The long-awaited God of War: Ragnarok is now available for PC, nearly two years after its well-received release on PS4 and PS5. That’s a pretty big deal in itself, but this port comes with a feature that wasn’t even available on the original console versions: As first reported by Kotaku, players can finally tell Kratos’ son Atreus to shut up.
In the original, Atreus was like Ocarina of Time’s Navi on Adderall: he was, in a word, chatty. Even worse, he had a tendency to ruin puzzle solutions by offering up unsolicited hints, something many players complained would happen even when they weren’t even trying to solve the puzzle.
In any case, the settings tab includes an option to reduce puzzle hints, which not only applies to chatty Atreus, but other companions throughout the game. I’m no game designer, but adding a mute button to some characters doesn’t seem like a hard fix. In other words, bring this to the console versions. Digital kids should be seen, not heard.
The PC version adds a few other features, too: game cinematics now come with audio description, and there are streamer GIFs available for use on Twitch and YouTube. Of course, the port also integrates with NVIDIA and AMD’s upscaling tools to support ultrawide monitors, so it’s great to be able to play the game in its natural form in a crazy 32:9 aspect ratio.
This port requires a massive 175GB to 190GB of hard drive space, so start installing early in the morning if you want to play in the afternoon. It’s currently available on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Somewhat disappointingly, the PC specs required to run this game are quite high, so performance on Steam Deck may be disappointing. Reddit users report that the game works, but only at 30FPS on the lowest settings.
