This is not a drill, boy: God of War Ragnarök is planned for a November release, Bloomberg reports.
Arguably the most anticipated game in Sony’s first-party pipeline, God of War Ragnarök is the sequel to 2018's God of War, which was both a reboot and a continuation of the original action game series. Ragnarök, which is set to release on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, picks up several years after the events of the 2018 game. Pre-release footage has shown protagonist Kratos alongside a noticeably older version of his son, Atreus.
Developer Santa Monica Studio has previously said it has no plans to extend the story into a trilogy, citing the length it takes to produce games of this scale.
God of War Ragnarök was initially planned for a 2021 release. Last June, developer Santa Monica Studio pushed its release to 2022. Reports this week in a number of publications suggested that it had quietly slipped back even further to a 2023 release window. This speculation was fueled further by Ragnarök’s general absence from the marketing cycle this month, historically the busiest time of year for game announcements. God of War Ragnarök was not shown at last night’s Summer Game Fest kickoff event or at Sony’s own State of Play live stream the week prior.
According to Bloomberg, who spoke to three people familiar with the game’s development, the game is not getting significantly delayed further. At one point this year, Ragnarök was apparently planned for a September release, but had its timeline moved slightly back due to the struggles of developing a big-budget video game during a freakin’ pandemic. Sony plans on making an official announcement of its November release date later this month.
Of course, none of this is set in stone. But if God of War Ragnarök indeed comes out in November, it’ll easily be one of the biggest games of the season. Starfield, the next open-world game from Bethesda, was initially planned for a November 11, 2022, launch on Xbox Series X/S and PC. Last month, Bethesda delayed the game to the first half of 2023.