Based on ancient mythologies, the series follows Kratos, a Spartan warrior and later the Greek God of War, who was tricked into killing his family by his former master, the original Greek God of War Ares. This sets off a series of events that leads to wars with the different mythological pantheons. The Greek-based games see Kratos follow a path of vengeance due to the machinations of the Olympian gods, while the Norse-based games, which introduced his son Atreus as a secondary protagonist, show an older Kratos on a path of redemption and inadvertently coming into conflict with the Norse gods.