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Message: [QUOTE="Bombastus, post: 92372, member: 2178"] Santa Monica Studio defines the Everywhen as the afterlife of the gods and the origin and endpoint of all magic. Faye wakes there after her funeral, but the place is not simply a new Norse realm waiting beside Midgard and Jötunheim. It sits above the afterlives already familiar to the series and brings divine figures from different mythologies into the same space. The [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/bruce-straley-said-god-of-war-laufey-did-not-excite-him.77752/']current argument over God of War Laufey’s familiarity[/URL][/B] mostly concerns combat and the shape of another large God of War adventure. The Everywhen is where Santa Monica is taking a cleaner swing at the series’ cosmology. Its rules affect who can meet, why Faye’s magic changes, and why dying has not ended her problems. One distinction matters immediately. Official material calls the Everywhen a transcendent realm above the afterlives mortals know, not a replacement name for Valhalla, Helheim, or the Light of Alfheim. Treating every place associated with death as one destination flattens rules the games have spent years keeping separate. [HEADING=2]God of War already had more than one afterlife[/HEADING] The Norse saga never presented death as a single road. Valhalla, Helheim, and the Light of Alfheim all exist within a world where souls can have different destinations and different conditions attached to them. Faye entering somewhere else does not automatically erase any of those places. The old mythology is not tidy either. [B][URL='https://doi.org/10.32743/UniSoc.2025.116.1.19130']Several Old Norse afterlife traditions coexist in the surviving material[/URL][/B], which helps explain why reducing Norse death to “everyone goes to Valhalla” never worked particularly well. God of War has always taken liberties with its sources, but multiple destinations for the dead are hardly a strange invention. The important break comes from scale. Santa Monica describes the Everywhen as a realm beyond the afterlives of mortals, and Ragnarök had already shown Odin obsessing over knowledge beyond ordinary death. Laufey turns that old obsession into a place Faye can actually enter. Faye’s arrival also tells us less than some current guides claim. Santa Monica has confirmed that gods and creatures from different mythologies gather there, with Sekhmet and Begtse among the hostile gods Faye encounters. It has not confirmed that every dead Greek god, every Norse god, or every divine figure Kratos ever killed is waiting for her. [HEADING=2]Broken magic gives the realm a mechanical purpose[/HEADING] The Everywhen is also the birthplace and endpoint of magic. More importantly, its natural flow has been disrupted, and Santa Monica directly ties that disruption to Faye’s difficulty escaping. The central problem is therefore not just that dangerous gods control territory around her. Faye brings soul magic with her rather than learning it from scratch. As the Golden Hand of the Jötnar, she could already manipulate souls before death, but the Everywhen greatly amplifies those abilities because it is steeped in older, concentrated magic. Her signature attack can rip an enemy’s soul from its body, opening direct attacks and combo possibilities. This makes the setting part of the combat rules. Faye is stronger in one specific supernatural area because of where she is, while the same environment is unstable enough to trap her. Power and confinement come from the same magical system, which is more useful than treating the Everywhen as elaborate scenery between fights. Phranque reinforces the idea that the realm has its own life beyond visiting gods. Santa Monica describes him as having deep ties to the Everywhen, and the reveal also promises beings native to the place itself. The population is not limited to recognizable names borrowed from existing mythologies. [HEADING=2]Cross-pantheon gods change what the series can show[/HEADING] Sekhmet and Begtse matter because neither belongs to Faye’s Norse world. Their presence establishes that the Everywhen can put figures from separate religious traditions into direct conflict without sending Faye physically across several mortal regions first. The setting does the connecting. It also avoids confirming a giant shared map of every mythology. Santa Monica has shown an Egyptian goddess and a Tibetan Buddhist war protector, but it has not announced complete Egyptian, Greek, or other pantheons as explorable regions inside the Everywhen. A character appearing there does not prove their original homeland will be playable. The same restraint applies to old God of War deaths. The Everywhen creates a plausible place where deceased divine characters could reappear, but possibility is not confirmation. Zeus, Ares, Poseidon, Odin, Thor, and other dead gods have not all been announced as residents merely because the new cosmology could accommodate them. What is confirmed is narrower and more interesting. The Everywhen is a divine afterlife above familiar mortal destinations; magic begins and returns there, its natural flow is damaged, and Faye’s soul powers become stronger inside it. Santa Monica has left the exact borders, governing rules, and full population deliberately unresolved. [/QUOTE]

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