Between The Last of Us on HBO, Fallout on Amazon, and now this, high-end video game adaptations are very much in. TV Line reports that Amazon Prime Video has officially ordered a series based on God of War, the hit video game series on PlayStation.
Some history may be in order. The God of War games started in 2005 on the PlayStation 2. You played as Kratos, an extremely violent guy in ancient Greece who wanted to kill everything he saw. After murdering the pantheon of Greek gods over the next couple games, Kratos took a break for a while before reemerging in 2018 with a new game also called God of War on the PlayStation 4. This time, Kratos was older, wiser, and living in Scandinavia with his son Atreus.
The most recent entry in this new God of War series, Ragnarok, came out just the other month. Kratos is murdering Norse gods now. It’s this newer series that will serve as the basis for the Amazon show, as we can tell from the official description:
"[God of War] follows Kratos, the God of War, who, after exiling himself from his blood-soaked past in ancient Greece, hangs up his weapons forever in the Norse realm of Midgard. When his beloved wife dies, Kratos sets off on a dangerous journey with his estranged son to spread her ashes from the highest peak — his wife’s final wish. Kratos soon realizes the journey is an epic quest in disguise, one which will test the bonds between father and son, and force Kratos to battle new Gods and monsters for the fate of the world."
Video game adaptations have gone legit
The new God of War games are part of a new vanguard of video games that combine sophisticated gameplay with deep, character-driven stories told with more subtlety than a lot of people expect from video games. Other examples of this kind of game include Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us. These kinds of games should translate over to TV, which could help explain why we’re seeing so many video game adaptations these days.
It could also be that the time for video game adaptations has simply arrived. The old generation of Hollywood producers is getting replaced with a new crop who actually grew up playing video games and aren’t as confounded by them. So we get shows like Halo on Paramount+, and Arcane on Netflix. There’s a video game show war coming. Will the God of War show be the victor?
We’ll have to wait a while to be sure, as there’s no premiere date set for the God of War show as of yet. The next glossy video game adaptation, The Last of Us, premieres on HBO on January 15.
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