God of War’s 2018 soft reboot wasn’t just a significant shift from hack ‘n’ slash to action RPG tropes and Souls-inspired combat, it also changed how Santa Monica Studio approached narrative. Side characters went from sexcapades and recurring exposition dumpers to being as meaningful as Kratos himself, with Ragnarok tying up seemingly every loose end they had. In the originals, we’d have probably killed them or never seen them again - it was all about button smashing, head smashing, and smashing smashing. However, tucked away between that trilogy of god-slaying action was Ghost of Sparta, a more character-focused spin-off that feels oddly familiar looking back.
Kratos discovers that his brother is still kicking, and that the two were separated at birth. Immediately, the focus is shifted from a thin plot about rage toward gods to a smaller, more focused family drama. We’re not crossing Greece with our Blades of Chaos primed to slit Zeus’ throat, but desperately following a trail that might lead to a long-awaited reunion. Kratos grapples with his place in this world like never before, contemplating his journey so far, even asking himself about who he’s become. These are all themes we see unraveled in Ragnarok where the ultimate fight with the gods isn’t something Kratos wanted, but an inevitably that rolled out of its own accord - his brother wasn’t enough to pull him out of that frenzy, but Atreus was.
Kratos was never a good man, but his rage is understandable. The gods pulled his brother away from him, tricked him into killing his wife and child, and continued to manipulate and backstab him at every corner. Throughout the original trilogy, his dead family is dredged back up time and time again to reiterate this point, but it serves as little more than a vague motive, never truly being developed as Kratos’ character remains painstakingly two-dimensional. His family died and he’s big mad - it never gets more complex than that. But Ghost of Sparta threw that aside for his brother, unpacking the bitter rivalry that had brewed in Kratos’ absence over that resentment of being abandoned.
Ghost of Sparta, while still set to the backdrop of the Greek pantheon, also looked inward at Kratos’ past as a Spartan. The series had touched upon it before, though mostly through flashbacks when he made a deal with Ares to win a battle. Here, it goes further.
We get to see what he was like as a child, sparring with his brother as the Spartan discipline is ingrained into them from a young age. A Spartan never falls on his back is something that is repeated over and over and over. Kratos clearly took that to heart, and it adds so much more depth to his unwillingness to back down from his warpath. He was raised to be this person, and so much of what we see in Ghost of Sparta is his breaking of that doctrine, even if he still succumbs to it by God of War 3.
We even visit Sparta with Kratos now deified as the God of War. He walks the streets and pays little attention to those revering him - he seems disgusted by the idea of being among the pantheon that scorned him. The whole segment is slower and more methodical, stripping away the action as Kratos strolls down the city streets at a leisurely pace, giving us a glimpse into his life beyond the bloodthirst. That’s because Ghost of Sparta isn’t afraid to move away from constant fights to tell a story, something that wouldn’t be embraced until nearly a decade later.
In doing so, it gave us our first look behind Kratos’ mask. So much of what we see in the earlier games is a facade, a front that Kratos puts up to cope with the pain and the loss he has suffered. Rather than trying to better himself and understand his pain, grieving and mourning in a healthy manner, he stays upright, refusing to show weakness. Eight years later, Ragnarok finally let Kratos open up and become that better person, but Ghost of Sparta opened that door.