Sony Santa Monica detailed the new Kratos who is more human and not the monster from the previous games of the series.
Sony Santa Monica’s lead designer Mark Simon said that Kratos will be different than what he was in the previous games. This is why he won't kill civilians due to moral isssues.
“For example, there’s the guy who’s against the wall, and there’s a fire, and in order to get past him Kratos just kills him and moves on. I think what the Kratos in this game would do is, he would try to move around the guy.”
“He wouldn’t try to kill him to move on. He’s not going to go massively out of his way or anything like that, he is very driven to do what he does — the guy is a Spartan general, he’s killed hundreds and hundreds of people.”
“But the civilians in this case, he doesn’t kill any civilian, here. The ones that are killing the civilians are the beasts that he’s fighting against, and we want to get back to that. Because it’s important to know that, like, these guys are terrorizing the workers on this statue.”
“Kratos is going to go in and fight those guys, so in a way he’s more heroic for doing things like this. When the Juggernaut shows up, he kills three guys just like that, and Kratos runs in and fights this guy. That’s the monster, in this game, not Kratos.”
■ Jensen6