WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for God of War: Fallen God #3 by Chris Roberson, Tony Parker, Dan Jackson, Jimmy Betancourt, on sale now.
Anyone who played God of War in 2018 likely remembers the iconic bare-knuckle brawl between Kratos and the Stranger, later revealed to be Baldur. It was an epic fight at the start of the game that saw the two deities pound each other to bloody pulps only to get back up and do it all over again. It was a brilliant change of pace to Kratos' usual method of hacking and slashing with his blades.
But as God of War: Fallen God #3 reveals, Kratos had to win another fight with his bare hands against a much more savage beast before that fight.
Kratos's fight with the Stranger was the opening boss battle and the event that prompted Kratos to bring his son, Atreus, along for the journey to spread Faye's ashes. Baldur showed up unannounced at their home and proceeded to force Kratos into a fistfight. It quickly descended into a battle in Kratos' backyard where the two began beating each other as hard as they could. And yes, technically Kratos used his shield and axe against Baldur, but he alternated between his weapons and his fists more frequently during that fight than at any other point in the game, most likely not wishing to be the warrior again, but circumstances forced his hand.
But the battle showed that Kratos was more than capable of holding his own in a fight without weapons, even proving to be a superior hand-to-hand combatant when the situation demanded it. In the past, Kratos has beaten down gods and monsters with his bare hands, but always after dominating them with his weapons. They usually died on their backs as Kratos turned their face into a bloody mess. Here, players got to see how Kratos fared without any weapons and discovered that he was just as deadly.
But now it has been revealed that he had another melee fight to prepare him for his first battle with Baldur. Shortly after destroying Olympus and killing Zeus, Kratos found his way to a village in Egypt where he was forced to fight and kill a creature known as a chaos beast. This gargantuan, demonic crocodile pushed Kratos to the edge, even more so because Kratos had left his blades of chaos behind. After a few rounds with the animal, Kratos realized that he wasn't going to win this fight without literally getting his hands dirty.
So he put aside any reservations he had and unleashed his fury upon the chaos beast. Kratos ripped it in half to end the fight and the assumed threat. The lessons from that battle are clearly on display during Kratos' fight with Baldur. Both men are not holding anything back, and as it becomes clear that the Stranger will not go down easily, Kratos once again dives into the melee, reducing his opponent to a bloody pulp to finally gain the opening he needed to remove the threat to his home and child. Of course, Baldur lived after the fight, but he had his own little cheat code. If Kratos had been fighting him one on one without Baldur's invulnerability, the other man would have lost the fistfight much earlier into the battle.