Ragnarök is nigh — that is, if you’ve got a PC capable of handling it. During its summer State of Play event, Sony announced that God of War Ragnarök is coming to PC on September 19th. The news was accompanied by a brand-new trailer including the info that the game is now available for preorder.
It’s been just over a year since God of War Ragnarök released, adding another emotional beat to the story of Kratos, the god of war, and his son, Atreus. When we last left the pair in 2018’s God of War, the two had just returned from an epic journey to disperse Atreus’ mother’s ashes from the highest peak in the nine realms. In Ragnarök, Kratos and Atreus’ lives have been upended by the omens heralding the destruction of the realms, an event that is connected to Atreus’ destiny. The two go on a journey — sometimes separate, sometimes together — to figure out that destiny and to put a stop to the god Odin’s evil plans.
In an accompanying blog post and announce video, Sony says God of War Ragnarök will require a PlayStation Network account. It is not clear why and comes weeks after the controversy surrounding a similar requirement for Helldivers 2. Sony eventually backed down and reversed the PSN requirement for Helldivers 2 after blistering player reaction.
Ragnarök is coming to PC at a time when gaming publishers are considering branching out beyond the walled gardens of console exclusivity to reach new players. This is one of the fastest PC ports for a first-party single-player Sony game, releasing a little more than an year after its console launch. Other Sony exclusives like The Last Of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Ghost of Tsushima remained on console for several years before seeing their own PC ports.
The timing of this announcement is also somewhat ironic, however, as earlier this week, PlayStation’s new CEO, Hermen Hulst, commented that while multiplayer games will see day and date releases on PC, the strategy for single-player games is to entice players to experience them on the PlayStation console.
And there’s an interesting if unfortunate merit to that strategy, as Sony’s single-player PC ports have a reputation of being quite poor at launch. Hopefully, though, with the full might of Ragnarök behind him, the God of War will avoid such issues.
Update May 30th: Article updated with PSN requirement information.
