“God of War Ragnarök”: An interview with the narrative director

Written by Cole Mihalich. Photo courtesy of Cole Mihalich.

Fifty years ago, “Pong” was one of the best-selling games. The story? It was driven by
your imagination. Today, the stories in video games rival that of films, novels and
television. Their merit, not only as entertainment but art, continues to grow as the
potential of the medium is explored. The video game industry has become as profitable
as the music and film industries combined, and the scale of games has only grown.
From stories of plumbers saving princesses to now, epic, sweeping sagas exploring and
inventing centuries of mythology. One of the most popular today is “God of War
Ragnarök.”

In 2018, the team at PlayStation’s Santa Monica Studios took a chance. A fresh
perspective on their own widely popular series, “God of War.” The risk paid off, and “God
of War” (2018) is now lauded as one of the greatest games of all time. In November of
2022, Santa Monica released “God of War Ragnarök,” a direct sequel to “God of War.” But
how do you follow up on something so revered? We sat down to speak with Matt Sophos,
Narrative Director of “God of War Ragnarök,’” to learn more about him, what it takes to
write a video game and the fascinating behind-the-scenes process of creating the
game.

Note that there will be spoilers for the story of “God of War Ragnarök” below.

So what exactly is a narrative director? What might your day-to-day look like?

Narrative Director is very different for every studio. A lot of my job is firefighting, and it’s
hard to predict what my day is like when I walk into – well, I was gonna say walk into the
office, but now it’s just logging into the computer. But, as a Narrative Director at Santa
Monica Studios, I’m involved with breaking the story of the game, hiring the writing staff
to carry the vision forward, and even writing myself. I work very closely with the lead
writer, Richard Gaubert. I’ve worked with him for over twenty years now, and he’s basically
my writing partner and my other half. I am also involved with casting the actors and
selections based on audition tapes.

Once we go to shoot the scenes, I work with the cine- (cinematics) arts lead who is
there, trying to figure out how to stage the scenes, and I answer any questions they may
have. They work on blocking because we do a single camera shot, so it’s obviously very
different from shooting something that has cuts. If you mess up somewhere in the
middle, we need to restart. The camera person is also a part of that dance – like the
actors. I’m directing the emotional performances and trying to make sure that Eric
Williams, the game director, gets what he wants out of it. He will give feedback on
things because he is on stage too, and we’ll both tag-team the actors to get where we
want to be.

Again, I’m jumping in at some points and writing for levels myself – trying to get things
stood up. I’ll play through levels over and over again and give notes. At the end of the
project, I’m working on banter-timing and such, so conversations that happen during
levels come off naturally. So, it’s a massive grab bag of stuff. And I’m sure there’s a lot
I’m forgetting too.

I was curious how you and the narrative team keep perspective on a story that is
30-35 hours long. Are there points where you’re able to step back and look at all
of it?

It’s difficult because you have a lot of thoughts along the way from all different kinds of
places. But, we’re always trying to get that beginning-to-end experience stood up, even
if it’s in really rough form. It’s often well before we’ve recorded any voiceover. So to
start a lot of studios will use “robo-voice” where you insert the dialogue, and then a
robotic voice spits it back out. I hate robo-voice. I don’t feel it gives you the timing. So
sometimes dialogue that I know will sound [good] in my heart will sound like crap.
People will react to it in negative ways. Instead, we use temporary voice-over. The
temp V.O. in the case of this game is all the writers taking on voices.

Who did you play?

I played Kratos laughs. Largely because I was Kratos in the last game. But the other
writers basically have to take on all the other roles. Now, at Santa Monica [Studios],
we’re very play-test-centric. We do lots and lots of playtests to try and give us as much
information as we possibly can. To get what’s working, and what things are not working
and then adjust on the fly. I’ve never been at a studio that did as much playtesting as
we did. So that is where you try to get some amount of perspective, but you really can’t.
You get too close to it. I’m free to admit at a certain point in the late stage of
development, you’re just hoping that what you have in the game lands for people.

I agree with the sentiment that people sometimes can be too close to their own
work, but when the work you do is passed through so many hands, do you find
that the new perspective from others is an inspiration?

Oh, absolutely. I like to say that writing is both the tip of the spear and the butt of it. In
the beginning, we’re charting the path and feeding content downstream. As soon as we
turn in a script that we’re happy about it then goes through staging, shooting, and
eventually animation, both cleanup, and keyframe. And then, it goes into the level and
narrative tech design who try to make things work.

So, everything rolls downhill from us. But, then in the end, we’re also the ones doing final
dialogue timing. We’re writing all the on-screen text stuff, so we’re downstream of
everyone too. I tell you that to illustrate that what we start doing as a narrative team is
impossible without so many other hands in the mix.

Music, right? There are scenes we did in this game that we knew were going to be
completely reliant on music. We’d walk through the scenes – Eric [Williams] and I would
walk him [Bear McCreary] through the scenes, and I’d go: Bear, in these scenes, we’ve
got great performances from the actors, great performance capture. But, it is going to
live and die by how you score it.

The two scenes that come to mind are Fighters Requiem, which was our internal name
for it. It’s where Kratos goes into his room and Atreus is gone and he just takes off all of
his armor and puts his weapons down – he’s just kind of broken, right? So that scene
and then obviously Brok’s funeral where there is really only the tagline about the riddle.
Everything else is resting on the score. That rolls down and expands out to all other
groups. You have to buy in and put all your effort into making that narrative stand up.
So we’re entirely beholden to everybody putting on their A-Game to deliver.

You’ve mentioned before that you started planning years before. How long after
“God of War” 2018 did you start thinking about Ragnarök? With that, at what point
did you realize that you needed to grow the writing team?

Well, we started on Ragnarök as 2018 was winding down. We shipped [“God of War”
2018] in April. In March of 2018, Rich Gaubert, the lead writer on Ragnarök, and I were
all that was left of our team on the writing side. We started to talk about where
Ragnarök could go.

Then we took a long break and came back, so it was before [“God of War”] 2018 had
even hit the shelves that we started thinking about what Ragnarök could be. We were
just crossing our fingers, hoping that people wouldn’t reject 2018, like “This isn’t the God
of War I wanted.”

Thankfully it worked out. The first few months were us trying to break the story and
figuring out where it needed to go while working with Eric [Williams]. We ended up
throwing out the original thing that we thought we were doing. We pivoted early. It was
through the end of 2018 that we started bringing on writers. We thought we’d bring on
maybe three writers, but then it got bigger, and the exploration team started talking about
how they wanted to make this big open space called “The Crater.”

And there were many quests in there, and it was like, “Okay – we’re going to need more
people.” It turned into that Oceans 11 thing, right? Are we going to get one more? Let’s
get one more. Even at the very end, it felt like we needed another person. It was like,
man, if we could just have someone handling this, then I could focus on that.

What were the things that you were looking for in those writers, and what is a skill
or direction students should take if they’re interested in entering the industry?

Writing is writing. I’m always drawn to any writing that comes out of character growth.
You can tell wonderful stories that stem from the plot – where the plot dictates what
happens to the characters. But for me – I get more caught up in things where everything
is coming out of character: the choices that they make and their flaws.

So, ultimately, I look at samples, and I want to read something that shows me a writer
really has a handle on what they’re trying to say. And, that the voices of their characters
are distinct. It’s a bit of a red flag when you have characters, and obviously, there are
exceptions, where they all have the same voice. To me, that’s like, “Ok, I can hear the
writer’s voice, but I don’t have perspective on who these characters are.” Really, if you
can write a good film script or if you can write for television, just show me you’re a good
writer. We can teach you the stuff you need to know for writing for video games.

The other part of it is being able to communicate your ideas clearly. So don’t
paraphrase, and don’t try to shorthand things. I want to see things written out.
Ultimately you’re going to be communicating with all kinds of different groups of people.
You’re going to be communicating with designers who think of things a different way.
You’re going to be communicating with programmers who think of things in a vastly
different way. I’m not as great at it verbally, but I can communicate well on paper. I can
write things out and create documents where people can parse information. And that – I
feel like that’s really important.

I agree. In doing research, I saw that you went to the University of North Texas
and noticed you weren’t on the notable alumni page – which, come on – that’s an
outrage!

laughs I can tell you the reason for that is that I didn’t end up graduating from UNT. I
had 18 hours left. Oho!

So, I was working at a radio station in Dallas called KLIF 570, working on the Dallas
Mavericks sports desk. And I was also going to UNT. Then, a buddy of mine, who after
high school knew immediately that he wanted to get into game development, contacted
me. His name is Lee Perry, and he ended up being a lead designer at Epic [Games]. I
wouldn’t have my career without him. He said, “I really think you’d like game
development – I think you should do this.” He was starting at a company called Ion
Storm. So I had a choice; do I jump into game development and put my everything into
it, or do I finish out school? And then it became a conversation with my wife going, “What
do you think?” and she said, “If you’re passionate about it, then do it.”

I found it amazing that you and Richard Gaubert have worked together in so many
companies, starting at Ion Storm all the way up to Santa Monica [Studios].

Yeah! I met him at Ion Storm, my first gig and his first gig in the industry. And after Ion
folded, I stayed in Dallas trying to find something, but the video game development scene
had been contracting a bunch there. Eventually, I got a gig at EA in LA and met back
up with him. Whenever I got a job in a place where they needed a writer, I’d go “Rich
you’re coming in.” So I brought him to a lot of places where I worked, but he ended up
getting the gig at Santa Monica Studios. We haven’t looked back since.

The thing I always – and I encourage this for you, too: find people you love working with.
And then work with them as much as possible.

Wow. I had a question related to direction. What was a scene you knew was
coming that you were either looking forward to or nervous about directing?

As far as directing goes I was looking forward to the Odin reveal because I knew it was
going to be a hard one. We had to shoot it in two different parts. We were shooting a
good bulk of it with Ben [Prendergast], who plays Týr, as a scene in two parts leading up
to the big moment. And then we’re going; we have to overlap where he says the line –
remember the cadence of it, and then we bring it to Richard [Schiff]. From there, we
shoot the back half, and he has to repeat the same lines as Ben did at the moment. But,
it’s a bunch of powerhouse people on the stage together. You have some lighthearted
stuff with Brett Dalton playing Freyr and very heavy stuff that happens, so I was looking
forward to it because I knew it had the chance to be great.

One that – I don’t want to say I wasn’t looking forward to it, but it’ll probably surprise you.
The scene after the big bar brawl – where Atreus and Thrúd drag Thor out of the bar and
sit him down. I was looking forward to it because Mina [Sundwall] is such a good actor.
When she auditioned, it was like, “Wow, we know that this is Thrúd. She’s just got it.” A
lot of that scene was an audition or a call-back piece. I was really looking forward to her
performance, but I was a little not looking forward to it because it dredged up emotions
for me. That was a scene that was very personal in some respects for both Eric
Williams and me. So it’s one where it was like, “This is gonna be good, but it’s gonna
hurt.”

I could say similar things about the scene in the tent with Kratos and Atreus. We knew
that one was going to hurt. Rich [Gaubert] and I, as fathers and the feeling of watching
your kid grow up – it hurts a little bit, and it’s bittersweet. It’s the right thing because you
want them to be growing up and taking things on their own. Kratos obviously has his
own stuff that I don’t need to think about, like, “I’m probably going to die tomorrow”,
going through his head at those moments.

The end of [“God of War”] 2018 for me and “God of War Ragnarök” – we’re always driving
towards something that feels bittersweet and leaves you longing for something. And it’s
those scenes that have an element that I look forward to. It’s going to hurt a little bit
emotionally, but we’re going to work with Chris [Judge], and Chris is going to give you
everything he has, and he’s just gonna knock it out of the park. But he’s going to go
through some stuff; so go you, alright, we’re probably only going to get three takes of
this, or it’s just going to be dead.

Now that Ragnarök is a few months behind you, what is something learned from
Ragnarök that you want to be able to take over for whatever is next?

I don’t really know what’s next laughs. I think it’s more of a process thing for me. Trying to take things
that I know worked well – and one of the things we did in developing the last game was
something called storytime.

As we were developing the story at various points in the production of
the game, we wrote out quarters of the game. For example, the stretch of the beginning
of the game up until Atreus goes to Jötunheim, we would, not do all of it, but write almost
prose style. We’re telling the story of what this section of the game is. We’d then set
things up, and we took everybody from the team over to the mocap volume, which is
next door. We had chairs and everything set up and a stage type-thing where Rich and
I were. We had a big screen behind us where we’d work with the visual development
team and would create all these different kinds of art to support the storytelling. And,
we would tell the story of the game. We did it in four chunks over the span of a year in
a half.

So, one thing that a writer, designer, or student can take from this is: no one ever reads
your documents, unless it’s their job. If you’re a designer and there is a design
document, you read it, but if you’re a writer and you’re writing out scripts, no one reads it.
On [“God of War”] 2018, we had a full outline broken out for people. I can count on both
hands how many people read it, and that was with a team of well over 150 people. So,
this was our way of telling people what the story was – what the game was in a way that
felt tactile and could catch them up in the emotions. We had dialogue in it, and obviously,
it was Rich and I performing, so take that for what it is.

Understudies! That’s great.

Yeah! Right. But, it was sort of a forcing function for people to really understand what
the game is. And, giving them information that they could act on in their jobs with a lot
of contexts and a lot of feel. It was probably the most successful thing that I’ve done in
my career at conveying what the game is from a narrative perspective to people. That’s
something we’ll need to find a new way of doing because we don’t have everybody
under the same roof anymore. But, that is a process I will take going forward.

“God of War Ragnarök” is out now on PS4 and PS5. It, too is lauded as one of the
greatest games of all time.