‘I was just taken with it’: Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica writer Ronald D Moore explains why he’s showrunning God of War

The executive producer and showrunner for Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming God of War TV series has spoken more about the project.

Ronald D Moore is best known for his work as a writer and co-executive producer on Star Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Votager, as well as the Battlestar Galactica reboot and Outlander.

Now Moore will be executive producing and showrunning the God of War series, following the departures of showrunner Rafe Judkins (The Wheel of Time) and executive producers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus (Children of Men, Iron Man, The Expanse) last year.

In an interview with IGN, Moore explained that while he doesn’t play video games and wasn’t familiar with God of War beyond its title, after viewing the cutscenes from the 2018 PS4 reimagining he became engaged with the relationship between Kratos and his son Atreus.

“It was just when I started watching it, I started looking at the cutscenes together, and there’s so much material there, and I really responded to the characters,” Moore said.

“I responded to the story of Kratos and his son, and then they set out on this epic journey in this world that was finely detailed and really interesting, and there’s a lot of combat and interesting monsters along the way.

“But I kept coming back to this story of father and son, and it was just emotional and it was different, and I hadn’t seen anything like that before, and I had no expectations because like you said, I’m not a gamer. I knew the title, but I didn’t really know what the story was, so I didn’t really know what I was going to be looking at, and I was just taken with it. And so I said, yeah, I’d love to do it. I think it’s really interesting.”

Moore added that the tone of the show “is trying to emulate the tone of the game, which is there’s this epic journey, this heartfelt story of these two men setting out on this thing to honor the memory of his wife, Atreus’ mother”.

“So it has this emotional heart, but there’s this sense of history of who Kratos is, this mystery about his past, what he represents, the emotions that he’s going through,” he explained. “So there’s a weight to it, but not so much weight that there’s not enjoyment along the way and there’s spectacle and there’s lots of things going on in this world.”