The huge success of God of War Ragnarok may be attributed in part to the remarkable attention to detail that went into the creation of Santa Monica Studio’s newest game. The sheer amount of God of War Ragnarok Easter eggs being unearthed, among other things, highlights the California-based developer’s painstaking approach to game design. One such memorable incident occurred earlier this week when a player tried to aggravate Ratatoskr by constantly ringing his summoning bell with Kratos’ Leviathan Axe, with hilarious consequences.
God of War Ragnarok, which was released on PlayStation systems on Wednesday, has already received critical praise and fan love, with Santa Monica Studio delivering yet another excellent game-of-the-year candidate that neatly fills out Sony’s 2022 exclusive roster. The long-running franchise’s ninth game closes the tale of the 2018 God of War, which replaced the series’ distinctive Greek mythology setting with one steeped in Norse legend. Ratatoskr is described as a magical messenger squirrel that transports messages between the top and bottom of Yggdrasil, the mythological world tree.
While the God of War reboot already had a “Bitter Squirrel” Runic Summon ability that summoned a fairly normal-looking squirrel with a cheeky attitude—all in reference to Ratatoskr—voiced by Troy Baker, God of War Ragnarok used Ratatoskr’s mythology to deliver a more fleshed-out character with a less conventional, anthropoid-like character model. The redesigned persona was also dubbed this time by popular YouTuber and voice actor SungWon “ProZD” Cho, however, Baker still makes a few brief appearances as Bitter Squirrel. However, the most amusing phrases were delivered to Cho, and the only way to hear them is to continuously ring Ratatoskr’s summoning bell, as Reddit user -flower boy- discovered earlier this week.
While the new game’s plot is as serious as the other entries in the franchise, many of the series’ fans love having some harmless fun with its mythos beyond appreciating its intended amusing Easter eggs. One fan, for example, recently pointed out a lot of amusing parallels between Ragnarok and Shrek, while another opted to celebrate the game’s enormously excellent reviews with a comical animation created using Media Molecule’s PlayStation-exclusive creative engine Dreams.
Because God of War Ragnarok has just been out for a week, gamers are likely to find additional Easter eggs in the game. And it’ll be fascinating to see whether any more are as amusing as this one featuring Ratatoskr.
