It's been almost ten years since the last installment of God of War, and Kratos has changed a lot in that time. Not only is the son of Zeus sporting an impressive beard and dragging around a child, he's also got a brand-new voice courtesy of veteran actor Christopher Judge. While this is seen as a controversial move to many, Game Director Cory Barlog explained why the development team felt the need to make a change.

In a new interview, Barlog claimed that big changes needed to be made to the God of War franchise when it returned from its lengthy hiatus. One of the biggest changes made was to replace long-standing Kratos voice actor Terrence C. Carson, which Barlog insists was a necessary decision.

"The way we shot all the previous games, we were able to have a different body actor than the voice actor, so the voice actor could do most of their work similar to an animated film where they just did all V.O. work in the studio. Doing what we wanted to do with a camera that was never going to cut away, we had a lot of scenes that required two characters to interact physically on the stage."

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Thanks to the significant size difference between Kratos and Terrence, the studio would have had substantial difficulty editing animations for when the titular God of War and his own child interacted. On the other hand, Judge stands at an impressive 6-foot-3, which makes the whole process a little more streamlined.

In reality, though, the biggest deciding factor in Christopher Judge getting the role was his chemistry with 12-year-old co-star Sunny Suljic. Cast at the age of 9, Sunny plays Kratos' son Atreus and was given significant input on who eventually received the role of his in-game father.

"We did a chemistry test, and I didn’t find out until later that they really did ask Sunny for approval," Judge commented, before laughing and telling Sunny that he owes him a new pair of Nikes.

Despite the addition of a child, it seems that developer SIE Santa Monica Studio won't be toning down the action in this new version of God of War. If anything, recent claims from Sony suggest that this will be the most brutal game in the series' significantly brutal history and we can't wait to find out what that means.

God of War is set to release sometime in early 2018 for PlayStation 4.

Source: Hollywood Reporter