Beyond Kratos's origin story he showed very little character development in all the games he was in, and imo his origin story was the only interesting thing about him.  After he got the big pay off from his origin story I have no desire to play as him anymore. 

Well, you're free to believe what you want. As for me, Bayonetta, The Wonderful 101, Kingdom Hearts or Metroid Prime 2 are my top in terms of boss fights, far beyond anything God of War has pulled together.

Extra Credits did an interesting video awhile back where they compared the original God of War's Kratos' narrative arcs to the narrative arcs of typical Greek stories and legends, and actually found a lot of parallels. His rage and pride reflective of Achilles, etc, etc, and not going to lie, it actually made me view the first game in a different light.

...and the video continued by lamenting the fact that the subsequent games massively dropped the ball on this, by stripping any real character growth from Kratos, and pretty much just making him an angry roid-rage jackass with no redeeming qualities, and I agreed wholeheartedly with it. There's just no way to view Kratos from subsequent games as an interesting character, and even his supposed 'redeeming mind-journey' near the very end of GoW3 was completely torpedoed when, literally seconds after having supposedly washed all the blood from his soul, he proceeds to beat Zeus to death with his bare hands. =P OUR HERO, PEOPLE.

What's more, they couldn't even take the ballsy route of just saying 'Yeah, you're playing the villain,' and instead had to try and justify Kratos' actions with such dumb elements as 'Oh, Zeus was corrupted by something something, and THAT'S why he tried to kill you Kratos, because he'd gone eeeeeviiiil!' rather than going with 'Yeah, no, you were being a monstrous dick. Zeus put you down. Now you're a hurt little bitch looking for payback.'

If Kratos is in God of War 4, he needs to be the villain. Hell, if nothing else the trilogy did a wonderful job setting it up. Kratos literally broke the world, have someone rise from the chaos to try and vanquish this World Killer, maybe coming from the ranks of Norse mythology. =P

He isn't as iconic as Sonic or Mario, what are you talking about? He's just a regular gray looking muscular dude.

Not as iconic as Mario, but not even Santa Claus is as iconic as Mario But for Sonic, that is questionable. For old school gamers like us Sonic will remain popular, but IMO newer gamers are probably at least as aware of Kratos as they are of Sonic.

I love Kratos, and absolutely loved to finish his story. But that said I wish for someone new in GoW4.

I like Kratos, his anger is so over the top I find it entertaining

Not really, trhe origin story wsa just the beginning of his journey and while he may not seem much different in his characterisation in the other games his story evolved into something much more complex and he got many more reasonsd to be angry upon the gods in subsequent games. He didn't ahve anything against Zeus in the first game, it was Zeus who cheated him in GOW II more than once, killing him and destroying Sparta, that fuelled his hatred towards Zeus. The other Gods Of Olympus stood in his way to extract revenge so he killed them too. He was a Spartan warrior so it was in his nature to kill anything that stood in his path to reach his destination.

Also, do you only play games with interesting protagonists? I never thought gameplay, level design and story were less important than the protagonist in a game, for me the protagonist is just a way to enjoy the gameplay and story in a game.

Yet people find him interesting. You know why? His story becomes far more complex and larger in its scale and ambition after the first game, even though he himself is the same, he gets much more reason to be angry.

COO and GOS showed a more humane side of him, where he sacrificed being with his daughter to save the world in COO and in GOS went on a quest to find his brother Deimos and would have lived with him too, had it not been for Thanatos killing Deimos.

I do love kratos and I hope to see him on the next god of war.

They can do whatever they want, if the game is as good as the others in the series, people will get it... Why do people focus on only one aspect of something...

Hell NO!!! What are you smoking???