God of War is one of the most well-known and beloved gaming franchises, spanning over 17 years of games featuring the vengeful Spartan champion, Kratos. The man famous for innovating the chain blades weapon goes through quite the journey in his years spent between the Greek and Norse lands, changing Kratos drastically as a character across his experiences.
But where does it all begin? Many players are familiar with the first God of War back in 2005, during the peak of the action-adventure era, but Kratos’ journey begins way before that. Before we get into the history of God of War, we need to learn more about Kratos first.
Kratos’ backstory
Before his deicide-filled journey began, Kratos was a mortal warrior of Sparta, the best one in fact. Kratos was hailed as Sparta’s champion, leading his armies to blood-soaked victory wherever he went. He was the ideal Spartan warrior and many looked up to him.
While the violence was strong within Kratos, he also possessed a softer side. Kratos cared for his soldiers as if they were his own brothers, drinking with them during times of peace and avenging their deaths when they fell in battle. He also had a family of his own, a wife and daughter that he loved very much. While they loved him too, they disapproved of his warmongering ways and wished for him to stop. As a Spartan warrior, Kratos had too much pride and bloodlust to do so.
These qualities caught the attention of Ares, the god of war himself. He descended down to the mortal realm and recruited Kratos into his army. Since the Spartans worshipped Ares as their god, it was a huge privilege to be enlisted in his service. Kratos served faithfully as Ares’ champion for many years and Ares rewarded him with the Blades of Chaos, imbued with the power of the god of war himself.
Ares, however, was not entirely satisfied with Kratos’ service and wanted more out of him. He ordered Kratos to attack a temple dedicated to his sister Athena, but this was a plot. Kratos’ wife and daughter were in the temple during the attack and Kratos accidentally slaughtered them as well. When he realized what he had done, Kratos was distraught, while Ares claimed he did it to rid Kratos of his weaknesses.
Now vowing revenge on the god of war, Kratos plotted to kill Ares for making him slaughter his own family. This is where the story of the games begins.
God of War: Ascension
Six months after the death of his family, Kratos is now tormented by nightmarish visions of his actions. With the ashes of his family now cursed to be stuck to his skin, carrying his sins with him wherever he goes, Kratos is now known as the Ghost of Sparta. Ares’ disowned son Orkos tells Kratos that the unending visions are due to the three Fury sisters, Megaera, Tisiphone, and their queen Alecto.
Kratos then travels to Delphi to speak with the Oracle about ending the nightmares. The Oracle instructs Kratos to get the Eyes of Truth from Delos. After heading to Delos and getting the Eyes, Kratos is ambushed by the three Furies who capture him and take away all of his items. Since the Furies have always punished oathbreakers, they deem Kratos a traitor and imprison him.
Kratos, however, escapes and kills Megaera in the process, gaining his items back. He uses the Eyes of Truth to break through the Furies’ illusions and kill Tisiphone and Alecto as well. Kratos then heads back home to find that the visions still don’t end. Orkos tells him that the visions will not end till he kills Kratos, thus setting him on a journey to kill a god.
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Kratos continues on his journey to kill Ares. Since his nightmares haven’t ended, Kratos decided to enlist help from the Olympian gods and they were happy to let Kratos into their service. The gods sent Kratos out on several campaigns and he did so to win their favor. One such campaign led him to the defense of Attica from an invading Persian army. During the invasion, the sky was suddenly plunged into darkness.
Kratos later finds out that the cause for this was the abduction of the sun god, Helios. This was done by Morpheus with help from Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Kratos fights through their armies and confronts Persephone who gives Kratos the choice of leaving his life behind to be reunited with the soul of his daughter Calliope in the underworld.
Kratos gives up his life in a heartbeat, only to later find out that Persephone had no intention of keeping her promise. She planned to take down Mount Olympus using the titan Atlas. In a final battle, Kratos kills Persephone and defeats Atlas, leaving him to shoulder the burden of the world on his back. Despite Kratos releasing Helios and fending off Morpheus, his actions earn the ire of the gods.
God of War (2005)
Caught in a sinking ship in the middle of a storm battling a Hydra is where most players meet Kratos for the first time. Sometime after the events of Chains of Olympus, Kratos is now firmly in the Olympians’ service. After the gods learn of Ares’ plan to topple Mount Olympus, they recruit Kratos as their champion to take down Ares, since it is forbidden for Olympians to go to war against each other.
This worked out perfectly for Kratos, lining up with his decade-long plan to kill Ares. Athena comes as a messenger to Kratos and he vows to her that he will take down Ares. In return, he asked the gods to remove his nightmares. Throughout the game, Kratos defeats several enemies that stand in his way, including a host of mythical creatures from Greek mythology.
Finally, after gaining several powers from the gods and opening Pandora’s Box, Kratos becomes strong enough to kill Ares. In the game’s final showdown, Kratos slays Ares in battle and reminds the gods of his reward. The gods claimed that they could forgive his sins but not stop his visions, so Kratos hopelessly throws himself off the highest mountain peak in Greece.
Zeus, however, did not wish to lose their strongest champion and saved him just before he died, ascending him to Mount Olympus as the new, but reluctant, god of war.
God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Now hailed as the new god of war, but still tormented by nightmares, a spiteful Kratos continues to act independently from the Olympians. With his revenge now behind him, Kratos goes back into his warmongering ways, leading conquests with his fellow Spartans using his new godly powers. This wanton abuse of power does not sit well with Zeus and the rest of the Greek pantheon.
No matter how many battles he fought, the visions did not stop. Due to this, he decides to journey to find his mother Callisto, who eventually tells him of his brother Deimos who has been imprisoned by the god of death, Thanatos. Callisto is then transformed into a beast that Kratos is forced to put down. After reluctantly killing his mother, Kratos then sets off to save Deimos and invades the domain of death after sinking Poseidon’s city of Atlantis.
The final battle sees Kratos and Deimos take on Thanatos together but Deimos dies in the process. Enraged, Kratos kills Thanatos to avenge his family, thus further angering the gods. Kratos’ tenure as the god of war gets even worse from this point on.
God of War: Betrayal
Before we head back to the main story, we make a small stop into the fairly obscure world of God of War: Betrayal. This is the only mobile game in the series and takes place right where Ghost of Sparta leaves off, with the gods still annoyed at Kratos for his actions. To stop Kratos’ rampages, they send Argos to defeat him on the field.
In the midst of the battle, Argos is killed by an assassin, and Kratos is framed for his murder. In an effort to clear his name, Kratos pursues the unknown assassin all over Greece, despite the minions of Hades barring his progress. Finally, Zeus sends Ceryx as a messenger to Kratos, warning him to stop his relentless pursuit.
Kratos responds by killing Ceryx, allowing the true assassin to escape in the process. This act further enrages the gods and all of that anger boils over in the next entry.
God of War II
We head back to Mount Olympus with Kratos reluctantly sitting on the god of war’s throne. After several years of service as the god of war, Kratos has grown tired of the gods not fulfilling their promise of getting rid of his nightmares. So he copes in the only way he knows how: conquest and war. This time, it all goes wrong though.
Kratos is tricked by Zeus to drain his godly powers into the Blade of Olympus, which then Zeus uses to stab him through the chest, sending Kratos to the underworld. Kratos meets Gaia and the rest of the titans here as he teams up with them to take revenge on all of Olympus. Kratos uses his newfound titan powers to break out of the underworld along with the titans.
Kratos then journeys to the Sisters of Fate, wanting to rewrite his destiny. He slays the Sisters and unwinds time to the point before Zeus kills him. He then faces Zeus in battle, but before he could finish off Zeus with the Blade of Olympus, Athena takes the blow in his stead. With her dying breath, Athena pleads with Kratos to not kill Zeus because he is Kratos’ father.
Further enraged by this revelation and the death of Athena, Kratos unwinds time back even further, bringing the titans back to their prime. The game ends with the sight of Kratos on the back of Gaia as the titans mount a full-scale assault on Mount Olympus.
God of War III
God of War III continues exactly where God of War II left off, with Kratos on the back of the massive titan Gaia. He is then confronted by Poseidon who is still angry at Kratos for sinking Atlantis. Kratos then proceeds to dismantle Poseidon, causing the sea level to rapidly rise. What follows after this point is nothing short of a bloodbath.
In his attempt to kill Zeus, Kratos slaughters gods and titans alike, slaying Hades, Helios, Hermes, Hercules, Hera, Hephaestus, and Cronos. In his final showdown with Zeus, Gaia interferes in the battle vowing to crush father and son together, consuming both of them. Unbeknownst to her, the battle between Kratos and Zeus raged on inside her, with Kratos finally driving the Blade of Olympus through Zeus and Gaia’s heart in one thrust, killing them both.
With his vengeance finally complete, Athena’s spirit arrives urging Kratos to give her all of the powers he absorbed by killing the gods. In a final act of defiance against the gods, Kratos instead stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus, releasing all of the god powers to the hands of humanity, ceasing the natural disasters, and letting them rebuild, to the dismay of Athena.
Kratos is then left for dead here, but as we know, his story is not over.
God of War (2018)
In a secret ending in God of War III, it was shown that the lifeless body of Kratos somehow made it off Mount Olympus. How he survived after this is not something we know yet, but Kratos somehow made it to the Norse lands. Having been nursed back to health by a mysterious woman named Faye, Kratos eventually marries her and the couple has a son together named Atreus. Believing this to be his second chance at a happy life, Kratos is finally at peace here.
That peace did not last long with the passing of his wife. Following this event, he is entrusted with her final wish, the scattering of her ashes from the highest peak in Jötunheim. After the father and son battle through Midgard, Alfheim, Muspelheim, Niflheim, and Helheim, they finally made their way to the top of Jötunheim, scattering Faye’s ashes in the process.
It is here that Kratos learns of his wife’s giant lineage and his son’s true name, Loki. These revelations are followed by the eventual coming of the great Nordic cataclysm, Ragnarök. To prepare for these events, Kratos trains Atreus to make sure he can brave the dangers of what is to come once Fimbulwinter comes to an end.
God of War Ragnarök
Fimbulwinter finally comes to an end and Atreus is now a seasoned warrior. The final journey in Kratos’ saga takes him and his son through the events of Ragnarök, defiantly opposing the forces of Thor and Odin. Odin wants to take Atreus back with him to teach him about his true power as Loki, but Kratos and Atreus refuse and escape to Yggdrasil to prepare their counterattack against the Aesir.
What follows next is the events of Ragnarök itself, with the father-son duo on their way to find Tyr, the Norse god of war. Kratos was prophesized to die in the events of Ragnarök, but father and son manage to change their fate, allying with the ruler of Muspelheim Surtr to take down Asgard itself. This assault leads to the deaths of Thor and Odin while Surtr destroys all of Asgard, marking the end of the Aesirs’ era.
Following these events, Kratos is elevated to the position of Allfather, overseeing the nine Norse realms with the help of Freya, Mimir, Thrud, Tyr, and Sindri, while Atreus departs with the giantess Angrboda in her quest to find and reunite the surviving giants. This is where the story of Kratos ends, for now at least. What’s to come next is yet unknown, but we will keep you posted with any updates.
