With that in mind, we are really excited to finally be able to debut the brand-new Official God of War Ragnarök Cosplay Guides for Kratos and Atreus.

One of the most rewarding things as an artist is to see cosplayers do such an amazing job recreating these characters. We do this with all our hearts to give fans characters that seem believable and it’s incredible to see people relate so much that they decide to cosplay them. To become the God of Thunder, we partnered with The Ronin Cosplay, who has been a longtime pillar of the God of War cosplay community. From Kratos to Sigrun, Ronin has taken on some of the most complex character designs in our games and made them look absolutely incredible.In addition to the new guides, we’ve once again partnered with members of our extremely talented cosplay community to provide resources and tips on creating three of the characters from the updated guides – Freya, Angrboda, and Thor. Freya – Ibelinn Cosplay Which elements of Freya’s original look as the Witch of the Wilds did the team feel were important to maintain across this next installment? With the release of God of War (2018), we were absolutely amazed by how many people wanted to cosplay characters from the game – even those we didn’t have the chance to make guides for. We wanted to design a character that embodied a thunderstorm, the concept of pure power coupled with a degree of chaotic unpredictability. As the strongest god in the Norse pantheon, we took inspiration from real world strongmen and powerlifters which gave him a solid build while also reflecting the general time period we reference for the game.

Grace Orlady: At the end of the last game, Freya undergoes a traumatic event with the death of her son – changing her from friend to hunter, vowing vengeance on Kratos. How did the team want to go about changing Freya’s visual look to represent her emotional state at the start of God of War Ragnarök? When it comes to visual storytelling, what aspects of Atreus’ character are most important to convey through his design?

While we know visual references are key, we also wanted to bring in the expertise of two of our community cosplayers to provide how-to resources and tips they put together while making the cosplays themselves! You can see on his left arm/shoulder the cuts of Kratos’ tattoo coming through the costume – like father, like son.

From a story perspective, Atreus is the humanity that Kratos lost. He's helping Kratos understand what it was like to be a human and Kratos is trying to help the kid understand what it means to be a god. The kid has no idea about any of that stuff. They're both sort of teaching each other a little bit and kind of helping each other hobble through a very difficult emotional journey." Dela Longfish (Lead Character Concept Artist) had some amazing designs for Atreus and the one we see now is an evolution of many iterations to find the perfect version. When Thor’s design was shown after the first God of War Ragnarök trailer, the internet exploded (just a bit) with discussions. Were you expecting our take on Thor to be such a hot topic among gamers?You mentioned Thor’s goats are referenced as motifs in his design, are there any nods to the Norse myths within Angrboda’s clothing? To show our appreciation for all the God of War cosplayers who have taken on Kratos and Atreus over the years, we wanted to make their updated guides for God of War Ragnarök even more comprehensive than the ones we did for God of War (2018).

Our hope is to be able to build that same connection between our characters and gamers. For our interpretation, we wanted a design that fit within the visual language of the world we had established in God of War (2018), while also complimenting the story and gameplay the team had in mind. To provide insights into the three characters we’ve partnered with community cosplayers to make, we’ve sat down with Dela Longfish, a lead character artist on God of War Ragnarök, to discuss how these designs came to be. Freya Atreus is a teenager and we wanted to make his outfit an avenue in which he could express himself, especially since he makes a lot of his own clothing. It’s important to us that our character designs reflect the times they are living in, so the use of materials, stitching, and coloring of the costume need to be grounded, but not so much as to be overly limiting. When we first meet Freya again, she is living on Midgard in the heights of Fimbulwinter. Did the harsh climate influence any aspects of her design?

BEHIND THE SCENES OF GOD OF WAR

Is there any aspect of Atreus’ design for God of War Ragnarök that you are especially proud of or want players to notice? Not only are her tattoos yellow as mentioned before, but you can also see other pops of yellow woven through her hair, in some of the stitching of her clothing, and in the bronze jewelry she wears. These were all layered throughout her design to give a consistent, but subtle, reference to the Giants. Along with making sure we get the overall look we want for any character we also enjoy layering in small hints and design details. Thor’s goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr, make an appearance in the bottom gold carved cap of Thor’s hammer. Keen-eyed players and cosplayers will also notice there are other goat motifs reflected in his design.