God of War creator declares Kratos a “raging bisexual”, then backtracks

Posted on June 9, 2019

God of War creator David Jaffe has declared that God of War protagonist Kratos is bisexual. This admirable attempt at inclusivity during Pride Month was oddly mitigated by a series of tweets by the developer stating that he was trolling people, and that Kratos “is not bi or gay as far as I wrote him. He’s straight”.  In the end, Jaffe determined that Kratos is not bi, but did state that there should be more LGBT characters in games (just not the ones he makes, I guess).

The whole thing started from Jaffe replying to a fun image tweeted by OBlackThunderO featuring Kratos wearing Pride clothing. Jaffe declares that Kratos was a “raging bi-sexual until he settled down with his wife. So Kratos is officially bi.” He also states that the Oracle from God of War 1 was a “lesbian, straight up”.

Now, disregarding the flippant JK Rowling-style “outing” of queer characters on Twitter without putting evidence in the text, David Jaffe probably would have been fine if he left it there. After all, Kratos is a member of the Greek Pantheon, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of evidence of bisexuality in Greek mythology. God of War lead animator Cory Barlog seemed to be cool with it. However, he had to go and retreat on his statement and make everything weird.

Kratos in God of War

About 15 minutes after the initial tweet, Jaffe backtracks and calls his declaration of Kratos’ bisexuality “a lie”. Apparently he was just trying to troll the people who were angry at the initial image of a Pride-themed Kratos. Not quite sure how that works. Jaffe then proceeded to dig himself deeper, suggesting that he maybe was bi, only not practising. The only reason it wasn’t shown on-screen is because “the only thing harder than animating women is animating males who are into both genders. So we dropped subtle hints instead”.


In the end, Jaffe eventually admitted that the whole thing had been a poorly-worded joke, and that Kratos (as he imagined him) has never been anything other than straight. His intention was to “take the piss out of all the haters”. When other Twitter users pointed out that this is a textbook case of queerbaiting, he seemed indignified that people would call him out on it. After much criticism, however, he relented and admitted that he can see how his words could be interpreted.

So what lesson can we learn from this? Well, maybe not making jokes at the expense of queer people during Pride Month would be a start. It is strange that Jaffe would try and champion the greater inclusion of LGBT characters in gaming, without actually doing any of it himself. Again, the God of War games (at least the first couple) were set in Ancient Greece; bisexuality was not especially frowned on at the time.

It is possible this could lead to the inclusion of LGBT characters in future God of War titles, which could be interesting. For all of you who still want to play as a heroic bisexual Greek hero, at least there is still Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.