notes that both the Greek and Norse eras influenced her fighting style. The result is something distinct from either era, tailored specifically to a protagonist who isn't a lumbering god-killer but a warrior operating at a different frequency entirely.
The team accomplished this by diving deep into Faye's history across the series. She wasn't a blank slate waiting to be filled in. She was a character with established power, agency, and presence. The challenge became honoring that while creating something that felt fresh to players who've spent two games watching Kratos carry the narrative weight.
The Unlikely Companions
In the Everywhen, Faye isn't alone. She finds a sword embedded in Phranque, a cosmic cube voiced by Jack Quaid of The Boys. The sword comes with an enchanted ribbon guardian named Rue, voiced by Perlina Lau. Three unlikely allies bound together by circumstances neither chose.
Lawrence hopes players develop genuine affection for what sounds like gaming's strangest fellowship. "I hope by the end of this, everybody has feelings for some ribbons and a jellied cube," she says.
Phranque isn't a gag character. Barlog emphasizes that the cube has been central to the project since conception. Strip away the design flourishes and what remains is something simple but imbued with struggle, earnestness, and genuine personality. A dancing prop becomes a character with weight.
The team also teased an unnamed, almost pixie-like character whose role in Faye's journey remains deliberately obscure. Whatever part he plays, Faye has companions for this nightmare realm. She isn't fighting the Everywhen in isolation.
Even in death, Faye maintains connection to her family. Kratos's voice reaches her across the boundary between realms. She sees visions of him. In narrative terms, she's been separated from her husband and son only moments before, which adds urgency and heartbreak to her journey through a world that doesn't care about her personal tragedy.
God of War Laufey isn't a prequel or a side story. Barlog frames it as running parallel to the timeline established in 2018's God of War and Ragnarök, operating as one continuous narrative. "Everything that we're doing inside of this game, running in parallel to the timeline of 2018 and Ragnarok, also has direct connections to everything, so that everything is part of a singular universe inside of it," Barlog says. "This is all a new chapter in the same book, a massive book, and we are starting to show that this has more than you could have imagined."
What began as a character introduced in dialogue and flashback, a woman whose influence shaped everything that followed, now steps forward as the center of her own epic. The question isn't whether Faye can carry a God of War game. She clearly can. The question is what the studio will reveal about her as she carves a path through an afterlife built on divine dysfunction and cosmic absurdity.
Author Emily Chen: "Santa Monica Studio is swinging for the fences here, betting that players will care about a new protagonist as much as they care about Kratos, and if this preview is any indication, they've earned that bet."
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