One of the earliest scenes in the God of War franchise is of Kratos standing on the edge of a cliff ready to fall to his death. Kratos has always been a complex character, even in the earlier entries of the series, when he was all about ripping and tearing apart Gods. In this article, we’ll be going over the evolution of Kratos to see how he became the stone-faced father that we know him as today.
Where It All Began
We learn most of Kratos’s backstory in the original God of War. Kratos offers his service to the God Ares in exchange for saving his life. That started the entire sequence of events that led to where Kratos is today. After Ares takes him under his wing, he sends Kratos to burn and slaughter several villages. It is during one of these slaughters that Ares puts Kratos under a blood lust rage which leads to Kratos cutting down his wife and child along with yet another village.
Feeling betrayed by Ares, Kratos sets out to exact revenge upon the cause of his family’s death. By the end of the first game, Kratos accomplishes just that. He not only slays Ares, but a fair number of Greek Gods that stand in his way and becomes the new God of War; but his story is far from over.
The Destruction of The Greek Gods
God of War 2 and God of War 3 are more closely related to each other than they are to the original title. As the next part of Kratos’s story kicks off we find that he has become a ruthless god that guides his Spartan army to take down city after city to the displeasure of the other gods.
This leads to Zeus tricking Kratos into relinquishing his power and confines him to Hades for all eternity. Luckily, he is saved by Gaia the mother of Titans. She wants his help to seek revenge upon the gods that rebelled against the Titans years ago. This leads to a massive confrontation of the Titans accompanied by Kratos against the Gods. While his first attempt at taking Zeus’s head failed, he did find out that he was a son of Zeus.
Kratos is unmoved by the knowledge that Zeus is his father. Kratos not only considers it something trivial but also readies the Titans for another attack against the gods. God of War 3 starts off right at the end of God of War 2 and acts as the final part of the original trilogy. Kratos not only kills Zeus but also ends up killing what’s left of the remaining Greek Gods and along the way ends up unraveling the mystery of the Pandora’s box.
Inside Pandora’s Box, Kratos discovers what leads him to become the somewhat calm and caring person we see in God of War 2018 – Hope. Kratos uses Hope to end his Father Zeus for good and shares the gift of Hope with humanity, thus ending his journey and suffering for a short period of time.
God of War 2018
Using his newfound hope at the end of the last part of the original God of War trilogy, he sets out to start a new life. He is in a new land with a new family. Once you take a better look at it, you realize just how marvelously his evolution as a character made him into the man he has become.
Kratos began his journey as a Spartan demi-God with some serious anger issues but since then he has come a very long way to being a stoned face father that not only has to keep himself in check but also make sure his own kid doesn’t walk the same path Kratos still finds himself on every now and then.
