In this chapter, you play as Kratos, accompanied by various characters.
If you haven’t already after the end of chapter 16, enter the mystic gateway and travel to Midgard, where the dialogue will signify the beginning of the end
for the main story.
Note that from this point onward in my first run for this guide, I played on Give Me story as opposed to Give Me Grace. Future revisions of this guide may allow for a build that can be put together with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), though for now for anyone struggling difficulty changes might be your best bet with some of the tougher fights.
Once you exit the gateway, Mimir and Atreus will ask if there’s anything you’d like to do
before the final mission truly begins.
For the sake of clarity, now is the time to undertake quests like Animal Instincts where you take out the aforementioned raider camps or Sigrun’s Curse if you’ve unlocked either of those.
As you nav assist away from the gateway, not boarding the sled, keep an ear out for a distant stationary raven to your left once the wind picks up.
That taken care of should you wish, nav assist your way to the lift. Atreus will say ready when you are
when you’re around the interact prompt, but said prompt can be tricky to locate.
Note: Hitting this interact prompt begins the final mission, with no ability to turn back.
Nav assist until your feet stop moving, then 180 via your shield and you should be able to hit said prompt and officially begin the game’s final act.
Everyone starts talking about the realm towers and, once you reach the top, nav assist your way slowly onward, moving around geometry where needed (mostly to the left during my testing) to keep yourself walking forward.
Note that you can’t sprint for a while, hence your pace being slower.
Once you get to Sigrun (as identified by Mimir) and feel a small haptic, you can stop moving whilst the dialogue occurs.
You can resume moving after Freya starts talking about the need for a general.
When Freya says about tents, stop moving, then resume nav assisting once the quest update appears.
Hit an interact prompt and Sigrun will ask to speak with Mimir, which is actually a fully skippable cutscene.
Once they’ve left, Kratos will put down his weapons and retire for the night, but not before a final reflective sequence.
Once you’re out of the cutscene, with Kratos saying he has nothing to say
, nav assist onwards and follow the instructions and prompts. Rinse and repeat until eventually you’ll enter another cutscene via a signature ability or triangle prompt on default controls, beginning with Kratos words You prepare for a distant future
.
Long cutscene done, with the simple instruction to the temple
, the quest updates again and you can nav assist your way onward.
Open the doors and nav assist, keeping an ear out for Lunda’s shop. She sells a set of armour to use in this final battle, for free, should you so wish and have OCR to purchase it.
If you want to check whether you’re on the right armour pieces in the various sections, you’re looking for any descriptions that say:
“Armour for the end times, handcrafted with love by Lunda.”
I also saw references to other armour sets that I’d not expected to even show up here during my testing, so there may be potential builds you could craft here including for trophies, should you have the resources to do so.
However, the build I use in the final act of the game in testing does usually involve the free Fate Breaker armour set referenced above.
Purchases, upgrades and any conversations done with, nav assist and interact with the door. Everyone will call Kratos General to varying degrees and you’ll enter a new area.
Nav assist your way to an interact prompt to trigger a another cutscene, beginning with a speech from Kratos.
This first cutscene done, you are thrown into a battlefield via a second cutscene.
This latter one complete, with the epic score encouraging you to move, nav assist your way forward to start combat.
From this point it’s a case of nav assisting, interacting where prompted and fighting off what should now be rather squishier versions of enemies that you’ve already fought previously.
Given how much combat there is and how repetitive this could get writing-wise, I won’t describe every fight here, though if there is felt to be a need for it, this section could be updated in future.
Keep fighting until, after a climb, you trigger a cutscene. This includes talk of the World Serpent, called the snake
by Kratos, looking different and an observation that there’s still no sign of the dwarves
.
After this short exchange, continue to nav assist and battle your way forward.
Once a dragon enters the fight and all the smaller enemies are dead, nav assist will kick back in. Nav assist onward and keep aiming as you move to find a cue for a spear throw. Hit this and detonate the weakpoint to take the dragon out of the fight.
Continue onwards until Atreus shouts The Dwarves are here!
.
After a heated exchange including Sindri and some more combat, you can nav assist to another dramatic cutscene, during which Sindri says more or less what you wanted?
.
With this cutscene over, you switch to playing as Atreus.
After a few waves of enemies are dealt with, nav assist a little and you’ll get into a section where you have to hit rage to progress, ushered in via a scripted sequence.
Once that section’s done, everything falls relatively quiet.
Keep nav assisting onwards, though your footsteps might be almost inaudible and you’ll find yourself in another cutscene.
After this lengthy cutscene, keep hitting heavy attack and see the results play out.
Cutscene actually over with, you’re back to playing as Kratos again.
At first the nav assist might get a little due to geometry, but a little manual movement should get you unstuck.
Keep nav assisting and fighting your way onwards through multiple back-to-back encounters, until you get to a cutscene with Atreus saying The Great Lodge, that’s where we gotta go
That’s not what ends up happening as instead, an old foe intercedes:
Boss Fight: Thor (Rematch)
Thor’s back and this time, he’s not joking around.
Phase 1 is mostly unblockables and retaliation windows, so use those to your advantage.
Phase 2, after some QTE elements, involves a wider range of attacks, which even on Give Me Grace are very powerful. Realistically, keeping the pressure on the God Of Thunder might help you here, including using rage.
Phase 3 (after more QTE elements) includes a large charging slam that you have to dodge, but the timing can be tricky as there’s a wind-up. Sometimes he’ll even do multiple back-to-back.
He also leaves areas of effect that aren’t discernible, at least with the music up and, if you see a shield strike, definitely try and hit it, as otherwise it can one shot you.
After an intense battle, you’ll get a stun prompt. Hit this to trigger another cutscene with a QTE, concluding the fight.
Cutscene done with, it’s time to face the final boss of the main storyâ¦
Boss Fight: Odin.
The multiple phases merge into each other so cleanly that you might not notice things are changing. On the higher difficulties, some of his attacks can one shot you, though if you have a resurrection stone it might help you here, as well as any Bifrost reduction elements you can work with.
If he throws out an attack with a long wind-up, run forward and hope that you’ll get an auto-traversal to avoid the AOE, which you’ll know by your lock-on breaking briefly.
This phase is probably the hardest to work with given the visual-only telegraphing of where is safe to be, but once you get through it, you don’t have to worry about that attack again.
You’ll eventually trigger (via a stun prompt) a cutscene where Freya enters the fight.
The battle isn’t done yet and, after a while more of hitting, blocking and dodging (without that pesky AOE from the previous phase), you can trigger a stun prompt to progress the fight to one last phase.
After you’ve hit Odin enough times though he does make that rather difficult with all the attacks he throws on screen, you’ll eventually get another stun prompt.
Hit this and you’ll enter the final QTE. Once that’s complete, you’ll trigger one last cutscene in this climactic conflict.
This cutscene complete and a trophy earned, you’re now playing as Atreus.
nav assist and talk to the various NPCs as you go, which should happen automatically. Sometimes, you can leave the conversation you’re in by nav assisting your way away from whoever you’re talking to), should you wish to do so as well.
Eventually, after several such interactions, you’ll hear another familiar voice. A little more nav assisting sees you enter a cutscene, reuniting with Angrboda and Fenrir.
During this cutscene, Kratos enters. You switch to playing as him as you nav assist onwards.
Keep nav assisting for a while, until another cutscene triggers, beginning with a single word from Atreus after a long pause.
With Kratos reflecting that there is much to do and much to rebuild, the cutscene over and music still playing, nav assist your way onwards as the credits role and dialogue eventually continues.
Discussions of Gna, the new Valkyrie queen finished, nav assist probably getting you a little stuck on geometry in between, you’ll start running into more NPCs and conversations again.
Some more running later, you’ll hit an interact prompt to open a door. This done, you’ll be presented with a narrated prompt that clarifies your journey, at least the main part, is complete!
Hit confirm and, with the quest completion cue, you’ll have no further main story objectives short of an epilogue, covered in the final main chapter of this guide.