God Of War Ragnarök makes one massive change to Kratos

God Of War Ragnarök is making some major changes to the relationship between Kratos and Atreus.

Here at GAMINGbible we've been busy playing the upcoming PlayStation exclusive and will have a full review for you next week. But we are allowed to talk about the first five hours of the game, and what's immediately clear is how much Atreus has grown up.

The wide-eyed child of the last game is gone, replaced by a moody teenager struggling to find his place in the world. Does he listen to his father and reject his Godly destiny? Or does he march to war in an effort to save reality itself? It's not the kind of choice any teenager should have to wrestle with.

This shift in Atreus' behaviour leads him to repeated conflicts with Kratos. Where previously Kratos' "boy" would follow orders and do what was asked of him, this older Atreus is much happier to challenge his father, talk back, and even lie to his face.

It's because of this that developer Santa Monica Studio opted to make a pretty big change to Kratos: in Ragnarök, he no longer calls Atreus "boy". This is something that was said so much in 2018's God Of War that it literally became a meme. Now it's over.

Speaking to GamesRadar, director Eric Williams explained why Kratos now refers to his son by his name only.

"It's that idea that we really wanted it to be this feeling of like 'oh, I can find a way into this story, whether I'm a parent or a child, or I'm somewhere in between, or I remember both sides of it'. There's a way in for everyone," he said.

"The last game you had Atreus just always being told what to do by adults. Anybody asks a question and they never give him an answer. But we wanted to be a lot more grey. Now we're getting into Atreus being like, "Well, I don't think it's like that". And [Kratos and Mimir] are like, "Oh, are you being sassy? Or should we actually have a real conversation about this?"