• Posted August 20th, 2012 at 12:29 EDT by Mike Harradence
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Developer Sony Santa Monica has revealed that God of War: Ascension will feature a different side to Kratos – namely, one that doesn’t feel compelled to slaughter everything in his path, innocents included.

Lead designer Mark Simon told Polygon that the bald brute boasts more human qualities about him in the prequel, and is a little more tactful this time around rather than simply letting his sword do the talking.

Said Simon: “For example, there’s the guy who’s against the wall, and there’s a fire, and in order to get past him Kratos just kills him and moves on. I think what the Kratos in this game would do is, he would try to move around the guy.”

“He wouldn’t try to kill him and move on,” he added. “He’s not going to go massively out of his way or anything like that, he is very driven to do what he does – the guy is a Spartan general, he’s killed hundreds and hundreds of people.”

“But the civilians in this case,” Simon continued, “he doesn’t kill any civilian, here. The ones that are killing the civilians are the beasts that he’s fighting against, and we want to get back to that. Because it’s important to know that, like, these guys are terrorizing the workers on this statue.”

“Kratos is going to go in and fight those guys, so in a way he’s more heroic for doing things like this. When the Juggernaut shows up, he kills three guys just like that, and Kratos runs in and fights this guy. That’s the monster, in this game, not Kratos.”

God of War: Ascension is a prequel and takes place just after Kratos is tricked into killing his family by the God of War, Ares. The game is due out exclusively on PlayStation 3 in March 2013.