In God of War 2018, Sony Santa Monica added a new weapon in Kratos’ arsenal in the Guardian Shield. Now, if you watched the gameplay reveal trailer for God of War Ragnarok, you might have noticed that Kratos seems to have a different shields in different areas of the video. Sony Santa Monica has confirmed that players will be able to use different shields in God of War Ragnarok.

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Speaking to a video interview with YouTuber Jon Ford, God of War Ragnarok Eric Williams confirmed that the game will feature different shields, and the devs are doing this so that players can be more expressive in how they set up Kratos’ loadouts.

Yes, there are different shields, and they have different defensive options, and abilities, and the reason why we’re doing this is we really want to open up the expressive choice — the way that you build your Kratos — like the equipment, and loadout, and things like that. So all the way down to the defense, you can, you know, kind of play a little differently, and then enemies know how to respond to that, or force you into these different situations where you need to use different things. So I think it’ll be fun for players to explore that, but also, just kind of, like we want it to be more expressive where you know your choices matter when you set them up – Eric Williams, God of War Ragnarok Game Director

This is definitely good news, and this means that with the Leviathan Axe, Blades of Chaos, and maybe other new goodies we’ll be able to use, there will be more combat variety in the game, and possibly make it even more personalized compared to GoW 2018.

Speaking of combat, Sony Santa Monica also confirmed that we’ll be seeing more combat set-ups for Kratos and Atreus in the sequel!

God of War Ragnarok is scheduled to be unleashed sometime next year for the PS4 and PS5.