Christopher Judge’s awe-inspiring speech at the 2022 Game Awards

By Kieran Burt.

This year’s Game Awards have come to a close, celebrating some of the most critically acclaimed games of 2022. But one award winner in particular stood out, and that’s because of the awe-inspiring speech that followed.

One of the first awards announced was the Best Performance in a game, and this year it went to Christopher Judge for his performance as Kratos in God of War Ragnarök. 

Starting off his speech, Judge thanked his family, and Cory Barlog (the director for the 2018 God of War), adding that he relates to Cory on an artistic level. 

He then revealed he nearly quit when Eric Williams took over as director for Ragnarök, but Barlog convinced him to stay, telling Judge that he’s a “beast.” 

Towards the end of the speech, he thanked the rest of his castmates, and specifically called out Sunny Suljic who voices Atreus, the son of Kratos.  

Finally, he ended his speech by saying that every person in the room, no matter what game they took part in, are “heroes because you got so many people in the world through a very difficult, dark time that’s still not over.

“Games in the gaming community so much to this world, so much in the course of dreams and escapism and just being better.”

Judge also mentioned he met Al Pacino, who presented the Best Performance award.  

Al Pacino is best known for playing Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy. More recently, he has appeared in the 2021 Ridley Scott film House of Gucci, and played Aldo Gucci. 

The full speech can be watched here.   

God of War Ragnarök was also nominated to win game of the year but lost out to FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.
God of War Ragnarök released on November 9 2022 on the PlayStation 4 and 5.