The 20-minute gameplay reveal of God of War Laufey dropped expectations on their head. Rather than exploring Faye's past before her 2018 death, Sony Santa Monica has chosen to follow her journey through the afterlife, a story that unfolds parallel to the events of the 2018 game and Ragnarok.
Faye, Kratos' wife and a warrior in her own right, awakens in a realm called the Everywhen after her death. The premise is straightforward but conceptually risky: instead of giving players a familiar origin story, the developers are asking them to explore uncharted territory alongside a character they thought had reached her endpoint.
In the afterlife of the gods, Faye discovers that her carefully laid plans to protect Kratos and Atreus are unraveling. To save them, she must navigate a hostile landscape ruled by ruthless deities from multiple mythologies, wielding her characteristic speed and precision in combat.
Game director Ariel Lawrence explained the thinking behind rejecting the prequel route. "It was super important for us to start on the same page as the players," he told IGN. "Where we left Faye was that she was dead. And we talked about a prequel and what we would have told a story about. And while those events are still quite interesting, it just felt like what we really wanted to start with was right where we left off and drive that story forward from Faye's perspective."
Cory Barlog, head of creative at Santa Monica Studio, went deeper into the narrative design philosophy. The decision traces back to threads woven into 2018's God of War and its sequel. Odin's fear of death, a central anxiety driving Ragnarok's plot, raised a question that neither game answered directly: what actually happens to gods when they die?
"We were setting tiny little narrative beats that were going to start to structurally support this growth of the universe," Barlog said. "Going into Ragnarok and having Odin's thrust be this fear: 'What happens when I die?' that idea of, we are going to explore this."
By making Faye the protagonist of that exploration, Barlog and his team are using one of the franchise's most significant deaths as the entry point to a vastly expanded universe. The Everywhen isn't confined to Norse mythology. It reaches back to earlier eras, suggesting connections between mythological systems that players haven't fully grasped.
"There is more to this world than you know, beyond what you knew from the Greek era, beyond what you knew from where we were in Norse," Barlog explained. "But it just goes so much further beyond it. And it all connects to each other."
The move has already sparked speculation among the community. Fans are scouring the previous two games for hints about what the Everywhen might be, whether Faye's afterlife journey was seeded into dialogue or cutscenes, and if unexplained events might have connections to her story unfolding in this new realm.
The decision to move forward rather than backward represents a fundamental shift in how franchises handle legacy characters. Instead of giving audiences comfort through origin stories and explanations, Sony Santa Monica is betting that mystery and genuine exploration of the unknown will resonate more powerfully with both longtime fans and newcomers.
Author Emily Chen: "Skipping the prequel trap and making Faye's afterlife the story is exactly the kind of bold narrative choice that keeps franchises from feeling like obligatory sequels."
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