In Los Angeles last month, Al Pacino walked on stage at the Microsoft theatre in front of an audience of video game developers and performers to present a trophy at the Game awards. Looking pleased but mildly baffled, and struggling to read his autocue, he announced the winner: Christopher Judge, for his performance as Kratos in the video game God of War: Ragnarök. Dressed in a sparkling gold suit, Judge enveloped a surprised-looking Pacino in a giant hug before embarking on a 10-minute acceptance speech. “I was the last actor in California to read for this role,” he says. “Back then, if I’d known it was for a video game, I might not have taken it. Boy, how things have changed.”
Back in the 00s, Sony’s God of War games were notable for several reasons – their jaw-dropping scale, the bite and immediacy of their combat, the sheer spectacle of their fantasy violence – but they were not exactly famed for their characters. Kratos, the protagonist, was an angry lump of muscle whose narrative arc mostly involved killing bigger and bigger things and getting more and more furious. So when Kratos and God of War returned in 2018 after a long hiatus, it was a surprise to find that not only had he left the realm of Greek mythology for Scandinavia, but he was now a widower, accompanied by a young son with whom he struggled to connect.
Yet Judge brought the character to life with emotional resonance, and the father-son relationship between Kratos and Atreus became the linchpin that held the game together.
The trajectory of the God of War series mirrors that of blockbuster video games as a whole over the past 20 years: from sequences of levels bookended by short cut-scenes to interactive cinematic events whose characters and narrative have become interwoven with the experience of play. In 2022, God of War: Ragnarök continued the story of Kratos and Atreus through grudge-matches with Norse gods, axe-wielding travels through the Norse realms and heart-in-mouth encounters with mythological creatures. At the centre of it, still, is the relationship between a distant, damaged father and a son trying to figure out who he’s supposed to be – a relationship made believable by the actors performing it.
Atreus is played by Sunny Suljic, who has grown up alongside his character: he first read for the role aged eight. Now a laid-back 17-year-old, he speaks to me between classes at his LA high school about the impact the games have had on his life. “When I auditioned for it, it was so secretive, I had no idea that I was even auditioning for a video game,” he says. “It took a while for me to adapt to it … it’s a whole different process than I had imagined. I had no idea about everything that went into a video game. I’ll forever appreciate the art of creating a game, now. It takes a lot.”
In Ragnarök, Atreus is a teenager embarking on his own secret night-time adventures to escape the protective gaze of his father. If the previous game was about closing the distance between Kratos and his son, then Ragnarök is about Atreus trying to establish some distance again, clashing with his parent as teenagers do. These are Suljic’s favourite parts of the game. “I’m growing up with the character, too, so a lot of the scenes I could kind of relate to,” he says. “I feel like generally around your teenage years, you want to start being more independent, finding your own way … I really like Atreus in this game, I feel like he’s maturing a lot, the dialogue is a lot heftier.”
The relationship between Atreus and Kratos is heftier, too, with a level of understated emotional literacy from Kratos that would have been unimaginable from the character a few years ago. “Having him be tender with Atreus in the last game wouldn’t have worked,” says Matt Sophos, narrative director at Sony Santa Monica. “We wouldn’t have earned it, based on everyone’s knowledge of where he came from.”
Throughout 2018’s God of War, Kratos refers to Atreus as “boy”: sometimes gently, more often gruffly, sometimes angrily. This quickly became a meme – the game was affectionately dubbed Dad of Boy on Twitter – but Sophos says that the game’s writers were trying to convey an emotionally closed-off demeanour. “He doesn’t refer to anyone by name,” he says. “Freya is ‘witch’, Brock is ‘the blue one’. He didn’t want to let people in. In Ragnarök, he calls them by their names. Kratos is allowing other people into his life, he is trying to be better as he promised Atreus he would.”
The artfully suppressed emotion in Judge’s performance is fundamental to this tonal shift, and its plausibility. In his Game awards acceptance speech, he told a story about breaking down during one of the game’s scenes, to the point where game director Eric Williams had to console him as he was sobbing.
“Chris is an incredible performer,” says Sophos. “He gives us every bit of himself every time he steps onto the performance capture stage or into the VO booth. “Kratos is the backbone of the game, so you need strong shoulders. Chris, as both a massive human being and as an incredible performer, can handle that.”
Suljic’s performance as Atreus is no less heartfelt, and no less authentic; anyone who has parented a teen will recognise the infuriating process of self-discovery that Atreus goes through in Ragnarök – arguments, risky behaviour and all. Touchingly, the relationship that has developed between the two actors over the years carries a faint echo of the relationship between their characters. “Chris is a really amazing guy,” says Suljic. “He’s given me a lot of acting tips – I honestly think he’s crafted me as a person, too.”
At one point during Judge’s acceptance speech, the camera turned to his younger co-star, watching from the audience with a huge grin on his face. “Sunny, I voted for you,” said Judge. “Your work was astounding; you’re the future of this.” He’s right in more ways than one: for decades there’s been talk about how video games might be the future of acting, but it’s also true that great acting is the future of video games.
