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When Sony's God of War recast Kratos, they had big plans for him to have a British accent - until the first take

Voice actor Christopher Judge has shared how the quirk was scrapped the very first time he filmed a scene as Kratos.

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Thu Nov 06 2025

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By now, players have gotten incredibly used to Christopher Judge and his performance as Kratos in the God of War series. Starting with the 2018 game that shifted the game toward Norse mythology, Judge’s deep, powerful voice has become iconic. However, this older and wiser Kratos originally sounded very different thanks to a misunderstanding between the studio, actor, and director.

During the God of War: Ragnarök panel at MCM London 2025, Christopher Judge explained to the audience that the very first scene they shot was very memorable to him – but not for the reasons you might think.

“I think one of the most memorable days was the very first day, because we didn’t ease our way into it. I think our… well, our first scene was the boat, which was the first scene of the entire shooting, and I had taken voice lessons.”

It is worth remembering that, by this point in his career, Christopher Judge is already a fairly well-known actor with an incredibly distinctive, deep voice, so it is a little surprising that he needed voice lessons at all. What were they for? “To do a British accent.”

That’s right; Kratos in 2018’s God of War nearly had a British accent, which would have been a big change from the character we’ve come to know. Thankfully, that was quickly put to rest by the director.

“So we do the first take or we’re doing the first take, and Cory [Barlog] yells cut, and he kind of walks over to me sheepishly, and he’s like, ‘Was that a British accent?’ and I said, ‘Well, I guess not if you have to ask me, you know.’ He’s like, ‘Well, why the hell are you doing that?’ I was like, ‘Well, you guys have been paying me for the past three months to take these, these dialect lessons.’”

This was apparently news to Barlog.

“He’s like, ‘Who told you that?’ I was like, ‘The studio.’ He’s like, ‘Fuck that. Do what you did in [the audition]. That’s what we hired you for. To do what you did. Like, do that.’ So that got scrapped the very first scene of the very first day.”

Somewhere in the endless reaches of the multiverse, there is a world where no one told Christopher Judge not to do a British accent for Kratos, and, even knowing it exists, we’re having trouble imagining what it was like.

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