Why God of War and Assassin's Creed both turned to a 'horrible and violent' myth

techradar.com:

“Ragnarök defines the Norse mythic cosmos as one that doesn't just have a beginning, but an end,” Dr Jackson Crawford, a scholar of Old Norse, says, explaining why the story appears in so many games. “All meaningful time for the living will end, and the end will be horrible and violent.”

According to Viking storytellers, when the end times come, stars will vanish from the sky, floods will swallow the earth, and the heavens will burn. After the world wilts from an enduringly harsh winter, giants will invade the realm of Asgard as human civilization is plunged into chaos. Odin will be swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, while Thor and the World Serpent Jörmungandr end each other’s lives in battle. Its destruction is total, marking not only the climax of creation but its final resting place.

Ragnarök has found its way into Assassin’s Creed, Viking RTS Northgard, Senua’s Sacrifice, and many other games. God of War: Ragnarök will become only the latest to take us through the Twilight of the Gods when it releases next month. By now the ground is well-trodden, the story retold in a hundred different ways. Still, strangely, game developers are compelled to return to it and put their brand on the myth.

“It’s a well-shaped myth”, Dr Carolyne Larrington, a tutorial fellow in medieval English language and literature at Oxford University, says. “From the first inklings of disaster with the death of Baldr, the punishment of Loki, the onset of the Great Winter, chaos breaking out across the human world, and then the attack of the frost- and fire-giants.

“It speaks to our fear of annihilation, whether through the destruction of the environment, nuclear weapons or cosmic disaster. The inevitability is on the one hand depressing, but on the other,