God of War | An Overdue Critique ft. Overly Sarcastic Productions

I finished 20 18 s God of War recently and I think it's time for a retrospective on it see videogames storytelling is very different to storytelling in a book or a film which we've usually focused on on this channel God of War is an interesting case study in the limitations of storytelling in the video game medium and how to address those challenges this game has languished and unadulterated praise as one of the best and narrative driven games for years and that's totally deserved but I do want to offer a different angle of critique that some of this discourse may have missed both in my criticisms and my praise for things that others may not have highlighted to be clear though God of War is a fantastic game with compelling characters their arcs in a beautiful world but me repeating all of that to you especially when you've heard it all before in Joseph Anderson's fully comprehensive three hour-long critique do go watch that wouldn't be all that valuable I wouldn't be contributing much so let's get to it and this video is brought to you by my magical patrons who support genuinely makes this and my other writing and were building content possible they allow me to make these longer form critiques and take the time to do them if you'd like to join the discord chat with us about all this kind of stuff with just a couple bucks a month please do so at the link down below looking forward to having you but I refuse to serene to my channel to negativity so we are gonna start with the things that the game does amazingly well in both its word building and its narrative as a game and we're gonna do it with the help of my amazing friends rid and blue from overly sarcastic productions hi Tim thanks so much for having us as avid God of War fans and professional mythology nerds we are hyped to talk about this game with you we'll leave the major analysis to you but we'll jump back in later to talk mythology in world-building thanks guys now for those unfamiliar with the story of God of War I am going to spoil all of it so you've been warmed back out now experience the game for yourself and then come back but I want to give you a quick summary to give you some context to work with so Kratos a Greek god of you guessed it war has ventured away from his homeland of Sparta to find peace after a long vengeance quest against the great gods whom he killed and during that happy adventure he also killed a bunch of people who weren't great gods who were just by standards living their lives basically he did a lot of killing in games one two three that was the thing now arriving in the lands of Norse mythology called Midgard but likely Scandinavia Kratos has found love with a woman called Fae and they have a son called at Reyes the game opens with phase death and Kratos taking on the responsibility of caring for his son alone which is not very good at holy fire when I tell you to fire they have a typical godly family relationship at the start by which I mean terrible phase last request was to have her ashes scattered at the highest mountain peak in all the nine realms so a trance and Creta set out to do exactly this and just like every adventurer named mythology it falls apart within the first few pages there's another Norse God hunting him down for reasons he doesn't understand the world serpent jörmungandr turns out to be a pretty chill dude and in very Greek fashion you get unwillingly caught up in a story because the gods decided to be dicks but in the end kratos Senate race get through it and have a very uncharacteristically non-greek happy ending and they are finally given the catharsis of scattering phase ashes and honestly that's it this was the first thing that stuck out to me about God of War as a video game narrative part one an old story told well now there have been a thousand stories of two radically different characters going on a physical journey through which they change personally and come to understand one another to go further than this one of them is often a darker more experienced character who needs to open up and Trust while the other is more innocent and naive and needs to mature with a more nuanced understanding of the world well that's exactly what it is we'll call this the journey story for the video the journey story was used as recently as in the SEM in DES masterpiece in 1917 with William Scofield being the wizened character and Tom Blake being the more naive one the film was oddly enough even criticized and praised for how it looked and functioned like a video game but it's also been a common trope in films like Logan and obviously this is the narrative paradigm for God of War a simple story of a father and son learning to bond over shared struggles we Kratos learns to open up and Trust while at Reyes matures to how the world works changing each other and themselves all with a very simple goal to fulfill the final wish of someone they both loved see one challenge with video game storytelling is just how much time you can dedicate to character development and Exposition Hideo Kojima certainly pushed the limits with this with its training and up to 40 minute cutscenes at a time but there's a reason that this game catered to a more niche community complex stories with a large cast of characters unusual character arcs and complex character goals that required backstory and Exposition about the world are a lot more difficult to tell in the video game medium not impossible but certainly more of a challenge when you don't have pages and pages to take your time through the complexity to show you what I mean the finish god of war script is only forty-five thousand words and then includes a lengthy descriptions of all the cutscenes titles for the scenes and notes on how things should be said for context that's 15,000 words shorter than your average young adult novel and those are short books your average adult fantasy novel is anywhere between 120 and 300 thousand words the dorita for God of War Corey bar logs seem to recognize this limitation and instead chose to tell a very simple story well the character goals in world don't require much exposition for the player to understand why they are doing things and the very limited cast of the manes Kratos and at Reyes but also these secretaries freya Amemiya allowed bar log to instead to dedicate as much of the script as possible to their meaningful character development it avoids the pitfall of spending half of your script explaining the story and the world around them to your audience just to help it make sense leaving the characters relatively paper-thin other videogame writers seem to have taken up on this similar method over the last decade some of the highest-rated story driven games have been developed with a similar journey premise The Last of Us by Neil druckmann Firewatch by Sean Veneman and BioShock Infinite by Ken Levine these games all use their archetypal journey story of just two radically different characters learning from and understanding one another as they go on a physical journey more often than not with one naive character in the dynamic being a child a friend of mine sage Hayden over at just right referred to this the deadening of video games now the journeys story isn't the only framework that works for good stories and video games but the fact that it is so common should be a testament to how these games meet the limitations of the medium God of War story worked because was written recognizing the limitations of the medium but also because it heavily uses what we'll call preconditioning there's another reason that the journey story works so well for games by creating at Reyes as a child and placing us in the shoes of a father figure we're already conditioned to care for and protect the other character building on this given we play as the character who does most of the fighting in the actual gameplay the player is an active participant in creditors motivations to protect at Reyes with him often placed in positions of danger the writers effectively used the medium of gameplay to give us the foundation for this relationship and facilitate its growth these simple stories use the familiar relationship dynamic to make it easy to become attached to the characters they create this isn't a particularly complex emotion to feel but it's very real and it's very relatable for someone to step into the shoes of building on this a major part of their relationship developing is their growing trust of one another Barlow chose to open with the death of a tracers mother and gives us the simple task of scattering the mother's ashes this is a very simple and down-to-earth objective to give the player one that some players may have even participated in themselves in real life though this world is fantastical and full of color and wonder we already have preconditioned thoughts and emotions and feelings about the actual substance of what we're doing and why and to help with this the character arcs of Kratos and at Reyes also use the immediately familiar in this archetypal journey structure at Reyes wanting his father to trust him as he grows is something that we all go through and him wanting cradles to be the father that he always needed is a sad reality that a lot of people have to deal with and even if you don't it's easy to understand what the lack of that kind of father figure would do to you similarly creditors archive allowing yourself to feel and to grieve is something that a lot of people struggle with especially men who would be the predominant target audience of the game and the struggle of handling guilt and being open about your past is a familiar one and the game frames this by never really dwelling that much on the godlike past of what he did and how horrible it was just the grief and emotions that come from that it's all very really grounded fundamentally by using the familiar and simple starting points for character arcs and player objectives the writer can dedicate more time to deepening the emotions around them and the dynamics that they have then games where the player isn't preconditioned to understand what a means or how it feels to be in the position that the character is for example in the game remember me they spent a lot of early game time dedicated to explaining that this is a world where memories can be altered how this happens that yours have been taken and encouraging you to care about your memories being stolen it's an unfamiliar world and kind of dynamic but it is probably a traumatic experience it just takes a little bit longer for us to care about that which means they get less time developing her as a character but familiarity also comes from structure how a story is structured tells the reader or player here on a mid a textual level what to care about what is important and the game relies on a very clear and familiar simple three-act structure the first set Inns arriving at the lake roughly 22% of the way through the midpoint ins with Mamere roughly 44% of the way through the second date ends with the destruction of the Jotunheim portal at about 80% of the way through in the third act ends at the scattering of the ashes about a hundred percent of the way through the structure gives an easy context in which the players can understand what they're experiencing clearly signalling what's important in what's not all of the major story beads are structured around Kratos and addresses father-son relationship and creditors struggle to trust him with the truth of his godhood and his past structurally the biggest story beads aren't their conflict with Balder despite him being the main antagonist but at Reyes confronting his father about how he neglects him and Kratos revealing that he is in fact a god as well as the fact that he killed innocents in his past the build up flow and release of tension in the structure of the narrative is all based around that relationship I'd be tempted to say that they didn't introduce Thor or Odin because they didn't want us focusing on them didn't want the focus of the game to be about the struggle between two gods once again its focus isn't on being unique but on doing something familiar very well all of this is deliberately crafted to help us empathize with the characters and the catharsis comes at the end when you finally reach yo tin hime and scatter the ashes together it's well-earned but more importantly it's very emotionally deep it's a simple but powerful kind of moment just as much as preconditioning as used to make you care about what you're doing in God of War they also use gameplay to reinforce these narrative elements which is fantastic the best example of this is how at the start kratos doesn't even trust at Reyes to carry his mother's ashes but as the story progresses he comes to trust and depend on him more the crane has chose to reflect on us and how you play at races ability to stun enemies becomes incredibly valuable even vital in combat and he plays crucial roles in helping you take down enemies and bosses I remember one time trying to kill this dam to hug Elf boss and it took me so much longer than any other boss even Balder and I only just survived by spamming a trace as bow and arrows before he killed me a moment longer and I would have died in a sense I was genuinely thankful for a tres being there and helping me even though I knew on a metatextual level that it was me making him do that see suspension of belief made me thankful for at Reyes you literally trust him more in how you play there's a distinctive pairing between narrative and gameplay here in the mechanics function in a kind of Pavlovian way rewarding you for doing exactly what the designers want which is learning to rely on at Reyes in the same way we are told Kratos comes to rely on him in the narrative this is a brilliant way to address one major challenge with gameplay storytelling will you give the player agency that can be a ludonarrative dissonance between what the story says your character is like and how the player believes them to be how they actually play here they incentivize you to play in a way that prevents any dissonance like that from ever happening and perhaps the reverse of this though the game also conditions you to feel for us traded with at Reyes when he goes on a bit of a power trip in the story to match this he stops obeying your commands without any real warning which was a rude awakening for me when it got me killed because he wasn't stunning enemies when I told him the section does have some pretty crunch dialogue but it's not the worst thing in the world and it's certainly not the worst dialogue I've heard in a video game show yourself our new ruler the Empire friends it is not over yet is that all you have to say and on the topic of gameplay and narrative integration there were also some pretty awkward moments some of it - a really jarring there's the strange mechanic where Boulder pins you down and you have to dodge either side and then strike out at him the controls are pretty odd and they weren't super intuitive to figure out in this moment of supposedly super high tension we're at Reyes has been taken by Baldur this happened at the end of the second act of the story which is meant to be the darkest point fair characters where Kratos has had to face up to his past in the blades of chaos and at Reyes even turns on you completely this is meant to be a highly emotional moment where you're desperately trying to get back to your son despite your difficulties but I couldn't get a grip of these controls which might just be hashtag you're a noob Tim if that's so type it in the comments but I ended up in this repetitive loop of him thumping down on me for like a minute straight I was so focused on figuring out exactly what the game wanted me to do here that I couldn't really get into the story part of this and it was clear that balda wasn't going to kill me so it lost any sort of feeling of danger any impact clunky gameplay controls killed the pacing of the scene Joseph Anderson as a more experienced gamer talks a bit more of this from his perspective but this was my experience despite this criticism God of War is a simple story told extremely well that doesn't just work within the limitations of the medium but actively uses those limitations to make the narrative more interesting and immersive if you want to hear more about gameplay and how a gameplay integrates with a narrative I do recommend dose of Anderson's breakdown part 2 gods and monster well god of wars narrative is already pretty sharp the story get a lot more complex when we add in all of those sweet sweet myths so when the spirit of appreciating as much of this game's story as possible we're gonna give you all a quick rundown of how this game pulls from real world mythology feel free to skip ahead of this isn't really a thing ever since the first god of war game when Kratos was just a wee Spartan soldier he's been a non-stop chaos fountain in real Greek mythology there is actually a god named Kratos a deity of strength personified and a big fan of unnecessary roughness but aside from those salient qualities our Kratos doesn't have a lot in common with his namesake in the first game he killed Ares and became the God of War in the second game he hopped on a revenge quest to get Zeus with the help of the Titans and in the third game he kills pretty much every man Titan in God in a 500-mile radius and that includes killing Athena the other god of war in greek mythology who spends the series as kratos his divine foil occasional ally and secret third act antagonist owen to wrap it all up he also kills himself jump cut to the start of 2018 s God of War where Kratos is alive and in Scandinavia though we the players don't learn how he accomplished either of those in fact Kratos is opening dialogue everything implicitly tells the player to just roll with it what's important to us is that the multiple mythologies in the God of War worlds do blend together which will in most clearly from the character of Mamere later revealed to be the Shakespearean puck from Midsummer Night's Dream and from tears temple which has paintings of Norse Greek Egyptian and Japanese deities but while artistic liberties are clearly at play the game sticks impressively close to a lot of established Norse mythology that said established Norse mythology consists of two books written in Iceland centuries after the area was fully Christianized and literally nothing else so point taken and even when they do break from that known canon the game is extremely clever about how it deviates and why throughout the story the Norse gods particularly the icer are portrayed as manic power-hungry and extremely violent which isn't really on-brand for the Pantheon itself but lines up pretty well with the previous games depiction of the Greek gods so while a character like Balder is mythologically beloved by the gods and generally seen as an unproblematic fav of goodness and light God of War keeps the light motif while reminding us that in this story the gods he's beloved by are all terrible people and he is correspondingly a huge jerk it also turns his mythical indestructibility on his head his mother Frigg did magically 99.9% of all harm but it also made him completely numb and drove him majorly bonkers which is not typically how that plays out in the mythos at the end of the game we dip back into real mythology again when Balder is killed with a mistletoe arrow by Loki oh yeah at Reyes is sneakily Loki will touch on that in a second and boulder's unexpected death triggers the start of fimbulwinter step one in the prophesied Ragnarok that much is true to myth but the problem for everybody in a 500-mile radius is that Kratos Senate Reyes triggered Ragnarok a century early things may be playing out roughly according to prophecy but just like the old games Kratos is a chaotic influence wherever he goes this destabilization is first seen in the boss battle against Thor's sons Magni and Modi the brothers are prophesied to survive into the start of Ragnarok but when Kratos manages to kill Magni Modi flips out and asks how because Modi is operating under the assumption that they're functionally immortal until Ragnarok starts so he's in total disbelief that Kratos could just break the prophecy like that beyond this it's unclear just how much the gods actually know about Ragnarok since a lot of the story involves Loki's interference and by the end of the game Kratos is the only other person besides at Reyes who knows that boy is actually Loki zooming out of it the entire Jotunheim sequence reveals a ton about how Kratos fits into the Norse world in an extremely myth-accurate way the phrases shown at the end of the game label him not as Kratos but as far about T which I'm definitely not pronouncing right the canonical husband of Lao FA and father of Loki the only relevant traits of Farber T in the myths are that he's Loki's dad and that his name means cruel or dangerous striker this is a brilliant swerve they take a mythically Canon character about which very little is known and slot Kratos right into this role with no narrative contradictions Kratos is a cruel striker and his wife Fay being short for Lao Fame makes the rest fit right in and this multi-layered reveal was a plot twist to a lot of people including director Corey Barr log as it happens partway through developments the lead writers came up with the idea that a trace could also be Loki so they pitched it to Corey and he was immediately on board they didn't even have to change the surrounding story everything just kind of fit the trace became Loki the mom became Lao Fey and Kratos became far bounty perfect hopping back to how Loki fits into Ragnarok we learned from Maggie and Modi's reactions as well as Brock in syndra's argument that Ragnarok is well enough to recognize fimbulwinter as step one we also glean from Amir stories and the omnipresent Ravens that Odin is desperate to avoid Ragnarok and to stop his prophecy downfall because Odin like Zeus is power-hungry and terrified of losing his grip on the world but beyond that it's tough to see how exactly the next steps of Ragnarok will play out in future games this is partially because nobody in game seems to have the full picture Odin knows enough to be paranoid as hell but the Giants were the ones who had the full story and they're all dead by the time the game starts the only solid looks we get at the coming Ragnarok come from the Giants murals which show a battle between gods are really big wolf and a big dude with a flaming sword who is probably certain but here are some wild cards to look out for number 1 in the mythology it's a huge deal that Odin and Loki swear an oath and become Blood Brothers which is the whole reason that Loki a yotan and noted pain in the ass is even allowed to hang out with the Iser for our baby boy at Reyes to suddenly get buddy-buddy with power tripping despot Odin would imply some pretty serious stuff going wrong between Kratos and at Reyes number 2 your man Gondor the world serpent is canonically one of Loki's many children the other major ones being Fenrir the wolf and hell goddess of Helheim in the game Yami's presence is loosely explained by wibbly wobbly timey shenanigans but there's a lot of this relationship left to explore and no signs of his other two children just yet number three canonically Odin and Loki's relationship breaks down on account of the Balder murder being revealed during the flighting of Loki so Odin imprisons Loki and some very unfortunate snake related circumstances until he's released for the final battle of Ragnarok Boulder's already dead but this event kicks off when Odin learns Loki is responsible so it's totally possible that Odin doesn't know yet and could do some very nasty things to our boy when he finds out our factors to look out for include Heimdall who's instrumental in Ragnarok because he kills Loki but we know very little about him in the game there's also some stuff about how in Ragnarok the Sun is supposed to disappear in the earth is supposed to flood which is conspicuously what happened to Greece when Kratos killed Poseidon and Helios and Freya swearing vengeance and kratos is prophesied death are also wildcards to watch out for but for the sake of time we're gonna leave it there all in all God of War does a fantastic job of incorporating real mythology into the story and even when it goes off script it's done so darn clever that it actually deepens the lore thank you so much for indulging our mythological tangent and we now resume your regularly scheduled Tim par-three the side quest problem so I'm gonna be critical now I hope you're okay with add-in if you're not I'm really sorry God of War is unequivocally a masterful game but I want to be fair and talk about perhaps my biggest problem with how God of War was written or structured you're probably familiar with RPG quest lines where your character has a goal to do X let's say kill the Dark Lord but to do that they need to find a special weapon giving them a goal Y but to do that they need to find a map to where the weapon is goal Zed but to do that they need ad infinitum the game will continue to make the previous obstacle conditional on overcoming new obstacles this kind of storytelling manufactures obstacles between the player and the end goal usually aimed at lengthening the main quest of the game without too much complexity and the problem with this simply put is that even though the player is doing things you don't necessarily feel like you're truly moving the story forward the obstacles don't mean anything to the narrative payoff they're arbitrary the result is bad pacing and this was very much the structure of God of War for me to the point that I was actively thinking about this problem while I was playing that's not great it wasn't even thinly disguised to demonstrate let's talk about the broad narrative structure of God of War in terms of goals and obstacles firstly Kratos has a meaningful personal goal to scatter the ashes of Fay at the top of the highest mountain but upon reaching halfway up the mountain we meet our first arbitrary obstacle the blank breath blocks your way and to get through you need to go to a different world and acquire the light of Alfheim upon doing this you reach the top of the mountain and you find out that this isn't actually the mountain you needed to go to instead you need to go to Jotunheim on another world giving you a new obstacle to do this you need to get a magical chisel that allows you to activate the portal to it and upon doing this any obstacle Rises when at Reyes nearly dies and you have to go through Helheim to find them a guffin that can heal him and upon doing this you finally get to the gates of Jotunheim where you can scare to phase ashes and the Gators destroy it you were thrown back into Helheim and a new obstacle is introduced you have to escape and you have to find a new way to Jotunheim and upon finding a new way to Jotunheim you have to find another magical item to activate it only to have the boss battle kick off with Balder see the problem with this SciQuest structure where each obstacle becomes conditional on a new obstacle is that overcoming these challenges still doesn't really move the narrative Ford finding the light of elf high into pass through the black brief doesn't feel so much like forward progression as it does sideways progression you're doing something but going nowhere even when you've done it you still feel like you're in the same place that you were before you got it quite literally physically in the case of God of War this is because the goal then means something to your character is continually put on hiatus for these inconvenient obstacles that don't contribute to the emotional or thematic payoff the three most egregious examples of this are finding the light of elf I'm finding mamiya's eye and fighting the Giants chisel they don't mean anything to either Kratos or to the player especially not emotionally even on a very superficial level these objects don't make us more powerful or really allow us to interact with the game in new ways you can use the chisel to open secret rooms but this is a pretty minor part of the game this is made more frustrating by how the game doesn't pay off a number of its obstacles even when you do overcome them the most famous example of this is getting to the top of the mountain where you realize that the princess is in another castle and it is not in fact the mountain you were meant to go to at all the real one is in Jotunheim I was getting to the top of the mountain and as I was playing through the game I was thinking about where the game could go from here it couldn't possibly be done already either a it would take a long time to ascend to the mountain in fact I thought oh we're gonna figure out what happened here in the mountain that's gonna be the mystery of the game or be the game would continue on from scattering the ashes by introducing new stakes after all we did have Baldur these two ideas were the most natural plots for the story to follow but it was neither it would have been more efficient to simply have Jotunheim be the aim from the start I'm not sure what not paying off this obstacle really added to the story though blue did point out to me that this moment suddenly expanded the world and told the player there is so much more to explore which is worth something and he pointed out that Mamiya provides a lot of narrative depth the second example I'll touch on is when you finally get the magic chisel and you use it to open the portal to Jotunheim this is payoff you get what you were promised after overcoming the obstacle but then Kratos willingly destroys the portal in combat with Baldur and they're forced to find a new way in this didn't just feel contrived to me but I didn't get why the writers did this I can perhaps understand taking away the emotional catharsis of allowing Kratos and Atris to scatter phase ashes once but twice in terms of pacing it would have been better to have just had more obstacles in Jotunheim itself to get to the peak then it would be to destroy it here though to be fear I do want to talk about the intersection between creative ambitions and real-world production problems these criticisms wouldn't be fully balanced without acknowledging them the writers and writers of God of War did want to do more with these locations than we were given for example the giant death bird thing in Hell home instead of a another Technicolor troll but they didn't have the resources or perhaps the time to do so a lot of these decisions and pressures are outside the writers and directors hands so we've got to be careful when blaming them for these issues it can come across as a little bit harsh now this doesn't resolve the issues from the player's perspective they're still there but there's a wider context to understand when seeing how they came to be now the SciQuest structure ultimately comes from earlier less narrative driven games where the only real medium of engagement was through gameplay story was usually a relatively simple framing device that justified the existence of game mechanics and levels the games have evolved with many AAA games having deep psychological narratives in the faith of the Last of Us one Playstations game of the decade is a testament to how gaming is changing not that gameplay is necessarily becoming less important but the narrative is becoming a more integral part of how we engage with the game and mini games are conveying their narrative through gameplay so these pacing problems can still be reasonably critiqued I think these challenges of video game narratives are rooted in the difference of medium though in games players need to well play in the case of God of War they need to hack to slash to throw and solve puzzles and the easiest way to make this interesting and diverse is to force players to use the same mechanics against different enemy varieties or at least in the case of god of war in different landscapes and different atmospheric conditions with different visuals which often relies on changes in physical setting and God of War is no different the different realms that arise from these side quests obstacles demand unique enemy varieties and visuals as well as some atmospheric difficulties like Niffleheim where a sickening mists continually steps your health and hides underground enemies it's where interesting and diverse gameplay can clash with well-written and consistent narratives but I don't think that these ideas require the SciQuest structure the God of War eventually settled on it just makes it harder it's a more efficient narrative to simply extend one obstacle that the audience has prepared for an immersed in than to create a number of pace stalling smaller ones however it's also understandable that the developers simply wanted to go to some of these other worlds in that case it would have been more valuable for players and Kratos to know that they would be going to these different worlds before say finally ascending the mountain for example if they had asked Kratos to tell three other people in three different worlds that she had died this gives him more motivation to go to these words and each world doesn't feel like a pointless obstacle to the overall goal because they each have their own independent and meaningful goal and that's the difference meaningful it has an emotional dimension now my focus here on sitting and the relationship between world building and the emotional stakes of the story brings us to an issue that builds into this pacing problem half of the world's themselves that you travel to have no real bearing on the developing relationship of at Reyes and cray us which is after all the real story at the heart of it the wrist is just dressing he travelled Alfheim once Helheim twice and tears temple kind of counts as a world in game out of all these three worlds though only one has any real narrative weight to it as a sitting Helheim Helheim is the land of the dead the place where you would expect the dead to come back and haunt you in a story about a man who was once a vicious murderer and they do Zeus and Athena equally taunt Kratos with his past providing a unique setting that beautifully fits in with his character rockin the story where he's owning up to his past it was one of my favorite moments of the game there's a definitive sense that the physical journey through the world itself is being paired with the emotional journey of the character there's this wonderful moment where a memory of him attacking his father Zeus appears in front of a trace the game echos the violent ending of God of War three by putting us in the first-person shot for this a deliberate choice to take the autonomy from the player and feel the guilt that Kratos does as we cannot undo nor stop this violence in a story of that fatherhood having a trainer see the scene was particularly poignant likewise we also see boulders past here the sitting plays a crucial role in the development of the story compare this to Alfheim the realm of the dark and light elves where though kratos senate reyes interact and continue to learn to trust one another the city itself doesn't really factor into this the closest we get is Kratos remarking on how they should not intervene in the Dark Elf light of war because they do not know the full context but this is never expanded upon it's basically a single scene out of hours of gameplay that could have made a parallel between those seeking vengeance from past wrongs and Kratos story in the first three games where he hunted down the rest of the gods or they could have used this elfcon flirt to show how Kratos refusing to involve himself in the world isn't always the wisest decision that he can still do good without losing self-control there maintaining self-control is not the same thing as passivity which is what he actually has to teach at Reyes now there is a moment at the end where Kratos goes into the light of elf Amon realizes how a Traer sees him as an angry distant father who doesn't care this realization is meaningful and stunningly crafted as a moment of gameplay and it's followed by a confrontation in the story where he realizes that he was inside the light for hours or perhaps even days while at Reyes was left alone he is forced to confront how distant and emotionless he has been and how this hurts at Reyes for really the first time in the story I was going and this is great this is good storytelling where pressure pushes characters to confront their issues and change but this doesn't really have anything to do with the world of Alfheim they don't sit up how the light of Alfheim reveals truth prior nor is there any innate reason we can figure out as to why this happens here inside the light this could have been placed almost anywhere with just a little bit of exposition it did however naturally happen at the point in credits and otras as a relation to development do not mistake my silence for lack of grief I'm sorry I didn't realize No why would you do not know my ways and this is what the story is ultimately about them learning to understand love and trust one another as father and son but most of the time this develops as they talk regardless of where they are the result is that is kind of like having two people talking in front of a green screen a lot of the time the dialogue might be great and the character development stellar but it doesn't really matter what the setting is behind them and it's the same problem with tears temple the relationship between cradles and the trails continues to develop beautifully but the fact that they're in another god of War's secret chamber doesn't really factor into how this relationship develops though I do want to remark on him finding the spot and vars that depicts his past easily one of my favorite moments of the game that blends story with sitting [Music] this doesn't make the development of their relationship a week here of course that part of God of War storytelling remains phenomenal but elf I'm in tears temple makes us care less about what we're doing in these places because there's no emotional dimension to it to how we're experiencing this world building attached only tangentially related issue to this before that the light of L find the magic chisel and meh me as I don't really mean anything narrative ly to Kratos or to the player much like how we care less about the sitting and what we're doing there because they aren't tied to the emotions of the story these items have no emotional dimension either we wouldn't care if we lose them except because it would be an inconvenience the heart of Helheim that Kratos has to acquire is a slightly better example because it's used to revive at Reyes a character we care about deeply but the item itself doesn't really build into any character arc and it's very quickly discarded but there is one exception to this the blades of chaos which he retrieves before going to Helheim these feel meaningful to retrieve because they have so much narrative weight in history and it was great that the writers allowed us to acquire them in the way that they did they didn't just take them for granted and on this point I'm gonna lay it read em bow talk about why we thought this whole scene was done so incredibly well part for chaos there's one gigantic counterpoint to the game sidequest structure and it's during the game's darkest hour where kratos retrieves the blades of chaos as far as we're concerned this sequence is one narrative story animations sound design and gameplay are all simultaneously bringing their a-game for context at Reyes has fallen deathly ill for unclear reasons and Freya says it's cuz he's having a really bad identity crisis on account of Kratos not telling him he's a god and the only way to fix him is with a MacGuffin from the icy depths of Helheim now Kratos has fought hill walkers before and his icy Leviathan axe doesn't really work on him so up until now Kratos has had to fight them barehanded which isn't gonna work so hot in Helheim so we need some firepower specifically his iconic weapon from the first games the flaming chain bound blades of chaos this is real hard for Kratos because these weapons embody all of his past violence against God's monsters humans and former family members alike and though they're no longer magically bound to him the scars are still visible so Kratos has a clear choice take up the blades and confront his awful past or let his son and his one chance at being good to somebody from once in his life die with a scowl mean enough to make a lesser man snap kratos sets off for home on his way he's haunted by visions of Athena and when he digs up the carefully hidden blades and begins to put them on she starts taunting him since she's in his head the clear implication is that her accusations are what Kratos thinks of himself now it goes without saying but Chris judges acting for Kratos in this scene is phenomenal there's just so much raw pathos in the way that he uncovers approaches and prepares himself to handle these blades also this is the only time in the game where we hear that ominous men's choir that was so ubiquitous to the older game soundtracks and I love it anyway Kratos his response to Athena that he is a monster but he's no longer her monster is the change that redirects the entire final act of the story by taking back the blades acknowledging his faults and taking his own advice of do not be sorry be better he is only now able to move forward both physically by going to Helheim and emotionally by accepting himself in saving his son this is stellar game design on multiple fronts not only does it allow the narrative to progress but it's a cathartic sequence that develops and deepens the story and it opens up an entirely new branch of gameplay with the blades of chaos all of the other road blocks in the game only satisfy that first criterion but this sequence is so special because it fulfils all three but there's one last element of the sequence after Kratos psychologically and symbolically breaks free of Athena's hold the game Hux a sea of Hell Walker's of the player to show them the ropes with a new weapon here the player learns how the blades work and how he'll Walker's are specifically weak to them but for some players especially anyone who remembers the blades from the old games the feeling of just mowing through a field of baddies is eerily good it's the gameplay conveying a ghostly remnant of Kratos old legendary bloodlust so if most of this game faeries Kratos from one MacGuffin to the other this super cathartic and pathos filled sequence represents the total antithesis of that design where everything works and sync and even a feeling as nuanced as remorseful rage can be conveyed through gameplay hats off to Sony Santa Monica for this masterpiece of a scene rate and blue are absolutely right here and the blades of cows clearly hold a big symbolic role and credits a story but I want to ask the question what is that story exactly part four contrary to what people believe I don't actually think that God of War was written as a Redemption arc of a Kratos at least not in the way that people think Kratos isn't particularly concerned with a redemption for his past crimes as he puts it I killed many who were deserving Zuko is perhaps the best Redemption arc ever written it's believable meaningful and all-encompassing this is because Zuko's redemption isn't a shallow sacrifice at the end of a story but a gradual journey where he organically grows an understanding of himself and the world he not only realizes why how he heard people was wrong but a significant part of the story is dedicated to Zuko working to remedy his past wrongs and minting relationships with the people he hurt all the while finding new purpose and meaning for himself if we were to divide good riddim snarks into these two steps Kratos is really only on this first step for his murder hobo past he understands and deeply regrets what he did but he believes himself beyond redemption but I am your monster no longer instead he tries to hide the wrongs of his past from those around him including betrayus his son as a visual manifestation of this he hides the chained scars around his arms and cloth now the story clearly shows that this was the wrong thing to do and a large part of the tension the story is derived from whether Kratos will finally be honest with at Reyes about his past it's rooted in how Kratos was always a distant father - at Reyes to help hide the truth from him to the point of neglecting his son there are numerous moments of conflict between Kratos and Mamiya or Kratos and Freya where he prevents them from saying what they know about him at Reyes even gets physically sick to the point of near death because the secret of his godhood is kept from him by suppressing the past and truth Kratos doesn't just harm himself but he harms those loved ones around him this is a common technique used in soft magic systems like this literal izing a metaphorical idea and a magical effect if anything the redemption arcing god of war is actually about his mistreatment and the glade of at Reyes hiding the truth not trusting him and leaving his son to feel like he doesn't care it's this that Kratos a comes to understand was wrong and B works to remedy major story beats are him revealing the truth of his godhood and his past he learns to trust his son and he actively works to show a fiction that he cares for him in a way that he didn't before to no longer be that distant father instead of redemption for his past crimes Kratos is focused on stopping the cycle of violence with him he says so explicitly at the end when killing Balder must be better he desperately wants a trace to not follow the path he did as a young God who I was it's not who we nee shows his chained scars on yatin Heim this isn't because he's redeemed from the scars of his past but because he's finally revealing who he fully is - at Reyes I have nothing more to hide this was a beautifully crafted arc one that's so much more subtle than it usually and it's powerful and brilliantly written this video has been so much fun to create I don't usually get to make longer form content especially not on this kind of topic and it really wouldn't be possible without my patrons as always thank you so much you guys are amazing you make my job so much easier and possible so thank you links down below if you want to join that community what do we have to say about god of war it's a fantastic game it's one we recommend playing and we will certainly be getting the sequels when they come out it's a simple story that does old tropes well a kind of Testament that not only being new isn't necessarily better but their creativity and uniqueness can still be found in these old stories I don't think that anyone would or should call God of War derivative it's clear how much thought planning beauty and care went into its production with a mind to be ambitious about quality and not scope I hope we can see more from these creators and that the future sequels aren't just a case of bigger and more but the NYX chapter of a deeper story big thanks to Rena blue for chilling with me on this video their channel is linked down below they do amazing content go check them out in the meantime stay nerdy and I'll see you in the future [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 399,740

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, god of war, review, gameplay, critique, narrative, storytelling, writing, worldbuilding, mythology, overly sacrastic productions, osp, hfm, kratos, atreus, sindri, baldur, odin, thor, norse, midgard, jotunheim, myth, game, gaming, gamer, analysed, explore

Id: qHcQIkKWcyw

Length: 47min 3sec (2823 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020