The original developer wanted Kratos to be a 20-something blood-drenched murder machine forever. But subsequent producers recognized the original God of War demographic as no longer being 20-somethings exclusively fixated on fuck-murdering and murder-fucking everything in their path. So they evolved the franchise to fit an audience of older, more mature, more parent-focused gamers.
Also, the original premise was... worn a bit thin, maybe? You can only murder-fuck your way through the Greek pantheon so many times before it gets a bit stale. GoW 3 was a remake of a remake and certainly felt it. So I don't even know if it was "Character en-changening" as much as it was "Marketing Re-upholstering". The dad-and-son dynamic was intended to (in some sense literally) inject new life into an old, exhausted franchise.
The original developer wanted Kratos to be a 20-something blood-drenched murder machine forever. But subsequent producers recognized the original God of War demographic as no longer being 20-somethings exclusively fixated on fuck-murdering and murder-fucking everything in their path. So they evolved the franchise to fit an audience of older, more mature, more parent-focused gamers.
Also, the original premise was... worn a bit thin, maybe? You can only murder-fuck your way through the Greek pantheon so many times before it gets a bit stale. GoW 3 was a remake of a remake and certainly felt it. So I don't even know if it was "Character en-changening" as much as it was "Marketing Re-upholstering". The dad-and-son dynamic was intended to (in some sense literally) inject new life into an old, exhausted franchise.