In my rewrite of God of War Ragnarok I split it into two parts of the series. God of War Fimbulwintr is described here. Now it’s time for the last entry in my imaginary trilogy, and for my rewritten God of War Ragnarok.
In my rewrite I aim to be close to the lore that has already been established in the real games so far, as well as I orient myself on the real norse mythology. Lastly I try to provide a meaningful psychological character journey and to adhere to a theme. The theme in this one is the cyclic nature of the norse world and the similarities between the contrahents Odin and Loki.
Apart from story telling aspects I try to intertwine some ideas for a fun gameplay experience. For example, to replace the Valkyre and Berserker challanges in the first two games, here Loki could find echos of his fathers past. Meaning we could reminisce about Kratos by fighting old greek enemies.
Anyways, I invite you to be the judge on how well I achieved my goals outlined above. Happy reading!
Prologue
Scene 1
An adult Loki is on the hunt on a very freezing Midgard. At the same time, he acts, as if he is the prey, nervously looking around, making sure no one is following him. He is accompanied by Sindri. Loki doesn’t talk much, but Sindri tries to get through to him. He asks him, how his search for a solution for the soul-marbles is going. After he got no answer, he suggests to ask Hræsvelgr, the bird giant that watches over Helheim. If someone knew how to tend to souls, then her for sure. Loki doesn’t acknowledge Sindri and stays focused on the hare he’s hunting. Just as he got it, Heimdall enters the scene. Sindri vanishes immediately. Loki has to defend himself, but Heimdall is obviously to powerful for him. Loki’s illusion tricks (new ability in the game) are not enough to get to Heimdall, but they barely suffice to escape him. Loki finds the time to get to a door between worlds, Sindri has opened for him and falls into Helheim.
Prologue, Scene 2
In Helheim Loki walks through a terrible blizzard. Apparition of his friends flashing before him, reminding him of his past mistakes, und giving a recap to the player. He arrives at a cavern, where he has been hidden for the last years. He roasts and eats the hare, while staring at the three marbles containing the souls of his father, Freya and Angrboda. Finally, he collects them and gets up. The game begins.
Level 1: Helheim – From cold depression to a spark of hope
With a flame sword, made by the dwarfs from the embers of Kratos’ blades you fight your way through Helheim to the bridge of no return. From afar he asks the giant bird what to do with his souls. The bird promises to tell him, if he gets over the bridge. Loki knows it would mean his death. But what reason is there left for him to live anyways? Besides that thought giving him comfort, he also thinks of what his father would do. He comes to the conclusion to follow the birds request and from there on to improvise for a way back. Loki traverses the bridge and Hræsvelgr tells him the secret: He has to implant the soul from a marble into a dying body and murmur some magic words. Unfortunately, on this side of the bridge no living thing could dwell and therefore no dying body could be found, for everything is already dead.
Loki, standing next to Hræsvelgr watches the souls traversing the bridges beneath them. He feels the weight of his defeat on his shoulder. Not only did his loved ones die because of him, but he himself, is now dead too. Yet there was this spark of hope too. It was actually possible to resurrect his friends. He could redeem himself and bring them back! After a while of thinking, he realizes Hræsvelgr was alive.
In the bossfight of this level you have to fight Hræsvelgr. When you made it, you put Angrboda’s soul in it. In its dying breath, like a phoenix it turns into ash and an egg emerges from it. From the egg, which is as big as Loki himself, emerges a girl, half dead, half alive, Hela, with the soul of Angrboda. However, she’s mute, and emotionally not always really back. It was not as perfect as Loki hoped for, but it sparked the hope in him, that he, himself came back to life. He crowns her the new queen of Helheim and she lets him escape the bridge again. Further even, in good Angrboda fashion, she brings him back to Jotunheim, to show him three shrines telling his own fate. They speak in riddles, however and Loki can’t make much sense of them yet.
As they are back in Helheim, Loki notices that a lot of dwarf souls were entering Helheim. Concerned, he got on his way to Nidavellir.
Mythology: Created by Loki with the soul of Angrboda Hela represents another form of Lokis and Angrboda’s daughter in the mythology.
Psychology: After the evets of God of War Fimbulwintr, Loki is in a deep depression, half dead. He has to live with his sins in Helheim. After defeating his Hel, he finds a new will to live.
Theme: Just as Odin gave his live temporarily to gain knowledge, so too Loki went to Death temporarily to gain knowledge.
Level 2: Nidavellir – From Chains to Trembles
Driven by his newfound nature, Loki travels to Nidavellir. There Heimdall’s warriors lay onslaught on the poplace. He had noticed Sindri on Lokis side during their first confrontation in Midgard. Now he searches for the dwarf, to get him to Loki.
Loki meets with the Huldra Brothers and together they attempt to evacuate the city of Nidavellir. Loki fends of the Aesir warriors, while the brothers bring the dwarfs away.
Yet earthquakes make the whole evacuation process frustratingly difficult. After defeating the first few waves of enemies, Brok and Loki decide its time to enter the mines to find out where the earthquakes are coming from. In dark and claustrophobic corridors, they fight their way to a cave, where they find a gigantic wolf in chains. His efforts to free himself are what cause the earthquakes.
Loki frees the wolf and the creature immediately attacks him. The fight is difficult and Loki needs to resort to his berserking bear form (unlocking the skill) to prevail. After defeating Fenrir, Loki remembers the souls in his pocket and in the creature’s dying breath infuses a soul into it. At first, he grabbed Kratos’ marble, but then hesitates. It doesn’t feel right. He instead goes for Freya. His second creation is Fenrir, a creature worthy of holding Freya’s anger and wrath towards Odin.
Together, Fenrir and Loki barge out of the mines into a camp of Heimdall’s warriors.
Mythology: Fenrir in chains is a mixture of the norse myths where the Aesir put Fenrir in change, and where a tortured Loki caused earthquakes until Ragnarok begins.
Psychology: During the evacuation, Loki has no control over the circumstances, and therefore a low perceived self-efficacy. This translates into a low self-esteem, that binds him, making him unable to act as he wishes to, as represented in the claustrophobic mines and the wolfs chains. Only as he frees defeats him, his self esteem starts growing, and he can be free at last, as represented in his berserker form and the cathartic attack on the enemy camp.
Theme: Loki, just as Odin, gets frustrated when he has no control over what is happening to him. The struggle to control oneself and their circumstances is another aspect that connects the both of them.
Level 3: Vanaheim – from coward to leader
During that battle in the enemy camp on Nidavellir, Loki spots Heimdall. Fear overcomes him, and he flees. Fenris understands and together they flee to Vanaheim. They don’t get far however, before Loki calms down. He decides he is done with running. Instead, he wants to be in control. He chooses the place where the confrontation should take place and waits for the arrival of Heimdall.
Heimdall’s downfall is caused by the chaos in Loki’s soul, due to which Heimdall can’t predict all his next movements. In his dying breath Heimdall stutters: “It can’t be. There is only one man I can’t read. Are you fooling me? Are you fooling us all, old man?”
Level 4: Breath of fresh air
After defeating Heimdall, a big part of the fear accompanying Loki for the last few years is gone. He can now freely travel through the realms again.
Loki has also escaped his lethargy and gained faith in himself. He is now planning together with the dwarfs and his new found children and alleys revenge on Odin. First, they must learn more about the Allfather and his weaknesses however. For that they decide to visit the spring of all rivers, where Odin’s power originated, and ask the fates about the outcome of their upcoming clash. A difficult journey, for which Loki needs to prepare himself first, that’s why he decides to use his newly found freedom of movement and travel the realms that are now open to him. Specifically, those are Vanaheim, Midgard and Helheim, and there is no prescripted sequence in which to visit them. The player is free.
Level 4.1: Vanaheim – One with nature
After the icy cold of Helheim and the dark tunnels of Nidavellir, Vanaheim seems like a paradise to Loki. On the track of the Vanir culture that was so intertwined with its beautiful nature, Loki must help clean the lands from monsters and finds on his way many runes for powerful spells. The highest price however, will be Freya’s bow, a powerful upgrade to Loki’s.
Level 4.2: Muspelheim – Trials of Fire and Fury
As always Muspelheim is a place to hone your skill and prove yourself in combat. The last enemy will be Surtr himself and defeating him will give Loki a powerful upgrade to his flame sword: Surtrs Blade.
Level 4.3: Midgard – Homecoming
You get to explore a frozen Lake of Nine again, which has some side quests. It seems to have become a hotspot for Travellers since Fimbulwinter started. But the highest price is to visit Kratos’ and Atreus’ old home, where the Axe is waiting for Loki to pick up. In an emotional scene of course.
Level 5: Niflheim – From being lost, to having a purpose
With hope and confidence in his skills, Loki is now ready to think about how to take down Odin. Him and the dwarfs decide to visit the spring of all rivers, where Odin has himself gained the wisdom and knowledge that guides him, in the hopes of finding a weakness to him.
The path should be easy: Just follow one of the rivers of Niflheim, it’ll naturally lead to its spring. So, the dwarfs and Loki go on their canoe trip and float through the sea of fog covering Niflheim. Of course, it isn’t that easy. Soon they find their way blocked, by a huge wall of scales. The level makes you find your way from one river to the other on foot, just to follow the next river until you get blocked off again.
When you finally arrive at the spring and see the tree, where Odin has hanged himself to gain his knowledge, you also realise what those scaley walls were. They are part of the giant snake, that lays around the spring. It is not yet Jormungandr, for it is just a hostile monster. First it has to be defeated, brought close to death, so that Loki finally can instill Kratos’ soul into its giant body.
There is an emotional moment between father and son, still with no way to properly communicate, but with a mutual feeling of respect and love.
Then we get to inspect the hanging tree in the middle of the spring. We learn how much Odin is willing to sacrifice just to learn knowledge.
Suddenly Loki gets sucked into the lake and we meet the tree fates, just like in the real God of War Ragnarök.
There we learn, that while the Fates can indeed see to the end of one’s life, the Giants do not have the gift of preminiscience. Instead, they are storytellers, chronicling the past. To the question, if they know Odin’s weakness, they answer “The weakness of any being is, that they see no further than their life’s end.”
Mythology: The spring of all rivers exists in norse myth, it is also where Odin hanged himself for three days to gain knowledge. The spring in the myth is full of snakes, which Jormungandrs appearance here refers to.
Psychology: At the start of the level Loki has no guidance, no purpose. There is something he wants to do, but he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what he should be aiming for. He is lost in a labyrinth hidden in a sea of fog, as depicted by the fog in Niflheim, and the labyrinth created by the giant snake. At the end of the level, he gets the wisdom he needs to guide himself.
Theme: Loki now too is obsessed with Ragnarok for which he seeks to control the outcome, just as Odin does his whole life.
Level 6: Jotunheim – From no one to accepting your identity
We climb up the Jormungandr scales through the worldtree back up to the surface of the spring. As Loki climbs through the surface, a hand grabs him an helps him up.
It is Odin. Brok and Sindri are there too, scared of the Allfather but unharmed. Odin threatens Loki, he should stop what he set in motion with amassing an army in Hel and uniting the forces of Vanaheim and Nidavellir to stop Ragnarok from happening.
Loki thinks quick and agrees. “We need to stop Ragnarok, but we both set it in motion. And it seems to have gone out of our control, so we need to work together to stop it.”
Odin is no fool, he knows, that once the battle starts, he can’t evade fate anymore and will lose. But if he can prevent the battle to start, he could prevent his loss. So, obviously he doesn’t believe Loki in his intention to stop Ragnarok. But Loki tells him, he has seen that Loki is fated to lose Ragnarok, while Odin will prevail. “That can’t be.”, says Odin, “I have read every prediction about Ragnarok, heard every fortelling, I know what will happen.”
Loki points out that he still hasn’t had access to Jotunheim. With that he catches Odin’s curiosity. Loki convinces Odin to let him guide into Jotunheim and show him the prophecies that tell about his doom at Ragnarok.
Together with Odin you then travel through Jotunheim, to the three tablets, Angrboda / Hela has shown you in the beginning.
“He who went to death for his knowledge cannot be deceived by the distorter of truth”, the first said.
“Destiny cannot be fought. He who seeks change will fail against the one who wants to remain”, the second.
“The father emerges victorious from his battle with the destroyer of the realms”, the third.
To read each of the tablet one must give a drop of one’s blood, the read the whole sentence. The first two times, Loki gives his blood. Excited to find the last prophecies about Ragnarok and soothed by the positive promises of the first two, Odin lets his protection shield around him fall for the last one, so he could cut his finger and sacrifice his blood. Just a moment after the last part of the sentence appears, Loki stabs Odin.
While Odin interpreted the prophecies in one way, Loki knew, that both characters referred to can be both of them. Loki went over the bridge in Hel for the knowledge of creation and as the god of trickery is a distorter of truth. Odin has hanged himself for wisdom and has distorted the truth in the realms he had colonized. Loki seeks to change the status quo of Asgardian supremacy and wants the cycle of Ragnarok to remain. Odin wants to end the Cycle and remain the ruler of the worlds. Odin is known as the Allfather, but with his conquest and occupation has destroyed the realms. Loki has “fathered” three children and can be seen as the destroyer of the worlds by bringing Ragnarok.
Odin realizes that the danger was all but gone, and wounded, teleports back to Asgard.
Mythology: The Tablets are written by Vafþrúðnir, who in the mythology prophesised Ragnarok to Odin.
Psychology: Loki has now accepted who he is, and from that draws confidence. Enough to take on Odin in a game of trickery.
Theme: Loki is a kind of incarnation of Odin. He is to Odin what Odin was to Ymir. And he knows one they he will be the Odin to another Loki.
Level 7: Asgard – Prophecy fulfilled.
The last level will start in Jotunheim, where the army of the broken is gathering. It includes Hela and the dead, the dwarfs and leftovers of the Vanaheim rebels. There are also Jormungandr and Fenrir. From Jotunheim they charge Asgard.
After entering Asgard Loki confronts the wounded Odin to the endfight.
The game ends with the start of a rebuilding process lead by Loki. After he has defeated Odin, he now has become the new Odin himself, ruler of the nine realms, waiting for his inevitable demise.