As Santa Monica Studio prepares to revive the Greek legends of Kratos in God of War Remake, discover the explanation behind the hero’s astonishing whiteness.
Last February, Kratos made a surprise return with God of War Sons of Spartaa 2D prequel to the adventures of Santa Monica Studio’s hero. For the first time since Ascension, this represented for fans of the franchise a sort of return to its roots, that is to say Greece, through a metroidvania whose success, however, was mixed. Fortunately, a remake of the original trilogy is also approaching, which represents a great opportunity for its creators to return to certain anecdotes.
The explanation behind Kratos’ appearance in God of War
Indeed, in an interview given in the latest issue of Retro Gamer, Stig Asmussen, director of God of War 3 now at Respawn Entertainmentreturned to the origins of Kratos’ appearance, and more specifically the color of his skin. Because everyone who knows the license knows, the whiteness of the Greek god is far from being trivial, in the sense that it is due to the ashes of his wife and his daughter which were placed on his body as a curse after their death.
However, as Asmussen recalls in the magazine, it was not originally planned for Kratos’ skin to be like this. The idea actually came about when David Jaffe, director of the first God of War, fell in love with one of Charlie Wen’s unfinished sketches, who was still working on the character design for the character at the time. « Jaffe came across an illustration on which Wen, lead artist, had not yet worked on the skin texture, so Kratos was still completely white »see souvient Asmussen. « And he thought it was really cool ».
This is why “very early” In the development of the first God of War, it was decided to make Kratos a protagonist with whitish skin. As for the resulting narrative explanation, it was found later thanks to the team of screenwriters, who said to themselves that it would undoubtedly be more interesting to justify this atypical appearance directly via the story of the game. This is what gave birth to one of the biggest twists in God of War, reinforcing Kratos’ place as an anti-hero worthy of the greatest Greek tragedies.
Source : Retro Gamer (via GamesRadar+)
