God of War Ragnarök Writer Anthony Burch: “I Tried Really Hard To Make Kratos Talk About Kissing Guys”

Ryan Pearson |

Jul 15, 2022

Source: God of War Ragnarök (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment

God of War Ragnarök Writer Anthony Burch has claimed he “tried really hard to make Kratos talk about kissing guys.”

Source: God of War Ragnarok

Burch’s claim came July 6th, shortly after God of War Ragnarök’s release date was announced. Quote retweeting the announcement, Burch added “I was a writer on this. I dunno if you’ll like the parts I wrote but I’m pretty sure you’ll like the game in general. Also I tried really hard to make Kratos talk about kissing guys.”

Source: anthony_burch Twitter

“I dunno if that line made the final cut,” Burch admits. “It lives in the same purgatory with the line where Kratos mentions Playstation All Stars Battle Royale as being a canon part of his backstory.”

Source: anthony_burch Twitter

While Burch has not appeared on the game’s IMDB page at this time of writing, Burch had previously stated “I’m workin on the new god of war” in a now deleted September 2020 tweet.

Source: anthony_burch Twitter

“I think the fans will love all the parts you specifically did not write,” God of War Ragnarök’s technical narrative designer Harleigh Awner joked. “And this is how you learned you can’t be sarcastic about me when nerds are involved,” Burch retorted, seemingly referring to some taking Awner’s comment seriously.

Source: harleighawner Twitter, anthony_burch Twitter

“I’m trying to resist the urge to yell at all these people and tell them you’re great,” confessed Santa Monica Studios Lead Player Investment Designer Anthony DiMento. “Haha it’s fine,” Burch assured. “I can’t see 90% of the tweets because most of these dorks are on a blocklist. they just jelly they didn’t get to write for the strong beard man and I (a cuck) did.”

Source: DiMentoXP Twitter, anthony_burch Twitter

The Borderlands writer is somewhat infamous online. Burch had previously dismissed the GamerGate consumer revolt as being a harassment campaign against women, which only drew attention to his personal life by GamerGate supporters.

In fact, Burch had dismissed GamerGate as not being interested in ethics in games journalism… As they hadn’t noticed he had been unethical.

Source: Red Faction: Guerilla – Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?, HAWPOfficial, YouTube

As cataloged by the now defunct Attack on Gaming (which links to all the tweets and is archived under web.archive.org), Burch made the confession under his now inactive @reverendanthony Twitter account, as Slate cites along with archives of his other tweets showing his face.

Long story short, Burch confessed that two of his friends gave positive reviews to two pieces of Borderlands 2 DLC- both under Destructoid, who also hosted his and Ashley Burch’s Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’? video series- and felt he didn’t get noticed by GamerGate “despite having 32.7k followers” because he was a man.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 – Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?, HAWPOfficial, YouTube

As a result of this, GamerGate supporters were made more aware of Burch’s marital issues, allegedly shared by Burch himself. These include being in an open marriage, his wife sleeping with other men- as aforementioned, a literal cuckold- and said wife later taking his Nintendo Wii U in a divorce.

All of which led to the meme “At least I’m not Anthony Burch,” a self-affirming claim that no matter how bad things get, Burch has it worse. It may be due to memes like this that Burch has become more defiant against the “nerds” he blocks on Twitter, even trying to own the reputation as a “cuck.” As such, even his claim about Kratos discussing homosexuality may be an attempt to tease his haters.

Source: Borderlands 2 – Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?, HAWPOfficial, YouTube

Under Destuctoid, Burch also wrote a counterpoint to Destuctoid’s 10/10 review for God of War III, calling it “too long, boring.”

Despite his initial enjoyment in the first five hours out of eight, Burch condemns the game as overly long, undercutting Kratos’ objective of finally killing Zeus with other arbitrary goals to achieve it, too similar to prior games, and feeling his attachment to his wife and child was a mismatch to how brutally violent and “evil” Kratos had acted- even at times when Kratos acts to save Pandora.

“If the gameplay tells me I’m being an evil bastard, then let me be an evil bastard,” Burch implored. He concluded his counterpoint of God of War III stating “it’s dishonest, overly long, and makes early promises it is incapable of keeping. ”