Cory Barlog teased God of War: Ragnarok in 2019 — but no one noticed
Ragnarok was foretold in a Twitter thread. We just realized it.
The newly announced God of War: Ragnarok was actually first teased back in 2019. The PlayStation 5 exclusive was announced at the end of Sony's September 16 PS5 Showcase with the tagline "Ragnarok is coming." It felt like a genuine surprise that, despite speculation for months that it was in development, but it turns out Game Director Cory Barlog has been teasing the new God of War on Twitter for some time.
As Digital Trends writer Joseph Yaden pointed out on Twitter Thursday morning, the pinned thread on Cory Barlog's account teases the new God of War game for PS5. The tweets in question give a behind-the-scenes look at the development of 2018's God of War.
Upon closer inspection, however, you can see the first letter of every thread spells out "R-A-G-N-A-R-O-K ... I-S ... C-O-M-I-N-G." That's the tagline of the game's trailer and why fans have preemptively started calling the PS5 game God of War: Ragnarok. So he was intentionally revealing that the game was in developing at that point in time, so it makes sense that 2021 would be the eventual release timeframe confirmed in Wednesday's teaser.
When the thread was posted in April 2019, some users did notice that the letters spelled out "Ragnarok is coming," but Sony never officially commented on a God of War sequel around that time. When someone asked him about the tease last year, he jokingly responded "Is that the one by @TaikaWaititi?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯," referencing the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Thor: Ragnarok.
He also tweeted about watching the show Ragnarok earlier this year. While these just seemed like playful tweets before, we now know that he was actually teasing a PS5 sequel to God of War.
While these are some fun teasers, they don't give any major story details outside of the fact that the story will have to do with Ragnarok, the mythological event that killed many of the Norse Gods. The trailer doesn't reveal much more about the new God of War game either.
In the trailer, we see a blue version of the series' logo form before hearing Christopher Judge's Kratos say "prepare yourself." The tagline "Ragnarok is coming" then finally appeared before confirmation of a 2021 release. While one can infer that Kratos is speaking to Atreus in the trailer, (SPOILERS) the post-credits scene for the first God of War does tease that Kratos and Atreus will fight Thor.
Sony also briefly referenced the game in a PlayStation Blog post about the PS5, just calling it "New God of War title" and affirming that it was in development at Sony Santa Monica.
The Inverse Analysis — It seems like the same creative team that worked on the first game is returning for the sequel, which is a good sign considering how fantastic 2018's God of War was. We have yet to see any gameplay; hopefully, we don't have to wait too long to see that as the game is supposed to come out next year and clearly was in active development as far back as Spring 2019.
Secret teases like this aren't uncommon in the game industry, as just this month Xbox revealed that Phil Spencer hid the Xbox Series S in the background of a few interviews earlier this year. Developers clearly like to play around with fans when teasing their next game's and system, so gamers should definitely be paying increased attention to tweets and on-camera appearances like this as we approach the launch of Xbox Series X and PS5.
God of War: Ragnarok will be released for PS5 in 2021.
