God of War Ragnarök took so long, Atreus actor hit puberty

God of War Ragnarök is almost upon us. Earlier this year, there were doubts that Kratos’ next adventure would even release before the end of 2022, but we’re now less than a month away from stepping back into his big burly boots and walloping some godly butts.

There’s been a four year wait between Ragnarök and its predecessor, though, and in that time, a lot can change. Namely, the voice actor for Atreus, Sunny Suljic, is now 17 years old, and spoiler alert, apparently sounds pretty different to when he was 13.

Take a look at the trailer for God of War Ragnarök right here.

As reported by IGN, in a behind the scenes video, Jodie Kupsco (the game’s supervising dialogue designer) explained that the team were faced with the “unique challenge” of dealing with Suljic’s changing voice while recording lines for the new title, which was exacerbated thanks to the pandemic extending production time.

“Our actor for Atreus, Sunny, is a teenage boy, and his voice changed dramatically throughout several years on this title,” Kupsco said. “We had to go in and even-out that performance so it sounds like it took place over a short period of time. That was a unique challenge on this one.”

The pandemic also impacted the game’s motion capture, which senior producer Ariel Angelotti revealed thankfully didn’t change the story. “We avoided compromising the story we were trying to tell as a result of the pandemic and these limitations we had to deal with,” Angelotti explained. “There were no cinematics that we changed; we still have the same characters in them in the final game. We just had to get a bit creative with how we shot the content.”

There’s not long to wait now, anyway, as God of War Ragnarök releases on 9 November.