Top Ten Video Game Berserkers (Patreon Reward)

hello my beloved followers the green scorpion here and welcome to patreon month the month where I dedicate myself to give back to my generous patrons I love running this channel and even when life pulls me away from videos for a while I'm always able to work my way back to doing what I love to do thanks to your undying support ladies gentlemen I really can't thank you enough and in return I'm happy to tackle your requested topics not just out of obligation but because it takes me to some pretty interesting places my least favorite Fire Emblem characters my top 10 voice actors and top 10 Dragons were all patron requests and I'm very proud of those lists so to kick off 2018 we'll be running some requested 5 minute reflections plus 5 all-new countdowns starting with this submission from Erich Birju vault buzzer kurz angry muscly usually carrying an axe or a big sword but what exactly is a berserker well for the sake of this list I took to the internet and learned a decent bit about their history turns out berserkers were actually a real thing the term Berserker actually comes from Norse mythology and Germanic folklore an elite class of warrior they charge into battle without armor say for the pelts of bears wolves and boars legends state that the best-trained could enter a state of hammerer or transformation where they would fight with rapid fury and bestial strength in fantasy games a berserker class is often defined with high attack power and loads of fences but that's not to say that their glass cannons necessarily many games will give them high HP so unlike your average tank they take a lot of damage but also have the Constitution to fight on anyway plus it gives a heal or something to do they favor ridiculous destructive potential in place of any finesse or strategy but for this list I want to focus on the idea of fury I'm looking for those characters that act on or even weaponize anger itself to kill anyone in their path whether it's with axes guns claws or their bare hands some will be based on personality others on physical prowess but all of them in unadulterated rage these qualities can be difficult to rank so you may disagree with the order of some of these choices feel free to discuss your favorites in the comments but leave the rage for the battlefield I am the green scorpion and this is the top 10 video game berserkers I cannot believe how close this list was to rank I had to kill off a ton of worthy candidates to narrow down my top ten but one of them just refused to die Tryndamere is a great example to start with in some ways he's your average human barbarian running around shirtless and swinging a two-handed sword with one hand and zero finesse tryndamere hails from the Freljord a northern region of runeterra that spent centuries divided into several factions to the point where it wasn't even recognized as its own governing body Tryndamere liked anarchy as much the next brigand but without any rulers to represent the Freljord city-states like Damacio were encroaching on their land skirmishes were taking their death tolls and looming threats like the ice which drove Tryndamere into action not only did he assert himself to lead most of the region's barbarian camps he grew close with Ashe the frost Archer and eventually the two got married and are now acknowledged by most of the world as king and queen of the north he claims it was just a political marriage but Adam now I still ship it can you ship a guy with his own wife politics or in his strong suit anyway he's a fighter unlike the majority of champions Tryndamere has no mana to use his abilities nor does he use energy like Lisa nor the ninjas instead he builds fury with every swing and with his bloodlust ability not only can he deal more damage the more it's been dealt to him he can also expend his fury to heal himself that's not exactly tanky but with bloodlust and some good lifestyle items his offense becomes his best defense and he really excels a ganking he can lower someone's attack power just by yelling at them and if they have the gall to run away while he does it they'll be slowed plus he has a spin to win that boosts him ahead nothing too fancy you might be thinking that Olaf should have taken this spot instead he is actually called the Berserker and leans more into the Norse inspiration right down to his ability called Ragnarok but the Barbarian can clinch this with his ultimate undying rage it's exactly what it sounds like the dude gets so angry he cannot die all attacks and spells bouncing off of him as if they were nothing it happens in every teamfight you think this guy is dead and he's just not he's your benchmark run-of-the-mill Berserker no bells and whistles unless you want the demon blades I mean it's not canon but right liked it enough to use it in their short video so I guess in a way this is the real Tryndamere to seems like a good number 10 to me hey seeker if I hit a guy high while you go low you think we could get him to flip yes ass over teakettle you know I suppose that could be done I've always wanted to get a guy to flip coming in at number nine we have the iron bull from Dragon Age Inquisition first important note it's the iron bull three words second note he's the best companion ever I will fight you over this with his two foot horns and rippling Stoney physique the iron bull is a proud representative of the Qunari like the rest of his hearty race he has a strong devotion to his religious order the Qun but unlike his kinsmen he loves to indulge in drinks and sex after a good day of manslaughter to the point where he was deemed too unstable to serve as a Qunari soldier instead he was assigned to the Ben Hasrat he's a spy something he'll happily tell you the first time you meet him the Qunari wants him to keep an eye on you and your Inquisition and he also runs his own mercenary band but he'll still make the time to patch some skulls alongside you while his stats may allow you to go for a tankier build he doesn't have a lot of armor options I'm not sure how he put it on anyway the way to go with him is full-on two-handed warrior with skills like mighty blow whirlwind and clear a path the iron bull charges through enemy lines but you could always do that with Cassandra if you prefer the iron bulls unique skill tree however is the rever path which gives him more damage output for damage taken strong moves that sacrifices HP and ways to heal when he gets a kill culminating in the dragon rage move which he learned from studying his favorite kind of prey but that's not why I love him beneath this tough exterior is a surprisingly wise and caring man his first rage only happened because he wanted revenge on a merchant who poisoned a school full of kids after which he lost several of his best friends while hunting the guy down he was so distraught he lost it and took out an entire talvez shot stronghold he fights for what's right but he also has a profound appreciation for the fine art of dismemberment tearing bad guys from limb chopping them in half feeling the bones break as he crushes their skulls it's enough to make a man quiver he's a beast on the battlefield but he knows to turn it off when the fight is done he's a good friend a laid-back conversationalist and if you court him an incredibly respectful boyfriend just get him some big skull for his birthday he loves them oh you guys you know got me he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet who just happens to really love killing people got a wonder about anyone who fights as much as we do and doesn't have some fun with it we have fought living men with loves and families and all that they might have been is gone yeah but they were [ __ ] there are plenty of ways to go berserk without a huge sword battle axe but is it possible to achieve that effect in a first-person shooter yeah it is just take a look at this game it's called rage I was also thinking a lot about brick from Borderlands who can enter a rage state where he throws his guns down and starts punching Scaggs to death or his follow up Salvador the gun Zurcher while they both have an activatable rage that you can use on occasion I want a character who exudes anger which can be hard to do in a first-person shooter developers usually make these games the way they are to let the players step into the role of a character but how do you characterize them without even being able to see them funny enough one of the earliest first-person shooter games ever made had a simple solution to this just put the guy's face down here this is the nameless marine or as the community has come to know him doom guy we don't know much about him but take a look at those shifty eyes he's having a good time if you think you're playing Doom you're pronouncing it wrong check the box it's not doom it's due sent to infiltrate a portal into hell established on Mars doom guy decided short sleeves were the way to go yeah he'll put on some power armor occasionally but his forearms are always naked to the elements of Mars hell and they'll be fine he wants those cyber demons to see just how strong and tough he is while he pulls the trigger with the most manly Arsenal ever assembled the super shotgun the chainsaw and of course the big [ __ ] gun 9000 there's a kind of raw intensity to doom that later shooters have ironed out with their hoity-toity strategy here the monsters are rushing you make them dead doom 2 keeps the same spirit alive while Doom 3 it goes for a more survival horror angle like System Shock darkness audio logs the game's not as bad as people say but it definitely lost sight of how the original doom felt that's why in 2016 we got the revival of doom called doom which spits in the face of all modern shooter conventions there's no cover system just kill them before they kill you Master Chief can only hold two guns I'll just carry them all reloading no time for that the game rewards this kind of crazed gameplay with the glory kills that also restore doom guy's health meaning you want to get up close and personal because there's no automatic health regen you won't catch doom guy camping with a sniper rifle well except in the crappy multiplayer mode but that's beside the point the best part doom 2016 has an actual plot but doom guide doesn't give up he was sealed in a sarcophagus by the demons for being too much of a threat to hell when have you ever heard of demons having to seal something away that's usually something that good guys do but they're scared pantsless of this guy well he just woke up on an operating table and he's pissed that's enough plot for doom guy and enough plot for me man testosterones one hell of a drug you know when you really look at it skullgirls is a pretty disturbing game there's this pattern to most of the characters innocent girl gets either possessed or somehow wrong by another character get some weird power set from it and sets out on a journey to set themselves right I mentioned before House Quigley had her mouth sewn shut but hopefully it doesn't get much worse than that Oh oh dear pain wheel gives us our first example of a certain berserker subcategory the beastman icelandic literary accounts often describe the berserker as fighting more like animals and human beings following this line several beast Lords ignore their human civility and revert to pure instinct you can see this in characters that were raised in the wild or werewolves but it's best to think of pain wheel as a female Wolverine well that's Laura Kinney she's already a thing but now that I think about it pain wheels probably more like Laura Kinney than the original Wolverine because at least Logan volunteered for the Weapon X program Carroll was a normal girl living a normal life when she was abducted by anti schoolgirl labs they infused her with tainted skull girl blood so that she could track down and defeat Bloody Mary and they also mentally broke her so that she could be controlled by the villainous brain drain messed up her face and outfitted her with some Wolverine claws but not just in her hands she's also got spikes on her elbows her knees her shoulders really anywhere she's willing to pull them from there's no limit because she barely cares about pain anymore in battle she twists and contorts her body into all kinds of agonizing shapes she can't possibly hurt any more than she already does she gets super armor on many of her attacks because she just doesn't care anymore and as I'm sure you've noticed Valentine added a big pinwheel blade fused right onto her spinal cord the matter she gets the faster the wheel spins she could even fly with it and she can activate her hatred installed to get faster and stronger running on pure fury it was part of aSG's designed for her to be angry but they might have gone a little overboard to the point where Carol is able to override all of brain drains mental conditioning and cut Valentine to ribbons it might also have the with her getting closer to the skull heart but to me though the interesting part is the source of this fury the sheer potential for boundless unending anger where does this come from I mean I know why she's mad but who knew it was possible to even be that angry it's not like being bitten by a werewolf or having lupine genes mixed into your own this ability to outrage to hate it was already there to begin with there's just no love cushioning it anymore they took this sweet girl who loved dogs and beaches and gardening and ripped everything away piece by piece leaving only the anguish that she is now and judging by her ending she won't be returning to a normal life anytime soon because how do you go home after turning into this being a monster is all she knows how to do anymore I think the rule I establish with spyro worked really well in top 10 dragons basically if I have a character that meets the criteria but is just so different from the other choices that I can't decide where to put them they get an honorary spot in the middle which is the case I get here with someone who isn't a physical juggernaut but can only be described as berserk this is Trevor Phillips Trevor is one of three playable characters in Grand Theft Auto 5 a Canadian born criminal who hit rock bottom and just kept going down one way to look at our protagonists is as foils Michael is at a crossroads to continue his life of crime or try for an honest life Franklin is relatively new to big crime like Michael once was and Trevor is a cautionary tale of what Michael could become or for you psych majors out there Michael and Franklin represent the ego and super-ego while trevor is all in he wants something he takes it he gets mad he breaks it he's a sex addict a drug addict he's prone to violent outbursts and he just doesn't know what to do about it take our first introduction to him he's selling meth to a guy named Johnny and decides he really likes Johnny's wife and so he takes his wife Johnny calls him out on it the two yell at each other but finally Trevor calms him down they hug it out before Trevor throws him down to the ground mid Huggins Thompson to death the problem is johnny is a leer of a dangerous gang who will want revenge so I guess Trevor will just have to go and kill them all - this is how he lives his dumpster fireable life taking drastic steps to get the things he wants and killing people to fix the problem he made by being so drastic he's not a combat berserker the same way these other characters are but Trevor is a realistic figure who lives in a Berserker State then again I guess there is a case to be made that he is a combat Berserker I mean of course you can hurt people in this game it's GTA but unique to Trevor is his red mist ability which allows him to take less damage and deal more damage for a time yeah you can cast rage in GTA this is especially helpful for Trevor's exclusive side missions the rampages in these segments trevor has to simply kill as many people as he can in a given time limit but the scary part is that these missions usually start just because someone rubs Trevor the wrong way it can be as petty as pointing out Trevor's Canadian accent or insulting Trevor's mother guys don't ever talk to Trevor about his mom that's a road you do not want to go down here's some other best stubs as a kid he got kicked off of his hockey team so he violated his coach with a hockey stick he probably killed his brother and his father eventually gave up on him and abandoned him in a shopping mall so he proceeded to burn the whole mall down he wanted a lackey so he met up with a guy named Wade killed his friends in a quarry and told Wade that they ditched him so that he'd stick around and that's all just background he also obsesses over an athlete woman and bike races to impress her he tortures a guy to get information and drives him to the airport just to thank him for all the fun he just had he was deemed psychologically unfit to remain in the Air Force but he steals planes for recreation and the most positive relationship we ever see from him is with a mob leaders wife that he kidnapped Grand Theft Auto is meant to simulate bringing Anarchy to a society that thinks everything is an order as a man that society just couldn't make room for Trevor is out to prove that the world is as mad mad mad as he is you listen to him long enough you'll start to feel it too Devon's car ooh hypocrisy Franklin civilizations greatest virtue oh Jesus your therapist has a lot to answer for I know I still hate myself okay we still know the words for it now yeah but I hate you and I know the words for it so does that mean I don't have to go to therapy look man you two [ __ ] terrify me or that middle-aged I'm good you're right to be afraid Franklin yeah be very afraid Franklin well that was weird now I feel off-kilter I need to get back to the roots of this trope and get a more basic example classic axe wielding types when I think of berserkers the most prototypical place I can think of is good old Dungeons & Dragons I got it too D&D when it was in 3.5 which featured the barbarian class it's everything you'd want it to be it has higher hit die than the other classes gets very few skills as a trade-off and has the trademark rage ability D&D has had a monumental impact on the video game landscape so I figured I could find this kind of plate straight Barbarian somewhere Dragon Age has oghren and of course the iron bull Baldur's Gate has Minsk and darkest dungeon has the Hellion but when it comes to simple portrayals of tabletop barbarians my favorite rendition has to be the barbarian class from diablo blizzard must have liked this class too because they featured it in all three generations of the game at least they tried to Diablo 1 only had three classes with the Hellfire expansion adding a fourth but there's an unfinished barbarian class hidden in the game's code that would have been a Mormon mak'st warrior barbarians got their first real appearance in Diablo 2 and were so popular that they came back for Diablo 3 which is the one I played the most of not my favorite class in the game but easily my favorite barbarian class from any game you might recognize this guy from my top 10 axe wielders and I stand by that though he's good with pretty much any weapon he can swing around and their lore is much richer than a bunch of blubbery brigands might lead you to believe like in real world history where the term barbarian was only created by groups like the Holy Roman Empire to denounce societies that didn't speak their language the so called barbarians of Mount arete were originally known as the children of Volk Athos in ancient times they were appointed to protect the all-powerful world stone and generations of Mountain dwelling hardened them into mighty sentinels their tests started when the demon Baal came for the world stone and while the children's defense was formidable the angel Tyrell decided that the risk of balls victory was too great and shattered both the world stone and Mount arete leaving the barbarians forlorn without a home or purpose they scattered some becoming criminals and cutthroats but one barbarian the Barbarian found his way to the plot of Diablo 3 and decided to strive for a new victory that could reunite his people and pride with a variety of melee skills stuns knockbacks and multi target Cleaves the Barbarian is your go-to frontline fighter and like tryndamere he works on a fury mechanic building it as he takes and deals damage and losing it any other time the strategy for playing barbarian is to get angry and stay angry you should never not be surrounded by demons the more you fight the more you can fight so yeah the rage is there what sets this demon demolitionist apart though is that flavor look at some of the art here the gray hair shows the Barbarian is an elder but his muscles show that he's endure through constant physical conditioning and sure it may seem like he's just being angry but there's a mental and even spiritual component to this the Diablo Barbarian is almost monk like much like how Norse berserkers observed a religion that informed their battle prowess the children of Baal kaavo's treated managing this anger as a discipline and that gets back to my favorite aspect about Dungeons and Dragons barbarians aren't supposed to be stupid you probably dumped intelligence when you made one but they also encouraged high wisdom and come with impressive will saves they might not be good at basic math but their minds are strong enough to endure magical illusions and resist fear or corruption and I feel like Diablo gets that I know it's a little weird putting a whole class on this lists but the Canon usually creates a name for most of these characters so they can put them in heroes of the storm let's check his name is Sonya hi Sonya huh now that I think about it in Diablo you could make just about any class as male or female so okay yeah this spot goes to Sonya as a representative of the Diablo trilogy earth-quaking the ground rage grappling into foes shaking off stuns and wielding a giant claymore in each hand I'm okay with this thanks Sonya you do your class proud I play a lot of fighting games and when I do I prefer the rushdown characters berserkers work really well for that like saberwolf and killer instinct or as I mentioned before pain wheel but street fighters never really done that has it the closest we got to a saberwolf was I don't know Blanca for the first four generations of Street Fighter someone like that would have been against the game's design philosophy Street Fighter is a slower more methodical game even when it went turbo this game was always pretty footsie with an emphasis on perfect positioning to get those chained hits even the story denounces giving in to anger take Ryu when has struggled to maintain the satsui no hado for example meanwhile Akuma who embraced that malevolent energy decided this game was too passive and went to go be in Tekken instead but before his return as an awesome DLC character we got a new challenger in Street Fighter 5 who broke the mold with animalistic malice Nick Ali I hope my little introduction there explains just how out of place in the callee felt when he was first introduced and his backstory what little we know of it is just jarring apparently he's some type of ancient force that's been dormant beneath the loam of South America his design is based heavily on Huitzilopochtli the Aztec God of War and the Sun and human sacrifice he did a lot 'no cali exists only to fight the greatest warriors he can find devour their essence and tribute their souls supposedly to his Aztec god at least I think that's what's happening here it's honestly a little unclear he's not exactly talkative when he wins he holds up his victim by the head as if offering them to the heavens so that's war Sun and human sacrifice right there everything checks out I don't get why he travels by melting into clay but alright I guess he's also a geomancer you'd think he'd be a big deal in the much-touted story mode of SF 5 but he really only shows up from time to time because Bisons plot woke him up early they do use him to foil that Ryu inner turmoil that I was talking about earlier so that's cool at least and it's a nice change of pace seen such unrestricted savagery in this series the SF 5 roster may have started a little light in quantity but you can tell a lot of thought and specificity went into the move set and here it's all about being brutal he doesn't punch people he swatted them like a starving Puma he throws people just close enough to - and hit them again Roda the Sun lets him alter his jump art so that he's harder to anti hair he gets projectile armor from the disks guidance even the little things like how his standing medium kick moves him just a little bit forward so that you can keep the pressure on there's a lot of subtle refinement to this never mind he just went super saiyan of course they had to put a rage mode in street fighter way to go capcom points to you yeh this is going to disappoint a lot of you there's no fire in Lim character on this list I know I can't believe it either I had so many great choices that the Berserker units got pushed out in case you're wondering my choice would have been Legion even though I never played mystery of the emblem he's available in Fire Emblem Heroes and I love him there so it's good enough to get me researching the number three spot is a similar case I know a lot of people were expecting velvet crow from tales of Brazoria on this list I mean it's tales of Brazoria the root word being berserk she's the titular Berserker and an excellent choice but another tales contenders stole my heart I've never played Tales of Destiny but I've seen this cameo and Vesperia so oh my god here he is barbados go asia barbados hits on all the obvious notes as soon as you see him he's big his axe is big and his penchant for anger is enormous but he's also an interesting comment on the berserker trope both in how he embodies and betrays the fundamentals of norse heroism barbados just wants to be remembered he wants to go down in history as the guy who fought bravely and saved the day that was a whole berserker ideal the ones who died in battle go to Valhalla and are celebrated for their bravery but while in battle he fights with the heart of a lion and the brain of a tyrannosaurus his actions outside of battle are underhanded and downright cowardly hundreds of you before Tales of Destiny to Barbados fought in the æther Wars for the sole purpose of Fame but he saw his country was losing and that's not good for his track record so he flipped sides and betrayed his homeland and he really did try to die a Warrior's death he was dueling with a lieutenant when Major General Minard interrupted the battle and Barbados was so pissed he rampaged after Minard and was tricked into running off a cliff if there were a Valhalla for Darwin Award winners he'd be set but instead he was struck from history for being a Benedict Arnold except people remember who Benedict Arnold was Barbados was forgotten jump ahead in time and a nefarious priestess named el rein is trying to alter history and resurrect Barbados to be her personal muscle offering him a second chance at heroism which would be great if Barbados had any concept of what heroism was it's almost tragic the guy finds the one-on-one battle to be sacred but will resort to the most underhanded tactics outside of a duel from kidnapping of targets kids to killing an unarmed enemy he also develops a deep grudge with the game's protagonist Kyle after his first defeat he's so petty this actually sidelines from el rains original mission and when el rain tries to mind-control him into doing what he was hired to do he uses his barbarian rage at great personal pain and actually resists it then tries to prove his superiority over Kyle by going back in time and killing his parents before he can be conceived yeah that'll make you the bigger man Barbados killing a kid so young he literally doesn't exist yet went on his last legs he plunges into the eye of a timoni just so he can die before anyone can kill him it's just he really really wants to be a Norse berserkers but he just doesn't know how that's more than enough background but it's far from the reason why he's here let's talk about boss fights in the original Tales of Destiny to Barbados is absurdly strong but also has some magic spells as most tales characters do all later appearances that the character would be changed to make him a purely physical threat though he can still magically pull rocks out of the ground and smash them like press a ax and again we see his famous hypocrisy even in this version girl Beto's uses magic he gets pissed if any of your characters do and counters every spell your party casts with another spell they brought him back in the ps2 remake of Tales of Destiny 1 as the boss of the postgame dungeon and he's traded his spells for the number zero greatest mystic art no items ever that's seriously what it's called because that's what he elves unlike other mystics Barbados doesn't have to be in over-limit and there's no cooldown he just uses it any time you use an item you even think about popping that Apple gel and he'll stop you into human gel now you could try to hide from him while your healer get you back up but he has a plan for that too if you haven't attacked him in a few seconds he'll start channeling his anger through his ace into the ground to activate world destroyer a basically unavoidable total party knockout oh and do not try to face him on simple mode where he gains the cheap eliminate move that instantly kills all filthy casuals it's one thing for cuphead to lock you out of the final boss for playing on easy difficulty but Barbados lets you fight him and insta kills you just to rub it in your face and then again you don't have to wait until the postgame to see Barbados at any point in the game just switch all of your characters to Auto for some easy note input leveling and eventually Barbados will show up and lecture you for taking the easy way out oh did I say lecture I meant to say Cal he shows up and kills your party for cheap Auto leveling is this guy for real this is coming from the guy who uses cheap tactics out of combat but once the battle starts he's fighting you head-on and he insists you do the same nor snores snores I've been talking a lot about Norse today but let's not pretend that Norway has a monopoly on Berserker legend I mean we already talked about about the Aztecs and keep in mind that one of our most influential stories of a man going into a violent rage comes from Greek mythology the story of Hercules there aren't Pericles if you want to be that guy in myth Zeus is wife Hera hated Hercules for being Zeus is illegitimate son and struck him with a blood-curdling rage that drove him to slay his wife and children against his own will this forced a heartbroken Hercules to perform the 12 labors to cleanse his soul which never really made a lot of sense to me since it's not like it was his fault why should he have to redeem himself well anyway it turns out that the greatest rage story of Western culture happened a few times in Greece most notably to a certain cue ball named Kratos even before the big inciting incident with his family Kratos was pretty unhinged his childhood involved a difficult relationship with his mom and his brother and he made his living as a soldier of Sparta one of the most bloodthirsty cities in human history but specifically Kratos was a champion of Ares the Greek god of war and during a battle for Greece against the barbarian king Kratos was able to invoke his God and was gifted with the sacred blades of chaos big swords on chains that come right out of his veins I think it's safe to say Kratos literally bleeds violence but Kratos got a little too mellow after he settled down with a wife and daughter so Ares put a berserker hex on him to make him kill the family holding him back from more military greatness now unlike Hercules who spends the rest of his life trying to honor the gods as a hero and make up for his involuntary manslaughter Kratos sets out for the most coveted of classical compensation revenge he slays a bunch of Greek beasts takes down Ares with one of the greatest zingers and video games I was trying to make you succeed and becomes the new god of war that's enough marital Rae he's already obscenely strong and comfortable with weapons and bare hands and he may look more like Quan Chi than an actual Spartan but to quote the God of War director David Jeff Kratos may not totally feel at home in ancient Greece from a costume standpoint I think he achieves the greater purpose which is to give players a character who really does just let them go nuts and unleash the nasty fantasies that they have in their head but the fun doesn't stop with Ares when Zeus betrays Kratos fearing his power has gotten too strong Kratos turns his sights on the entire pantheon of Olympus never mind that these guys governed the elements and killing them might have serious repercussions on the planet if it's not vengeance Kratos isn't interested and it is brutal main combat in God of War consists of wildly swinging the chain blades but finishers shift into extended QuickTime events that show just how sadistic Kratos can be sure doom guy has some gruesome fatalities but Kratos makes it personal cutting off Hermes legs so he can squirm before he dies gouging out Poseidon's eyes smashing feces his skull with the door he was trying to guard and Prometheus I mean he was already hanging he probably would have asphyxiated but Kratos chooses to shoot him down so he can burn in his own fire holy Hera man true Kratos isn't a lot of pain but that hardly justifies just how far he's gone to satiate his bloodlust on multiple occasions when given the choice between saving the world and punching Zeus he chooses to punch Zeus and he comes really close to ending all life as we know it Ares did him wrong but while Kratos first murderous blitzkrieg was the result of divine intervention he uses that to justify all of his savagery all of the gods and pretty much everyone in Greece dead except for Aphrodite because well and hey it looks like in the new series he'll be trying to finally leave all of that in the past and do right by his new son with no more Olympians to regicide this story will be concerning Norse mythology well maybe in a year we can compare Kratos to the original berserkers ragnaroks coming early this year maybe we'll get to see Kratos trade blows with Thor or Odin or Balder or whatever but if he wants to see rage at its purest form he'll have to head to the sci-fi Buddhist Hindu inspired world of Gaia and contend with a Sierra's wrath you mad bro because this was never even a contest Asherah had this list locked down from day one there are some strong parallels between Asura and Kratos both are demigods both love them so QuickTime events and both are motivated by revenge in asterisk case he used to be a member of the eighth guardian generals a group of Gaia's deities who protected the world but when he declined involvement in another demigods plan for greater power he was framed for murder his wife was killed his daughter Mitra was kidnapped and he was thrown into Naraka which is basically Buddhist hell as you're a reincarnated twelve thousand years later and though his memories take some time to recalibrate at first the millennia has done nothing to erode his grudge one interesting difference is that Asura has the chance to rescue his daughter while Kratos already has nothing to lose but as Asherah says being angry is just about the only thing he's good at he's a seasoned warrior but parenting Mitra is always difficult for him since all he really knows to do is punch things that make her cry this human element of the character is actually addressed but the other main difference is how Rage works in this universe Kratos is in line with trevor or doom guy where chronic anger drives them but has no tangible power outside of characterization with characters like Sasha and Tryndamere and indeed Astra rage is an actual resource but not just as a game mechanic but as a source of actual power each of the deities has a mantra affinity from which they draw power from such as melancholy lust or vanity Asura's affinity is wrath and it turns out that this is the best one because while other gods supplement their power reserves with the praise of the people or just harvest thousands of human souls and convert them into mantra Astra systematically destroys them single-handedly wait did I say single-handedly because he has a variable amount of arms but I'll get to that as Yura detests the use of innocent humans and doesn't even like being worshipped himself even a thank-you from the people he just saved makes him uneasy so when he parries a blow from wise who's the size of Jupiter mind you that's all Berserker energy most of the deities have a transformed state they activate when they have to do battle but not only is Astra in his battle form about 90% of the time he keeps reaching new more ridiculous forms just because he has so many feelings as Vajra Astrea he is ultra strong and can throw energy punches like an ak-47 get him a little matter and he'll form for more energy constructed arms for even more mad punching then there's berserk Asura notably the only one where he actually has zero control over his choices like The Incredible Hulk his power proportional to his rage is theoretically infinite though it does do damage to his body over time his berserk mode eventually Peters out into rack Asura where he's now hurting himself more with each punch than his enemies but that's never an excuse for him to stop other times the backfire will cause him to lose arms but he'll still Monty Python his way to victory he reaches his ultimate form when me thourough grants him the moral support to become mantra Asura but then that isn't even his true form because he gets the mantra reactor installed into his body that lets him actually regulate the power without spontaneously combusting and then he still has another form called Asura the destructor which you think would be the ultimate annihilation and yeah he can now punch planets and stars into smithereens but he first uses it to block a blast and protect the planet he attacked but he also protect this is why I like Astro more than Kratos besides the obvious change in scale I mean this is basically animated game Kratos and Asura stories even have similar endings the hero brings an end to the gods and leaves hope for mankind to govern themselves but where in God of War Kratos kind of decides at the last minute to help humanity now that he's screwed up a planet but Ashera always disliked the superiority of the gods and always wanted what was best for the people where Kratos sacrifices Pandora who's become a surrogate daughter to him just so he can finish Zeus Asura kills chakravartin at the expen of himself in spite of his daughter's protests to save her and everyone else Kratos was willing to go through everyone and anyone to kill Ares and Zeus and to hell with the consequences but Asura targets his anger more carefully specifically ensuring that no innocents are ever caught in the crossfire and hating the deities all the more for not having that same level of compassion think back to those Nordic berserkers they used anger to fight yes but they had something to fight for their country their kin their people there's the stigma that anger is inherently a bad thing but while it's not necessarily as fun being angry as being happy anger is a very important emotion it's capable of incredible good when properly channeled and it helps us recognize injustice or Spurs us to positive action look at these berserkers and why they fight Tryndamere took up fighting to protect the Freljord the iron bull fights for the Qunari Sonya fights for the bulk Athos mnek Ally for his God even Trevor though not taking steps to really fix anything is the way he is because of the cruelty of modern society and how at least people like him behind and similarly Kratos because of the gods and how they play with the lives of mortals this can go horribly wrong if the fighters goals are more selfish as with Barbados and I'm not saying that these characters need to be good to be compelling of course Kratos hurts people it's a Greek tragedy but despite Astra's only talent being his bottomless wrath not once does he use it as an excuse to hurt the undeserving or to take for his own gain there's no use for God that only take says Astra and though he won't accept thanks for it Asura ultimately uses his destructive powers to save people he found what he was truly angry about and he used his anger to fix it I am the green scorpion and Thank You Erik bruvold for such an engaging topic and for reminding me of a very important lesson when faced with the evils of this world happiness can give you the foundation to bear it sadness gives you the wisdom to acknowledge it and anger gives you the strength to oppose it so rise my friends and me you

Channel: The Green Scorpion

Views: 119,685

Rating: 4.9175706 out of 5

Keywords: greenscorpion64, The Green Scorpion, Top Ten, Video Game, Berserkers, gameplay, commentary, review, countdown, angry, Patron, Patreon Month, Eric Bergevald

Id: HAmX0YuLq1A

Length: 45min 36sec (2736 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2018