GOD OF WAR Full Story Explained

 

 

Our story begins with the Primordials, the very first beings to come into existence, fighting for control of their creation, Earth. This war ravished the world, and eventually the three Furies were born from the rage and power of the battle. The Furies were then tasked to honor oaths between the various beings of Earth. Their first victim was the Hecatonchires, Aegaeon, who had broken an oath to one of the first Gods, Zeus. To make an example of Aegaeon, the Furies petrify his body into The Prison of the Damned for anyone who dared to break an oath in the future. Eventually the Furies began to take guidance from the God of War, Ares, who convinced them to join him in a siege on Olympus. Believing their forces to be too weak, the queen of the Furies, Alecto, birthed a son with Ares hoping to create a powerful warrior. This warrior, Orkos, proved to be a failure in Ares’ eyes, and was disowned; however, the Furies decided to use him as their oath-keeper. With Ares still in search for his warrior to help take over Olympus, Zeus hears of a prophecy foretelling his death at the hands of one of his sons, a ‘marked warrior’.

 Ares is tasked to find and dispose of this threat. Ares discovers Deimos, a young Spartan who bore a birthmark all over his body, and storms the city to capture him. During the kidnapping, Deimos’ brother, another young Spartan by the name of Kratos, attempts to stop the God, but he is struck down, leaving a scar over his right eye. Ares attempts to kill Kratos for this, but his sister, Athena, the goddess of war, convinces him to spare the boy. Deimos is then taken to the god of death, Thanatos, to prevent the prophecy and protect Zeus. Kratos, tortured by his inability to save his brother, vows to never fail like that again, and tattoos a replica of Deimos’ birthmark on himself in remembrance. Kratos’ rage and pain remained with him as he became a leading member of the Spartan army, eventually marrying a Spartan woman named Lysandra, and the two have a daughter whom they name Calliope. Calliope unfortunately contracts a plague, which infects her skin and causes the Spartan authorities to decide for her to be thrown into a chasm and left to die. Kratos then sets off to find the cure for her disease, a mysterious element with exceptional healing abilities called Ambrosia. Unbeknownst to Kratos, the Gods had a wager in which they selected various heroes whom they believed would first obtain the Ambrosia. Kratos was chosen by Ares, likely due to their prior run-in in which Kratos displayed his resilience and bravery. After battling the other Gods’ selected heroes, Kratos fights a climactic battle with an army of Barbarians and their leader Alrik, who was trying to retrieve the Ambrosia to heal his own father. Kratos eventually bests Alrik, and captures the Ambrosia, but at the cost of many of his men. Upon returning to Sparta, Kratos heals his daughter, and the King of Sparta bestows on him the title of Captain. As captain of the Spartan army, Kratos leads his men to many victorious battles, often slaying scores of enemies with an increasing hunger for power, despite the wishes of his wife. Eventually, Kratos comes across a familiar enemy, the barbarian king Alrik who still blames Kratos for his father’s death. Kratos and his army are no match to the rebuilt Barbarian army, and Kratos, moments away from death at the hands of Alrik, calls out to Ares in desperation.

 Ares, seeing a candidate to overthrow Olympus, accepts Kratos’s offer of loyalty, and kills the Barbarians in exchange. He then gives Kratos the Blades of Chaos, symbolizing his servitude to the God of War.

 Under Ares’ loyalty, Kratos slays many innocents, razes villages, and spreads chaos in the name of Ares. Under Ares’ influence, Kratos slowly loses his humanity with every battle fought for the god. Soon, Kratos is tasked to raid a village of Athena’s followers due to Ares’ jealously of Athena, whom their father Zeus favored. There, he encounters an oracle, who warns Kratos of dark things awaiting him inside the city’s temple. Kratos ignores this warning, and enters the temple, blindly slaughtering those inside. However, afterwards, Kratos comes to realize that those inside the temple were none other than his beloved wife Lysandra and daughter Calliope.

 Ares reveals that he had transported them there secretly in order to sever Kratos’s human ties and create the perfect warrior. Kratos leaves the bodies of his family inside the temple to burn, and as he exits, the oracle curses him, binding the ashes of his wife and child to Kratos’s skin, forcing him to wear another reminder of his failures, and turning him into the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos then renounces his allegiance to Ares, and breaks his oath, causing the Furies to hunt him down and torture him with endless illusions. Kratos then finds himself trapped in an illusion of his former home in Sparta. Orkos appears before him and helps him break the illusion using Lysandra’s necklace and ring. Orkos then convinces Kratos to seek out Aletheia, the Oracle at Delphi. He finds the Oracle captured, but is unable to prevent her from being mortally wounded. Before her death, she informs Kratos that the only way he can be free of his oath to Ares would be to slay the oath’s enforcers: the Furies. Kratos returns to Orkos who informs him of Ares’ true intentions all along to use him to overthrow Zeus. With this knowledge, Kratos travels to Delos to slay the Furies. Upon his arrival, however, he is ambushed and captured by them, and they proceed to torture him in the Prison of the Damned. After two weeks of torture, one of the Furies leaves an opening for Kratos to exploit and escape his imprisonment. After various battles and illusions, Kratos is able to outsmart and outfight the Furies, slaying all three of them. After the death of the Furies, Kratos returns to his home in Sparta where he finds Orkos, who reveals to Kratos that while he killed the Furies, they transferred Kratos’ oath to him, keeping the bond with Ares’ intact. Orkos hands Kratos his blade, and asks him for an honorable death in order to permanently end Ares’ hold on them. Kratos complies, killing Orkos, and burning his home with the former oath-keeper’s body still inside. No longer under servitude to Ares, Kratos dedicates his life to serving the Gods of Olympus as their trusted warrior. After defeating an invading Persian army for the Gods, Kratos appears before them to ask for his next task, suddenly, however, he sees the Sun fall from the sky, enveloping the world in darkness. Kratos follows the last trace of light he can see to the Temple of Helios. After speaking to Athena, Kratos concludes that Helios had been captured, allowing the God of Dreams, Morpheus, to entrance other Gods into a deep sleep, allowing him to take control of Greece. Inside the temple, Eos, Helios’s sister, tasks Kratos to awaken her brother’s Fire Steeds in order to find him. In return, she promises to relieve Kratos of his nightmares, which haunt him in the form of a melody his daughter used to play on her flute. He does this, and the steeds take him to Helios’s location: the Underworld. There, he meets, Charon, the ferryman on the River Styx, who ultimately denies Kratos passage, as it is not his time. Kratos engages him, but is knocked unconscious and thrown into Tartarus, the darkest depths of the Underworld where the Titans had been chained by Zeus. Upon waking, Kratos witnesses Atlas’s chains broken, and the Titan missing. Kratos fights his way through Tartarus, eventually climbing out to confront Charon once again. After defeating him, Kratos uses his ferry to follow Helios’s light down the river Styx to a temple. There, Kratos sees his daughter upon the shore. He followers her inside, but instead finds Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld. Persephone reveals to Kratos that he can meet his daughter once again, and she is now residing in the Elysium Fields. Persephone tells Kratos that to see his daughter again, he must make a sacrifice; to give up all of his weapons and powers given to him by the Gods. Kratos does this, transferring his powers into the Forsaken Tree, and regains his humanity. He reunites with his daughter, but the reunion is interrupted by Persephone, who reveals her true intentions. She reveals that it was her who released Atlas, whom she tasked with destroying the pillar that holds the Earth. She intends for this to kill everyone, including herself, to free her from her imprisonment by Hades as his wife. Kratos painfully makes the decision to give up his ability to see his daughter and re-gain his weapons. Doing this, he once again becomes the Ghost of Sparta, and against his daughter’s wishes, takes off to stop Persephone. Kratos finds the Queen at the base of the pillar, and she carries him to the top. There, the two engage in a final battle. During this battle, Persephone attempts to confuse Kratos and convince him to return to Elysium to be with his daughter. Kratos resists this, however, and Persephone orders Atlas to take care of him. Atlas does not get this chance, however, as Kratos chains the Titan to the ceiling of the Underworld and returns to Persephone, besting her in battle and killing her. Her body explodes, destroying the pillar and leaving Atlas the only thing holding the world together. Atlas, though defeated, taunts Kratos, as he remains a slave to the Gods. Kratos accepts this fate, as he can only hope that serving the Gods will cause them to free him from his nightmares. Atlas then predicts to Kratos that they will meet again before Kratos leaves to return Helios to the sky. Weak, and now knowing that his sins will never allow him to see his daughter again, Kratos falls from the chariot, landing on a cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea. Some time after waking, Kratos is sent into the sea to kill a Hydra and return peace to the waters. After doing so, he is approached by Athena, who asks Kratos to save her city, Athens, from her brother Ares, whose army is currently advancing. Kratos, seeing an opportunity to get revenge on Ares, agrees on the condition that the Gods free him of his nightmares once and for all, as well as offer him a chance at redemption. Kratos enters Athens to find the town’s Oracle, who tells him that in order for the mortal to defeat a God, he must seek the power of Pandora’s Box, which is locked inside a Temple, constructed on the back of the Titan Cronos, who Zeus cursed to wander the Desert of Lost Souls for eternity. Kratos makes his way to the temple, encountering a mysterious grave digger on the way. Inside the temple, Kratos solves several puzzles in order to find Pandora’s box. However, Ares senses this, and throws a pillar from Athens, impaling Kratos and killing him. Ares then arrives and steals the box as Kratos dies and returns to the Underworld. However, with help from the grave digger, who refers to Kratos as “my child”, he is able to climb from Hades and return to Athens. There, he opens Pandora’s box, and gains the power to confront Ares.

 After a battle, Ares tortures Kratos by forcing him to relive his family’s death at his hands. Kratos resists this, however, and Ares is forced to strip the Blades of Chaos from Kratos’s Arms, and kills the illusion of his family in front of him. Freed from the illusion, Kratos finds a nearby sword being used as an ornamental bridge, and uses it to kill the God of War.