God of War: Ascension Story Explained

God of War: Ascension came out in March 2013 on the PlayStation 3, made by Santa Monica Studio. It was the last Greek game for more than a decade, but it tells the earliest part of Kratos's adult story: how he broke his blood oath to Ares after being tricked into killing his family, and what that cost him. The game opens with Kratos chained in a prison and tells the weeks before his capture in flashback. This page lays the story out in the order it happened. Full spoilers follow, ending included. (God of War: Ascension)

Before the story begins#

Years earlier, Kratos had been a Spartan general facing death at the hands of a Barbarian horde. As the Barbarian King Alrik raised his weapon, Kratos offered his life to Ares in exchange for victory. Ares destroyed the Barbarians and bound the Blades of Chaos to Kratos's arms. Kratos then led Ares's campaigns across Greece, until one night he slaughtered everyone in a temple of Athena and found his wife Lysandra and daughter Calliope among the dead. Ares had put them there. The village oracle cursed him to wear their ashes, and he became the Ghost of Sparta. (God of War (2005))

Ascension starts from that point. An oath sworn to a god in blood is binding, and breaking one brings the Furies. The first being ever to do it was the hundred-handed giant Aegaeon, who broke an oath to Zeus after the Great War. The Furies turned his body into a living prison for every oath breaker who came after him. (God of War: Ascension)

The broken oath and the village of Kirra#

Kratos told Ares he would serve him no longer. Ares set the Furies on him. The sisters were Alecto, their queen, who could see into a victim's soul; Megaera, who punished with pain; and Tisiphone, whose illusions were the strongest. Once they had been harsh but fair judges. Then they joined Ares in a plot against Olympus, and the punishment started to matter more than the crime. (God of War: Ascension)

The plot had a history. Ares wanted a warrior who could overthrow Zeus, and he had fathered a child with Alecto in the hope of breeding one. The child was Orkos, and he disappointed his father, who cast him out. The Furies spared him and made him their Oath Keeper. Ares then looked to a mortal soldier instead, and found Kratos. (God of War: Ascension)

Orkos saw that the oath binding Kratos was unjust. He and Aletheia, the Oracle of Delphi, whom he called his beloved, had tried to warn Zeus about Ares's plan, but Ares found out. The Furies tore out Aletheia's eyes, turned them into the Eyes of Truth, a relic that could break any illusion, and hid them on the island of Delos. (God of War: Ascension)

Hunting a way out of his oath, Kratos came to the ruined village of Kirra and suddenly found himself at home in Sparta, with his family. It was an illusion. Orkos broke it, using Lysandra's ring and necklace to pull him out, and told him to seek the Oracle at Delphi. Kratos did not trust him, but he went. (God of War: Ascension)

Delphi and the Oracle#

The Oracle's temple had been taken over by Castor and Pollux, conjoined twins worshipped as gods, with Castor posing as a prophet. They held the blinded Aletheia and used the Amulet of Uroborus, a charm that could rebuild or decay things, which they had stolen from her. Kratos chased them through the temple and killed them both, and took the amulet for himself. (God of War: Ascension)

Kratos found Aletheia crushed under the rubble. The amulet could not heal her. Before she died she told him everything: Ares meant to shape him into a weapon to overthrow Zeus, Orkos could be trusted, and the oath could only be broken by destroying its keepers. The Furies could only be beaten with the Eyes of Truth, which were hidden on Delos. Kratos stayed with her as she died. At Kirra's port he met Orkos again, who admitted he was the son of Ares and Alecto and that the Eyes Kratos wanted had been Aletheia's own. (God of War: Ascension)

Delos and the Statue of Apollo#

On Delos stood the broken Statue of Apollo, built by the engineer Archimedes under pressure from the Furies. The Eyes were hidden in the lantern on top of it. The Furies caught Kratos there with another vision of Sparta. This time he saw through it and fought all three. He tore off Megaera's arm and nearly killed Tisiphone, but Alecto, in the form of a huge sea monster, sank the statue's lantern into the sea. Then she took human form, trapped him, and offered to make him a god if he went back to Ares. He refused. (God of War: Ascension)

Orkos rescued him before the sisters could take him and gave him his Oath Stone, which could make a shadow copy of whoever held it. Kratos used the Amulet of Uroborus to rebuild the statue and raise the lantern, passed the trials Archimedes had built to guard the Eyes, and finally took them. They were a decoy. Alecto held the real Eyes, the Furies had already subdued Orkos, and they took Kratos prisoner. (God of War: Ascension)

The Prison of the Damned#

The Furies chained Kratos inside Aegaeon's body, in the Prison of the Damned, and tortured him there for weeks, demanding he return to Ares. He kept refusing. The game opens here. One day a blow from the one-armed Megaera broke his chains, and he went after her. (God of War: Ascension)

Megaera fled through the prison, loosing parasites that twisted the prisoners and Aegaeon's own arms into monsters. Tisiphone tried to stop him with an illusion of women offering themselves to him, but she wore Lysandra's ring and gave herself away. Finally Megaera infected Aegaeon's head. Kratos fought his way up the giant, reached her on Aegaeon's eye, and killed her with both his blades. Aegaeon died in the fight too. Kratos took back the amulet and went after the other two. (God of War: Ascension)

Alecto and Tisiphone#

The Furies tried their best illusions. Tisiphone appeared as the King of Sparta, offering Kratos honours. Alecto gave him the thing he wanted most: his own home, with Lysandra and Calliope alive. She promised he could live in that dream forever if he returned to Ares. Kratos almost gave in. Then he saw the Eyes of Truth hanging at her hip and refused. He used the Oath Stone to break free of her trap and seized the Eyes. (God of War: Ascension)

With the Eyes he could see through everything. Alecto became the sea monster again while Tisiphone made the chamber into a whirlpool. Kratos broke Alecto's monstrous form and killed Tisiphone's creature. Tisiphone tried one last trick, appearing as Lysandra and then as the village oracle, hinting that Kratos's family had not been in that temple by chance. It did not work. Kratos killed her, then drove his blades through Alecto. As she died, Alecto told him killing them would not free him from his madness. (God of War: Ascension)

The ending explained#

Kratos went home to Sparta. Orkos was waiting, and he congratulated him. Then he told him what Alecto had meant. Before they died, the Furies had bound Orkos to Kratos as his Oath Keeper. While Orkos lived, the oath to Ares still held, and Orkos was still a slave too. He asked Kratos for an honourable death. (God of War: Ascension)

Kratos did not want to shed more innocent blood. He did it anyway, stabbing Orkos with his own blade. The oath broke. Kratos burned down his house with Orkos's body inside and left Sparta. (God of War: Ascension)

What it means. The bond to Ares had a strange side effect. While it held, the Furies had clouded Kratos's mind and memory. With it broken, he remembered all of it, clearly: the temple, his wife and daughter, his own hands. So the ending is both a win and a curse. Kratos was free of Ares, but he was now haunted by the full truth, and that is the man the first God of War opens on. His next step was to serve the other gods of Olympus in the hope that they would take the nightmares away. (God of War: Ascension; God of War (2005))

Where it fits#

For thirteen years after its release, Ascension was the earliest game in the God of War timeline. Sons of Sparta (2026) now goes further back, to Kratos as a boy training at the Agoge with his brother Deimos, but Ascension is still the first chapter after his family's death. After it comes his ten years of service to the gods: God of War: Chains of Olympus, then God of War (2005), where he finally kills Ares. For the whole saga in order, see the God of War story explained. Its closing chapter is God of War III. (God of War Sons of Sparta; God of War: Chains of Olympus; God of War (2005))