Former God of War director Stig Asmussen has revealed that the Kratos we've grown to love today could have had a totally different name. In fact, the character was almost accidentally named after him.
Asmussen worked on all the God of War titles, including the PSP entries, before the franchise underwent the well-received overhaul. However, he could have left an everlasting mark.
Now at Respawn, the director has most recently played a key role in the making of upcoming game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Game Informer caught up with him during a recent visit to the studio and he would reveal that, when working on the God of War series, Kratos was originally named Dominus but could have been named Stig by the time the first game was ready to publish.
“We were trying to figure out Kratos’ name, and we were working with marketing on that and [director David] Jaffe opened it up to the team,” he said. “[Kratos’] working name for a long time was Dominus, but marketing didn’t like that. I don’t know how many members of the team submitted names, but I submitted maybe a handful of them and they went to marketing and they came back with four, maybe five names for Kratos – Kratos was one of them … and Stig was one of them.”
Asmussen didn't submit his own name as a candidate for the violent Spartan's but had simply put his name on his submission so marketing would know it was his idea. However, they misunderstood and actually liked the name Stig. He was surprised when he was told that his name was among the potential ones for the title's protagonist but he wasn't at all against it.
“I totally would have been cool with it,” he joked.
The most recent God of War installment was the only one from the series Asmussen wasn't involved in, having left Santa Monica in 2014. When asked if he's played it, he confirmed that he has.
“Of course. It’s brilliant. I’m really proud of that team," he declared. “It’s a little bit painful playing it when you didn’t get to work on it,” Asmussen said. “It’s going to be interesting to see where they go with it. I was really skeptical when I first heard about where they were taking Kratos, where [director Cory Barlog] was going with it. [Kratos] is a lunatic, but it totally worked. It was the right time for it, too. It was exactly what God of War needed.”