God of War Laufey’s surprise debut at this week’s State of Play has had gamers buzzing ever since, for a variety of reasons. A new God of War game. Hell yeah! A new God of War game where you don’t play as Kratos? Oh. And in this new God of War game, one of your companions is a talking gelatinous cube named Franque? Uh oh. The gameplay footage has me impossibly stoked to play as Kratos’s late wife, the powerful Frost Giant known as Laufey (or Faye). She is quick, acrobatic, and aerial, meant to evoke the verticality of the Greek trilogy combined with new mechanics of the Norse games. I have no issue with that. But even for me, Phranque came off as a bit weird and off-putting in the short footage we saw of him in the 20 minutes of gameplay Sony showed off. He reminded me a bit of Mimir, the chatty severed head who Kratos had hanging on his belt for two games, but worryingly more annoying. But according to the game’s director, there’s still much left to learn and see. “Phranque has probably got six or seven lines in the reveal, so it’s not a fully developed personality present [there] because we’re just not having as much conversation,” God of War Laufey director Ariel Lawrence said in an interview with GameSpot. “So I would say as we are still in development on all of these things, we’re treating Phranque as we would any companion character. His earnestness, his honesty about being in the moment is kind of integral to his character, but that doesn’t make him completely unserious.” Phranque, voiced by Jack Quaid (best known as Hughie in The Boys), meets Faye along with talking ribbons attached to a sword named Rue, and his pithy dialogue immediately gave many the ick. Lawrence assures that “For us, we want to find his humanity,” she said. “And as we’ll discover, in the world of Everywhen things are not great right now. So for him, I think it’s really about helping Faye see the world as it is. So he’s not meant to be a joke in that kind of capacity.” Image via PlayStation Like Mimir, Phranque will likely be a voice of reason and a bit of a foil to the seriousness of the situation Faye faces, along with occasional backseat gaming when it comes to combat or exploration. The hope is that it won’t be too much, too often. “Kratos is pretty serious a lot of the time, and so the levity of other people stands in contrast to that a lot,” she said. “We have characters that can go across the spectrum of that, so it’s not that we have to be very serious and very light. I think we have real people as much as we can, but I think the reveal is just a very small section of the Everywhen, and so as we kind of open up the world to see the next things, Phranque fits into that part.”0The post God of War Laufey director says the game’s talking cube is ‘not meant to be a joke’ appeared first on Destructoid.