God of War Laufey does not take place in Midgard, Helheim, Vanaheim or any of the nine realms you have spent two games walking through. It takes place somewhere new, and the name is doing a lot of work: the Everywhen.
Here is what Santa Monica has actually said about it, and why it quietly reshapes what this series can be.
The official description
The studio describes the Everywhen as the birthplace and endpoint to which all magic returns – a transcendent realm sitting above the afterlives that mortals get sent to.
That single sentence carries most of the weight, so it is worth unpacking slowly.
It sits above the afterlives, not beside them
This is the part people keep getting wrong.
The Everywhen is not a tenth realm bolted onto the Norse map. Helheim and Valhalla are destinations – places a specific kind of person goes after a specific kind of death, governed by a specific pantheon’s rules. The Everywhen is the layer underneath all of that.
The simplest way to hold it: Helheim and Valhalla are addresses. The Everywhen is the landlord.
Which also explains the name. Not a where, not a when. Both, and neither.
It is not a Norse realm
Here is the reveal with the biggest consequences. Gods, monsters and creatures from mythologies across the world end up in the Everywhen – not only Norse ones – alongside beings native to the realm that belong to no pantheon at all.
And they are not cohabiting peacefully. They are fighting each other for control of it.
This is the first time since Kratos walked out of Greece that God of War has put multiple pantheons into the same space at the same time. For a series that has spent two games being scrupulously, beautifully Norse, it is a deliberate door being kicked open.
Why that matters for the future of the series
Fans have speculated for years about where God of War goes after Norse mythology. Egyptian was the popular bet. Japanese and Mayan came up constantly. The assumption was always that Kratos would pack up and move to a new pantheon the way he moved from Greece to Scandinavia.
The Everywhen sidesteps that entire question. Instead of choosing the next mythology, Santa Monica has built a place where all of them can show up, in any combination, for as long as the studio wants.
It is a worldbuilding cheat code, and it is the kind of thing you only get to introduce once. That it arrives in the same announcement as a confirmed Kratos-led sequel is not a coincidence.
What it means for Faye
The realm is not just scenery. It changes what Faye can do.
Faye is the Golden Hand of the Jötnar, and her soul-manipulation powers are described as amplified inside the Everywhen specifically. In a realm where all magic begins and ends, her particular brand of magic runs hotter.
Mechanically that shows up as the golden palm: she strikes an enemy, knocks the soul out of the body, and then has two things to fight instead of one. She can attack the soul directly or hurl it into other enemies to start chaining combos.
So the setting is also the power source. Faye is stronger here than she ever was alive, which is a neat piece of design for a character who spent two games being described as unbeatable by people who watched her die.
Why she is there at all
The story starts immediately after her funeral at the beginning of God of War (2018). Faye wakes in the Everywhen, which is not where she expected to end up, and discovers that the plans she left behind to protect Kratos and Atreus are at risk.
Which raises the question the whole game is presumably built on: who or what in the afterlife of the gods has an interest in unpicking a dead giant’s plans – and how did she end up in the one realm powerful enough to do something about it?
What we still do not know
- Which specific pantheons show up – no gods outside the Norse cast have been named yet
- Whether the Everywhen connects to the nine realms in any traversable way
- Whether it is structured as an open area, a hub, or a linear run
- Who or what actually rules it, if anyone
God of War Laufey arrives February 16, 2027 on PS5. If you want to revisit how the realms worked when they still had rules, our Ragnarök breakdown is a good place to start.
Discover more from Lazybatman
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
