If there's one thing Sony's Santa Monica Studio probably regrets about 2018's excellent God Of War, I'd imagine it was inadvertently making players believe that they'd be able to travel across all nine realms on their adventure.
As I'm sure you recall, travel between realms via the Bifröst was possible from a sort-of hub area. From here, you could explore the vast majority of the realms, each packed with their own secrets and adventures.
Why weren't all nine included? Time constraints, for one thing. And of course, certain realms were being held back for story reasons. Wouldn't have made much sense for Kratos to walk right into Asgard, would it? Especially since he seems to be actively avoiding that place.
Unfortunately, for this hub area to work in the context of the game, it had to make it look like the remaining realms were simply... currently inaccessible for whatever reason. In other words, you could see these realms via the travel menu, but just couldn't get there. This inevitably led to endless speculation that Santa Monica Studio must be working on DLC, despite the fact that the game's director Cory Barlog repeatedly shut these rumours down.
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Fortunately, Santa Monica Studio won't have to contend with such rumours when God Of War Ragnarok launches in 2022. That's because the upcoming sequel will give players what they were after in the first game, and allow them to explore all nine realms. From Alfheim to Vanaheim, the realms are Kratos' oyster.
A post over on the PlayStation Blog confirmed the news, proudly stating that all nine realms will be present and correct at launch.
"God of War Ragnarok will take you to the previously unreachable Vanaheim, Svartalfheim, and Asgard - as well as to new areas from locations featured in the last game," the studio wrote. "Exploring the realms will take you everywhere from verdant, otherworldly jungles to intricate subterranean mining networks. This next installment in the series will bring you a more diverse, beautiful, and mysterious variety of locations than in any other God of War game."
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So there you have it: God Of War Ragnarok is going in hard, offering us all new worlds to explore while changing up previously visited locations in surprising new ways. Just when I thought I couldn't be any more excited for this damn game.
Featured Image Credit: SonyTopics: News, PlayStation, God Of War