Kratos, les mythes, le monde. Jeux vidéo et représentations sociales contemporaines de la mythologie

In 2018, the Santa Monica studio released a new God of War. Contrary to the previous games, its hero Kratos no longer plays in Greece but in Scandinavia with a new pantheon. In this article, we are interested in player’s mythology representations from their reactions to this passage from one mythological landscape to another. We draw on several discussions held on two forums between 2018 and 2020, Jeuxvideo.com and Reddit. Reading the different conversations reveals important debates about the narrative plausibility of the transition from one mythology to another and the inconsistencies generated by the arrival of Kratos in a new pantheon. Following our study, it is clear that the players base their representations of mythology not on the most recent academic works, but on intermediate media which are themselves vectors of altered representations.