Christopher Judge’s take on Kratos fromGod of Waris one of the most well-regarded vocal performances of the modern gaming generation, but it was originally going to sound very different. Both the 2018God of Warreboot and its sequelGod of War Ragnarokfeatured an aged Kratos looking to set aside his violent past and teach his young son Atreus not to repeat his many mistakes. However, father and son soon find themselves caught up in the machinations of the malevolent Gods of Asgard, and Kratos is forced to wage war against them as he did in Ancient Greece.
Kratos was a truly gripping and nuanced character intheGod of WarNorse saga, and a strong part of that came from voice actor and motion capture performer Christopher Judge. Judge’s deep, commanding voice and soft-spoken delivery helped to humanize Kratos as he struggled with raising Atreus and confronting his personal demons, and the actor has won several accolades for his performance in bothGod of Wargames, with the most recent one being the award for Best Performance at The Game Awards 2022 back in December.
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It might come as a surprise tofans thatGod of Warvoice actor Christopher Judgeinitially had a very different idea for his Kratos role. In a recent interview with IGN, Judge revealed that he had undergone vocal training for months before he started mocap work at Sony Santa Monica – with a British accent. “Our first day on set we’re doing our first take and you see people whispering and talking then Corey walks over to me and he says ‘was that a British accent?'” Judge noted, before admitting that said accent wasn’t very good and switching over to his natural American tone.
Judge also described the motion capture process used to bringthe world ofGod of Warto lifeacross two successful games, and how different it was from his past video game roles. Instead of simply standing in a recording booth and reading lines, Judge and the other actors would perform their scenes wearing motion capture suits. He also talked about meeting hisGod of Warco-star Sunny Suljic, who portrayed Atreus, and how the two hit it off immediately during a chemistry test performance.
Given that TC Carson voiced Kratos with an American accent duringthe originalGod of Warseries, having Christopher Judge speak with a British one wouldn’t have made much sense for the Norse-set games. Still, the idea of the strong and ferocious Kratos talking in a posh English tone would have been interesting had Sony Santa Monica agreed to let Judge go in this direction inGod of WarandGod of War Ragnarok.
God of War Ragnarokis now available on PS4 and PS5.
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