God of War Laufey Revealed: Faye Stars in PS5 Afterlife Spin-Off

God of War Laufey is officially real, officially on PS5, and officially starring Faye, the late wife of Kratos, as she fights through the afterlife of the gods. Santa Monica Studio dropped a 23-minute debut trailer at PlayStation State of Play and, yeah, this absolutely rules.

Faye (voiced by Deborah Ann Woll of Daredevil fame) wakes up in a mysterious forest right after being cremated at the start of the 2018 God of War reboot. Her story kicks off basically the second Kratos and Atreus walk away from the funeral pyre, which is a wild place to pick up the thread. The game is also joined by Rue, voiced by Perlina Lau.

Okay, but hear me out: the breakout star of the entire State of Play isn’t Faye. It’s Phranque. Phranque is a gelatin-like talking cube companion, and Jack Quaid (Hughie from The Boys) not only voices him but did the full motion-capture performance. They put a guy in a mocap suit and had him perform as a cube. PC Gamer correctly identified this as an exciting new form of method acting and I will not be taking questions about it.

If you’re worried Santa Monica is benching Kratos for good, the developers already addressed that. In an interview with IGN covered by GameSpot, the team said “we’ll always tell stories about Kratos” and framed Laufey as “not a departure; it’s more of an expansion.” Faye is described as “so pivotal” to the wider story that she earned her own full game. Cory Barlog also appeared to clarify, per GameSpot’s developer interview piece, that Faye’s afterlife story begins almost immediately after the 2018 game’s opening.

PC Gamer flagged that the game likely won’t come to PC, which stings, but the PS5 release is pegged as coming “soon” per Eurogamer. A character who’s been dead since the very first cutscene of the modern era getting her own full action game is genuinely great, and that cube already has a fandom.