Kratos could've died in an early draft of God of War Ragnarök

The game would've gone down a very different path at one point in time.

Warning! This article contains major spoilers for God of War Ragnarök.

Now you've been warned, after months of worrying when we finally sat down to play God of War Ragnarök, we all breathed a sigh of relief as the credits finally rolled and it was confirmed Kratos would not meet his end in this game.

However, Kratos' death was something the writers considered heavily. According to Matt Sophos, the narrative director for the game, the "earliest, earliest draft of an outline that we had come up with," which would have Kratos die in the first Thor fight.

"And so," Sophos continued. "He was gonna die, and then it wasn't a permanent death. What was going to happen - and I don't care, we can tell this, because it doesn't happen any more so this is all fan fiction at this point - he would get pulled out of Hell, essentially, by Atreus. But it's now been, like, 20 years have passed - it was going to be a big time jump-type thing. So that was a version of it."

Apparently, the writers didn't go down that route because the game's director, Eric Williams, wasn't a fan of it. It does seem like an interesting concept, but considering the tremendous story we got in God of War Ragnarök, it might be for the best it was left out.

Sophos also added that the current version of the story instead allowed the writers to better convey a theme of defying fate. "Knowing that Norse mythology is all about fate and prophecy and everything, and we wanted to say 'that's bullshit', you know? Nothing is written that can't be unwritten, as long as you're willing to make changes in your life then you're not bound to fate."