In Los Angeles last month, Al Pacino took the Microsoft Theater stage in front of an audience of game developers and artists to present a trophy at the Game Awards. Looking pleased but slightly puzzled, and straining to read his autocue, he announced the winner: Christopher Judge, for his performance as Kratos in God of War: Ragnarök. Dressed in a shiny gold suit, Judge wrapped a surprised-looking Pacino in a giant hug before embarking on a 10-minute acceptance speech. “I was the last actor in California to read for this role,” he says. “Back then, if I had known it was for a video game, I might not have taken it. Boy, how things have changed.”
In the 2000s, Sony’s God of War games stood out for a number of reasons—their staggering scale, the bite and immediacy of their combat, the sheer spectacle of their fantasy violence—but they weren’t exactly famous for their characters. Kratos, the protagonist, was an angry lump of muscle whose story arc mostly consisted of killing bigger and bigger things and getting more and more enraged. So when Kratos and God of War returned in 2018 after a long hiatus, it was a shock to discover that he had not only left the realm of Greek mythology for Scandinavia, but was now a widower, accompanied by a young son with whom he was born. struggled to connect.
However, Judge brought the character to life with emotional resonance, and the father-son relationship between Kratos and Atreus became the lynchpin that held the game together.
The trajectory of the God of War series mirrors that of highly successful video games as a whole over the past 20 years: from level sequences delimited by cutscenes to interactive cinematic events whose characters and narrative have been woven into the gameplay experience. In 2022, God of War: Ragnarök continued the story of Kratos and Atreus through grudge fights with Norse gods, axe-wielding journeys across the Norse realms, and direct encounters with mythological creatures. At the center, still, is the relationship between a distant and damaged father and a son trying to figure out who he is supposed to be, a relationship that the actors make believable.
Atreus is played by Sunny Suljic, who has grown alongside his character, first reading for the role at age eight. Now a laid-back 17-year-old, he talks to me between classes at his Los Angeles high school about the impact gaming has had on his life. “When I auditioned for it, it was so secret that I had no idea I was auditioning for a video game,” she says. “It took me a while to adjust…it’s a completely different process than he had envisioned. I had no idea how much went into a video game. I will always appreciate the art of creating a game, now. It takes a lot.
In Ragnarök, Atreus is a teenager who embarks on his own secret nocturnal adventures to escape his father’s protective gaze. If the previous game was about closing the distance between Kratos and his son, then Ragnarök is about Atreus trying to establish some distance again, bumping into his father like teenagers do. These are Suljic’s favorite parts of the game. “I’m also growing with the character, so I can relate to a lot of the scenes,” he says. “I feel like generally around your teen years you want to start being more independent, finding your own way… I really like Atreus in this game, I feel like he’s maturing a lot, the dialogue is a lot more intense.”
The relationship between Atreus and Kratos is also more grounded, with a low-key level of emotional literacy from Kratos that would have been unimaginable from the character a few years ago. “Having him cuddly with Atreus in the last game wouldn’t have worked,” says Matt Sophos, Sony Santa Monica’s director of narrative. “We wouldn’t have earned it, based on everyone’s knowledge of where it came from.”
Throughout 2018’s God of War, Kratos refers to Atreus as “child”: sometimes gently, more often roughly, sometimes angrily. This quickly became a meme – the game was affectionately nicknamed father of child on Twitter, but Sophos says the game’s writers were trying to convey emotionally closed behavior. “He doesn’t refer to anyone by his name,” he says. “Freya is ‘witch,’ Brock is ‘the blue one.’ He didn’t want to let people in. At Ragnarök, he calls them by their names. Kratos is allowing other people into his life, he is trying to be better like he promised Atreus he would.”
The artfully suppressed emotion in Judge’s performance is central to this tonal shift and its plausibility. In his Game Awards acceptance speech, he told a story about collapsing during one of the game’s cutscenes, to the point where the game’s director, Eric Williams, had to comfort him as he sobbed.
“Chris is an incredible artist,” says Sophos. “He gives us every bit of himself every time he steps on the performance capture stage or VO booth. “Kratos is the backbone of the game, so you need strong shoulders. Chris, both as a massive human being and as an incredible artist, can handle that.”
Suljic’s performance as Atreus is no less candid and no less authentic; Anyone who has parented a teenager will recognize the exasperating process of self-discovery that Atreus goes through in Ragnarök: arguments, risky behavior and all. Poignantly, the relationship that has developed between the two actors over the years has a faint echo of the relationship between their characters. “Chris is a really amazing guy,” says Suljic. “He has given me a lot of acting advice, I honestly think he has shaped me as a person as well.”
At one point during Judge’s acceptance speech, the camera turned to her younger co-star, who was looking on from the audience with a big smile on her face. “Sunny, I voted for you,” Judge said. “Your work was amazing; You are the future of this.” He’s right in more ways than one: there’s been talk for decades about how video games could be the future of acting, but it’s also true that great acting is the future of video games.
