u/DioBrandoXVII

Just going to make this as an explainer for anyone who's curious about the God of War story. I'll avoid as much detail as I can, but obviously beware spoilers. Kratos was the son of Zeus and a human woman named Callisto, and eventually became an accomplished Spartan soldier. One day, he and his army fought an army of soldiers from the North led by Alrik the Barbarian. His army was on the brink of defeat, and so Kratos called out to Ares to grant him power. Ares granted this wish, giving Kratos the Blades of Chaos and the power to defeat Alrik and his army. However, this came at the cost of him becoming a slave to Ares. He would spend the next several years as Ares's best soldier, laying waste to various Greek towns.

Unfortunately, during a raid on a city who worshipped the goddess Athena, he sacked a temple in which his wife Lysandra and daughter Calliope were hiding. He killed them in his blind rage, and only realized what he had done after the fact. An oracle punished him by magically sticking the ashes of his dead wife and daughter onto his skin, which is why his skin is ashy white.

He felt angry about what happened and long story short, went on a very long journey to get revenge on Ares. He did receive help from various gods along the way, including the infamous Titans, but most of them ultimately betrayed him save a few like Aphrodite. He opened Pandora's box, which hoed everybody, but also released hope into the world. His actions resulted in the destruction of Greece. He would eventually leave and wander for over a hundred years. In that time, he would encounter the Egyptian pantheon before eventually finding his way to Scandinavia. There, he would meet a Giant named Laufey. They fought each other when they met, but would eventually fall in love and conceive a son named Atreus, who is named after a great Spartan soldier that Kratos admired.

For reasons we do not know yet, Laufey would eventually die suddenly. As a Giant, she had the ability to see the future, and so told Kratos that she wanted her ashes spread from the highest peak in the realms for some reasons he did not know of. Unfortunately, just after she died, he would be tracked down by the Aesir god: Baldur. Baldur was sent by Odin to track down Laufey, just as he hunted down and killed all the remaining Giants, but Baldur had instead mistaken Kratos for Laufey, believing him to be the Giant he was looking for. You spend the entirety of 2018 going on a quest to reach the highest peak in the Nine Realms while fighting off Baldur and some other gods, which turns out to be in Jotunheim, the realm of the Giants. Along the way, they find out a few crumbs about the world, and eventually learn that to her people, Laufey did not refer to Atreus by that name. She called him Loki.

In God of War: Ragnarok, Ragnarok has been set in motion due to the death of Baldur. Odin and Thor pay a visit to Kratos to try and arrange a peace deal, but Kratos refuses out of a lack of trust in the Aesir. A fight with Thor ensues, in which Thor mentions that when clashing with the Leviathan Axe Kratos is wielding, he felt it was familiar. This is due to him vaguely remembering that in the past, he once crossed paths with and fought Laufey. She was powerful enough to fight him to a standstill while both were drunk.

Throughout God of War: Ragnarok, Kratos and Atreus meet and kill various gods, help various people, while also receiving help from a few gods and even a few remaining giants. And the game ends with Atreus going off on his own to be independent.

God of War: Laufey takes place immediately after Laufey dies, and its events happen concurrently to God of War 2018. Despite not being a goddess herself, she awakens in the afterlife reserved for gods. She is captured by gods who subservient to the Mongolian God of War named Begtse, and the Egyptian Goddess of War and Medicine named Sekhmet. She eventually fights Begtse, but we know nothing more about the game as of this moment.

I left out a ton of details, but that's a basic rundown for anyone curious or if someone in RDC reads this.