God of War: Laufey director Ariel Lawrence has stepped in to explain the game’s most divisive reveal element: Phranque the Cube. In an interview with Gamespot, Lawrence pushed back on the idea that the sentient cosmic cube is just comic relief, calling him an earnest companion built around honesty and being present in the moment.
The newly revealed title shifts focus away from Kratos and Atreus to Faye, also known as Laufey. She is the late wife of Kratos and mother of Atreus, whose death kicked off the entire Norse saga in God of War 2018. The new game appears to follow her after that death, in a realm called Everywhen.
Lawrence said Phranque, voiced by Jack Quaid, only gets “six or seven lines” in the reveal trailer, which means viewers aren’t seeing the full version of the character. The team is still shaping him “as we would any companion character,” placing him in the same lineage as Atreus and Mimir rather than treating him as a one-note gag.
“For us, we want to find his humanity,” Lawrence said. “And as we’ll discover, in the world of Everywhen things are not great right now. So for him, I think it’s really about helping Faye see the world as it is. So he’s not meant to be a joke in that kind of capacity.”
That single quote drops two big hints. Everywhen isn’t a peaceful afterlife but a setting with active conflict, and Phranque’s job is to guide Faye through it. The reveal also teased a much wider mythological scope than the Norse-only worlds of the previous two games, with figures resembling the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet and the Tibetan wrathful deity Begtse appearing in promotional footage.
Santa Monica Studio hasn’t confirmed how Faye’s journey through Everywhen connects back to Kratos and Atreus, or which gods from other pantheons will show up. What is clear is that God of War: Laufey is being treated as a mainline entry, with Faye as the playable lead, a new realm to explore, and a talking cube along for the ride.
