Ronald D. Moore hit IGN’s San Diego Comic-Con 2025 live show today to discuss his long career writing some of the most memorable sci-fi and fantasy shows of the past several decades, from Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica to Outlander to For All Mankind. Next up for Moore is Amazon’s adaptation of God of War, which Moore is serving as Executive Producer and showrunner on.
For starters, Moore said that while of course Kratos will lead the show, his son Atreus will also be a big part of the series. This perhaps isn’t that surprising, but is still the first confirmation we’ve got on that front that the father and son team will be core to Amazon’s God of War.
Indeed, the notion of parent/child relationships, and in particular missing or absent parents, has been a theme of Moore’s work, going back all the way to his first Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “The Bonding,” which depicted a child onboard the Enterprise who was orphaned after an away team mission. Deep Space Nine, which Moore worked on after TNG, features Captain Sisko and his son Jake moving forward in life after the death of their wife/mom. Battlestar Galactica also deals with themes of parent/child strife, and now here we are with God of War which, in the 2018 game, literally starts with Kratos and Atreus preparing the funeral pyre for Kratos’ wife.
Read on to find out everything the tight-lipped Ronald D. Moore had to say about God of War.
IGN: What drew you to God of War? I know you’ve said you’re not really a gamer. What was it about the property that interested you?
Ronald D. Moore: It was just when I started watching it, I started looking at the cutscenes together, and there’s so much material there, and I really responded to the characters. I responded to the story of Kratos and his son, and then they set out on this epic journey in this world that was finely detailed and really interesting, and there’s a lot of combat and interesting monsters along the way.
But I kept coming back to this story of father and son, and it was just emotional and it was different, and I hadn’t seen anything like that before, and I had no expectations because like you said, I’m not a gamer. I knew the title, but I didn’t really know what the story was, so I didn’t really know what I was going to be looking at, and I was just taken with it. And so I said, yeah, I’d love to do it. I think it’s really interesting.
IGN: And you haven’t really played, you’ve watched cutscenes, but you haven’t actually played it?
Ronald D. Moore: I’ve tried to play it. I continue to try to play it, but I grew up in the arcade era, so I can bang away, just give me a Defender console or an Asteroids console, I’ll kick your ass. But it’s just a different thing. My family can do it. My wife can play video games. My wife plays Skyrim, but I lack the muscle memory of my thumbs. And so Kratos is fighting the troll and I’m constantly like, okay, which one’s the B button? No, I’m dead. It is that kind of thing. But I try.
IGN: How would you describe the tone of the show?
Ronald D. Moore: The tone of the show is trying to emulate the tone of the game, which is there’s this epic journey, this heartfelt story of these two men setting out on this thing to honor the memory of his wife, Atreus’ mother. So it has this emotional heart, but there’s this sense of history of who Kratos is, this mystery about his past, what he represents, the emotions that he’s going through. So there’s a weight to it, but not so much weight that there’s not enjoyment along the way and there’s spectacle and there’s lots of things going on in this world.
IGN: I think there’s a bit of a theme through your work, which is a single parent or a missing parent that goes back to your Next Generation spec script where we dealt with a crew member who died and left behind her son. I know you didn’t create Deep Space Nine, but obviously Ben Sisko and Jake are dad and son. The mom’s gone like Atreus’ mom. Battlestar Galactica gets into this stuff. Is this something that’s a theme that you’re aware of that’s in your work? And could this be part of why you’re interested in God of War?
Ronald D. Moore: It’s a recurrent theme. I mean, I’m always interested in it, and it’s a classic theme. It goes back many, many eons. It’s not something I do in particular, and I think it’s because it’s a broken family. Broken families with missing people that have ruptured relationships are endlessly interesting. There’re ways of bringing out character because there’s a pain, there’s a trauma, there’s something that’s happened and they’re trying to work through it. So it’s always a good way to set up a drama to sort of explore character, and I think that is why I respond to it.
IGN: What is your take on Atreus as a character? Obviously Kratos has long been the face of the franchise, but what are you hoping to achieve through the portrayal of Atreus?
Ronald D. Moore: Well, again, we want to honor the game and what they laid out for Atreus’ journey. Here’s a young man who doesn’t know his father very well, that sets out on this mission, and along the way they learn about each other.
IGN: So in terms of Kratos, there’ve been different incarnations of him. Are you familiar with the earlier versions of God of War? And is there a chance that we will get little dollops of that?
Ronald D. Moore: Well, maybe, you’ll have to wait and see it.
Interview conducted by Scott Collura.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
