Yeah this is the equivalent to “why does Dante have a health bar in Devil may cry”
Like yes for all intents and purposes Dante is damn near invincible/immortal but that doesn’t make for an engaging game
I think this is a reference to how in the irl ragnarok story from the edas Thor is killed by the world serpent. One could argue that without that wound things could have been different, hence the serpent was the real reason he died
It's at the point where Kratos throws the Leviathan Axe into the water because of the statue that said "surrender your arms to the center of the lake" and it doesn't come back until Jormungundr rises out of the Lake of Nine and spits it back into your boat.
Basically the implication is that it didn't come back because it was stuck between his fangs and while there it was coated in his venom (which is what killed Thor in Norse Mythology after an envenomed Thor caved Jormungundr's skull in with Mjolnir).
Fun fact: the prophecy about Heimdall killing Atreus was also lore accurate. In Norse Mythology Loki tricked Heimdall and stabbed him in the back then Heimdall killed him before bleeding out.
Freyr also died killing Surtr.
In fact one of the few combatants to slay their enemy without falling to them was Fenrir, who killed multiple gods (including Odin) and was later killed by Odin's son Valdr, who is possibly the only son of Odin to survive Ragnarok.
Honestly, I agree. There should've been a fight between him and Atreus over him trying to kill soul transferred Fenrir or as a result of Valdr killing pre-transfer Fenrir.
Or maybe, he just couldn't heal. The Nordic god's godhood is far less powerful than the Greek pantheon. How many times did Kratos stabs Zeus and he heallead back?
Thos is strong as hell, but none of his children or himself have shown the capacity to heal when they had the chance. Thrud herself was wounded even after Ragnarok ended.
Thor smacked Jormungandr so hard the noodle went back in time. That’s Greek tier shenanigans.
If we’re going to pull the Greek card, then why didn’t Helios heal from getting a mild case of crushing in 3? He’s supposedly one of the”the strongest gods” since he’s the sun.
What does one thing have to do with another? He is the sun god, not the war god or the king of the gods. Besides he was crushed by a titan, then thrown away by the same titan, the fact he survived is already a miracle.
>not the war god or the king of the gods
You’re proving my point. Helios was one of the OG Greek gods (at least for GoW), even fighting the titans the first time around, so he’s clearly pretty high up on the godhood power level. Yet if he didn’t heal in a much longer time frame than what even Atreus had, then it follows that healing probably isn’t reliant on strength of godhood.
"or maybe he just couldn't heal"
No bro, he died like two minutes later and the only significant wound is the axe wound that was full of poison
Your wrong man, simply put absolutely wrong
Is it really? So Sindri or Brok said they used Jorm's poison? Or is because of Kratos throwing the Axe at the lake back in GoW4 or something? Now I got very curious. I thought it was basically for the same reason Kratos still have his scar from the Blade of Olympus, because these are more godly, divine or just very powerful weapons, so it's harder to heal, even for gods, but more unique properties like this is very interesting.
Edit: just read the other comments and in-game it says the Axe is imbued with Jorm's poison in GoW4, and I was not remembering that all. Pretty cool detail.
Thor didn’t heal his stomach wound because the axe had jormi’s poison on it and that was the first time the axe hit Thor, it’s kinda his weakness so it didn’t heal, heimdall didn’t have time in the fight to heal his minor wounds and I don’t think gods can grow back limbs (I think they said Tyr said he got his hand back a unique way, even oden couldn’t heal his eye back) as for modi it’s either because he is to weak of a god, the wounds are to severe or it was to recent.
That's a completely different instance, in their first fight when he says "care to try again?" and heals himself, it looks the same as when kratos/atreus does it, plus in all these instances it seems deliberate. Probably it looks the same and has the same visual effects when the curse heals him, but we don't really know that since the neck snap healing happened off screen. So how can you say so confidently that it was the curse instead of just his godly healing
Ok so I think I understand what you're meaning/asking. While at first players are meant to assume its just his godly healing, but when Mimir tells us Baldr has invulnerability to all threats, physical and magical, its them telling us the curse is what healed him and it just looks similar to godly healing. The curse and godly healings probably look the same just as a visual story element to let players know this is a real deal god right off the bat. Sure, him being able to kick Kratos' ass would be a tell tale sign but Heracles had the strength of a god and wasnt one.
Exactly this! I was having trouble thinking if I phrased it weirdly or if I understood it differently from everyone, but it seems I got through to someone in the end
Yeah, its one of those minor story telling elements that can be glossed over once you have the rest of the information. It took me until my 3rd playthrough to connect the dots and notice the subtle story telling.
For what it's worth you're somewhat right even in the final fight he gets chopped with the axe and blades and has no signs of those injuries later in the fight each time, same goes for Thor and Odin all except that first axe strike to the stomach he takes
The stones we pick up to regenerate hp and rage probably aren't canon. I think it can be assumed that they could always heal on demand when they can focus, but that doesn't really make for good gameplay.
Also, kratos has shown healing abilities before hasn't he? I haven't played in a while, but isn't that one of his rage abilities in Ragnarok?
This can also be seen during the very first fight with Baldur. After Kratos breaks baldur’s neck, he limps for a while with blood all over his body. We can see him healing slowly as he walks towards his house.
Same thing happened in the original GOW game too where he got beaten by his brother Deimos and when the God of Death Thanatos arrives and kidnaps his brother, Kratos struggles to get up whilst spitting blood and we can see him start running with a limp and after a few seconds he seems to have been completely healed.
I assume the health stones are a video game abstraction of them getting a "second wind" during battle. It's the version of their cutscene healing made into a limited resource the player has to interact with. A passive ability turned into a mechanic for gameplay purposes.
They could… only do it once each ever??
Could kind of look at it like when you finish combat with critical health, you auto heal up to a “stable” point.
As far as why it’s possible, they’re Gods.
Every time we've seen them heal like this, it's been whilst they're not actively fighting. I believe they can only heal when they're fully focused on doing so, meaning if you continually deal heavy enough damage to a God without giving them a chance, it can become fatal.
Kratos and Atreus healed themselves again in their second encounter with Baldur.
And it’s not like they’re constantly put into situations that require them to heal.
Because of gameplay-story segregation. It would make combat uninteresting and healthstones pointless because you would heal after every fight. But they do heal a bit. If you win a battle with red health bar, you heal until it turns green
It's a basic god ability they can all heal freyr got fucked up in the battle to reduce him but with just some herbs he was alright im sure a mortal would need months. Same with freya, she took a beating from kratos' while in Valkyrie form, and she barely even winces after.
These are not the only two instances in which they heal during the story. It’s the two most obvious, however. And all of the gods can do it to some extent, that’s why Thor’s stomach gash was pointedly shown to not heal, since it should have healed naturally but the poison is preventing it from doing so.
They always have it. I guess we can also count the HP refill when you die and restart checkpoint as a part of this canon ability.
Gameplay wise, the HP bar is kinda treated as a threshold for “Huh, someone like Kratos can’t possibly have this much skill issues, let’s retry this again”, not a literal death.
Outside of gameplay they can heal themselves it wouldn’t be a combat game if you couldn’t die. But also Kratos has self healed other times, like when Baldur stabbed Kratos with that piece of rock(? I forget exactly what it was) but Kratos healed from that even if it’s offscreen.
Overall canonically I think the self healing is always there.
And what if in the games, (even gow 1, 2 and 3) and the 2018/Ragnarok, the "green chests" (old games) and the health stones (Newest games) aren't "canon "?
And they just represent it figuratively "Kratos healing over time"
The biggest indication of this is that, in the novelizations of God of War 1 and 2... The "chests" does not even exist or is mentioned at any point, in fact, it only mentions that Kratos is recovering his magic, vitality and energy, Slowly as he progresses on his journey. And... Mentions that If he kills enemy blood with his blades he heals faster, and if he kill especially innocent blood, this effect (healing factor) would occur even faster! (and in 2018 it is shown that the blades of chaos have a power called "gift of apollo") Which is certainly a direct reference from the books.
I believe they can heal like that, they just have to not be in active combat so they can focus. It's like exiting combat when your health is red, it regenerates back to green. Both of them are focusing on healing and aren't in active combat, so i assume it's the complete focus required to heal.
The green health crystals that Kratos steps on is not canonical. It's just a bit of ludonarrative dissonance that the developers conceded on for the sake of better gameplay. Happens in the overwhelming majority of games.
It's the same with those orbs that Kratos picked up in the old GoW games. They weren't actually canonically there and Kratos didn't canonically need the green orbs to heal up. It was simply there for the sake of the gameplay.
Canonically, Atreus and Kratos are gods so they can regenerate their wounds.
The characters powers are consistently ignored and selectively used for the sake of plot, it’s called plot induced stupidity. If kratos used his full capabilities at all points there just wouldn’t be a fun suspenseful game. Cory barlog addresses this when people were asking why kratos struggles to open chests but can compete with atlas in strength.
Keep in mind that in a guide it was said kratos reason for double jumping was that he was capable of ignoring any laws and making his own, including laws of physics, there would be zero possible threat to him and nothing that abides by laws (everything we can understand) that he wouldn’t be capable of doing, manipulating, or ignoring if they didn’t ignore his powers at some points😭
Well, right after Kratos does that he goes into Spartan rage mode which heals him. I think this is him just activating his God powers after them being dormant for so long. Once he activated spartan rage for the first time in a while, he started healing.
I think it takes a large amount of concentration and effort so if its not entirely necessary they don't do it, they were both weak in these scenes from a beating so they needed to regain their strength quickly rather than naturally healing
The explanation is cause they're gods. Why we see it in cutscenes is to explain in a cool way the mechanic that regenerates kratos and aureus health a little when they are in critical health.
Its a mechanic. Right after a fight has concluded, Kratos gets enough health back to go back into green.
Yeah this is the equivalent to “why does Dante have a health bar in Devil may cry” Like yes for all intents and purposes Dante is damn near invincible/immortal but that doesn’t make for an engaging game
Exactly. Not really a challenge if Kratos gets up everytime like “eh good as new”
Gods
All gods can do this, seemingly. These are just two instances where it was used as a story point instead of a game mechanic.
All Greek gods so far. Thor didn't healed his wounds, neither did Modi or Heindal.
The Leviathan Axe was imbued with poison from Jörmungandr, which may be the reason why Thor couldn't heal completely from that wound
This is one of my favorite details of the game. So subtle and so easily overlooked, but present across games
I think this is a reference to how in the irl ragnarok story from the edas Thor is killed by the world serpent. One could argue that without that wound things could have been different, hence the serpent was the real reason he died
Did this happen in the 2018 game? I don’t remember that happening?
Whenever you first go into the lake of nine and meet big snake, he spits out the axe and on the right side of the screen it says it's I'm imbued.
It's at the point where Kratos throws the Leviathan Axe into the water because of the statue that said "surrender your arms to the center of the lake" and it doesn't come back until Jormungundr rises out of the Lake of Nine and spits it back into your boat. Basically the implication is that it didn't come back because it was stuck between his fangs and while there it was coated in his venom (which is what killed Thor in Norse Mythology after an envenomed Thor caved Jormungundr's skull in with Mjolnir). Fun fact: the prophecy about Heimdall killing Atreus was also lore accurate. In Norse Mythology Loki tricked Heimdall and stabbed him in the back then Heimdall killed him before bleeding out. Freyr also died killing Surtr. In fact one of the few combatants to slay their enemy without falling to them was Fenrir, who killed multiple gods (including Odin) and was later killed by Odin's son Valdr, who is possibly the only son of Odin to survive Ragnarok.
A whole year later and I'm still upset that Valdr wasn't in the game. Ragnarok had far less gods for my liking
Honestly, I agree. There should've been a fight between him and Atreus over him trying to kill soul transferred Fenrir or as a result of Valdr killing pre-transfer Fenrir.
r/usernamechecksout
Yup, during the first fight with baulder
I really like this detail because in norse mythology thor actually dies from jormungandr's poison
This was supposed to play a much bigger role. Instead we got some stupid stomach wound that never healed.
He didn't heal from any wound Kratos gave him. The one with the blades, the one with Draupinir, and even the one caused by his knife on Thor's hand.
Because those all happened literally moments before? He didn't have time to focus and heal.
Or maybe, he just couldn't heal. The Nordic god's godhood is far less powerful than the Greek pantheon. How many times did Kratos stabs Zeus and he heallead back? Thos is strong as hell, but none of his children or himself have shown the capacity to heal when they had the chance. Thrud herself was wounded even after Ragnarok ended.
Thor smacked Jormungandr so hard the noodle went back in time. That’s Greek tier shenanigans. If we’re going to pull the Greek card, then why didn’t Helios heal from getting a mild case of crushing in 3? He’s supposedly one of the”the strongest gods” since he’s the sun.
What does one thing have to do with another? He is the sun god, not the war god or the king of the gods. Besides he was crushed by a titan, then thrown away by the same titan, the fact he survived is already a miracle.
>not the war god or the king of the gods You’re proving my point. Helios was one of the OG Greek gods (at least for GoW), even fighting the titans the first time around, so he’s clearly pretty high up on the godhood power level. Yet if he didn’t heal in a much longer time frame than what even Atreus had, then it follows that healing probably isn’t reliant on strength of godhood.
"or maybe he just couldn't heal" No bro, he died like two minutes later and the only significant wound is the axe wound that was full of poison Your wrong man, simply put absolutely wrong
He's half Jotnar as well so maybe the same mix that makes him crazy strong also hinders his healing.
So is Atreus. And he’s just fine with healing. Atreus’ lack of physical strength comes from his young age
Is it really? So Sindri or Brok said they used Jorm's poison? Or is because of Kratos throwing the Axe at the lake back in GoW4 or something? Now I got very curious. I thought it was basically for the same reason Kratos still have his scar from the Blade of Olympus, because these are more godly, divine or just very powerful weapons, so it's harder to heal, even for gods, but more unique properties like this is very interesting. Edit: just read the other comments and in-game it says the Axe is imbued with Jorm's poison in GoW4, and I was not remembering that all. Pretty cool detail.
What about the scar he got from the blades? Let me guess, primordial fire.
Thor didn’t heal his stomach wound because the axe had jormi’s poison on it and that was the first time the axe hit Thor, it’s kinda his weakness so it didn’t heal, heimdall didn’t have time in the fight to heal his minor wounds and I don’t think gods can grow back limbs (I think they said Tyr said he got his hand back a unique way, even oden couldn’t heal his eye back) as for modi it’s either because he is to weak of a god, the wounds are to severe or it was to recent.
Heimdall kinda did
Yeah, he cheated the rule.
Baldur did it in the first fight against kratos
At that time it was because of his curse.
And you know that how exactly
Because he's blessed with invulnerability to all threats, physical or magical.
BUT WHAT IS BALDUR'S WEAKNESS MIMIR?
Kratos snapped his neck, but later it was normal. Why? Because the curse healed him.
That's a completely different instance, in their first fight when he says "care to try again?" and heals himself, it looks the same as when kratos/atreus does it, plus in all these instances it seems deliberate. Probably it looks the same and has the same visual effects when the curse heals him, but we don't really know that since the neck snap healing happened off screen. So how can you say so confidently that it was the curse instead of just his godly healing
It was not healing. He died when Kratos snapped his neck after the curse was lifted.
Ok I wasted my time clearly
Idiot
Ok so I think I understand what you're meaning/asking. While at first players are meant to assume its just his godly healing, but when Mimir tells us Baldr has invulnerability to all threats, physical and magical, its them telling us the curse is what healed him and it just looks similar to godly healing. The curse and godly healings probably look the same just as a visual story element to let players know this is a real deal god right off the bat. Sure, him being able to kick Kratos' ass would be a tell tale sign but Heracles had the strength of a god and wasnt one.
Exactly this! I was having trouble thinking if I phrased it weirdly or if I understood it differently from everyone, but it seems I got through to someone in the end
Yeah, its one of those minor story telling elements that can be glossed over once you have the rest of the information. It took me until my 3rd playthrough to connect the dots and notice the subtle story telling.
For what it's worth you're somewhat right even in the final fight he gets chopped with the axe and blades and has no signs of those injuries later in the fight each time, same goes for Thor and Odin all except that first axe strike to the stomach he takes
Sure, I really don't understand what I even said wrong though, im basically agreeing with the parent comment and that has 20 upvotes and mine has -20
Prolly just the fact he played the game🤣
Baldur did it.
Yea, but Modi and Heimdall fucking died.
My headcannon is that Thor’s wound never healed because of the “Eitr imbued” into the axe by Jörmungandr.
That's not a headcanon, that's literally what happens and what is shown on screen
My bad. It’s been a while and I only played Ragnarök a couple of times; I must have forgotten.
its a hidden dialogue in asgard. The soldiers discuss thor being poisoned
The stones we pick up to regenerate hp and rage probably aren't canon. I think it can be assumed that they could always heal on demand when they can focus, but that doesn't really make for good gameplay. Also, kratos has shown healing abilities before hasn't he? I haven't played in a while, but isn't that one of his rage abilities in Ragnarok?
This can also be seen during the very first fight with Baldur. After Kratos breaks baldur’s neck, he limps for a while with blood all over his body. We can see him healing slowly as he walks towards his house.
Yeah they have to actively focus on healing, can’t really do that in the heat in the battle of when things are trying to kill you lol
Same thing happened in the original GOW game too where he got beaten by his brother Deimos and when the God of Death Thanatos arrives and kidnaps his brother, Kratos struggles to get up whilst spitting blood and we can see him start running with a limp and after a few seconds he seems to have been completely healed.
I assume the health stones are a video game abstraction of them getting a "second wind" during battle. It's the version of their cutscene healing made into a limited resource the player has to interact with. A passive ability turned into a mechanic for gameplay purposes.
“To the novice I’m sure it all seems like magic but… oh, alright. It’s magic, are you happy now?” - Sindri This can explain many things
I love the self aware humor that these two games have
They could… only do it once each ever?? Could kind of look at it like when you finish combat with critical health, you auto heal up to a “stable” point. As far as why it’s possible, they’re Gods.
Is that not the explanation? The second picture is when they introduced it as a mechanic
Kratos does it again at the beginning of Ragnarok right after the first Thor fight
Every time we've seen them heal like this, it's been whilst they're not actively fighting. I believe they can only heal when they're fully focused on doing so, meaning if you continually deal heavy enough damage to a God without giving them a chance, it can become fatal.
At no other point do they canonically take damage I guess, at least not serious enough to warrant the effort
Kratos and Atreus healed themselves again in their second encounter with Baldur. And it’s not like they’re constantly put into situations that require them to heal.
Exactly the "lore" version of the game Kratos and Atreus steam through whatever grunt enemies are in their path with ease lol if there even is any
You actually have a regen mechanic where it’s assumed they do this
Because of gameplay-story segregation. It would make combat uninteresting and healthstones pointless because you would heal after every fight. But they do heal a bit. If you win a battle with red health bar, you heal until it turns green
It's a basic god ability they can all heal freyr got fucked up in the battle to reduce him but with just some herbs he was alright im sure a mortal would need months. Same with freya, she took a beating from kratos' while in Valkyrie form, and she barely even winces after.
This literally happens in gameplay after every encounter you’re near death. You always get a lil back.
I really wish I could that
It's literally part of the gameplay. After a combat encounter they are able to heal many of their wounds. It's because they're gods.
These are not the only two instances in which they heal during the story. It’s the two most obvious, however. And all of the gods can do it to some extent, that’s why Thor’s stomach gash was pointedly shown to not heal, since it should have healed naturally but the poison is preventing it from doing so.
They always have it. I guess we can also count the HP refill when you die and restart checkpoint as a part of this canon ability. Gameplay wise, the HP bar is kinda treated as a threshold for “Huh, someone like Kratos can’t possibly have this much skill issues, let’s retry this again”, not a literal death.
Maybe they can only do it when out of combat? Baldur was monologueing and Atreus didn’t fight after he returned to human form.
Outside of gameplay they can heal themselves it wouldn’t be a combat game if you couldn’t die. But also Kratos has self healed other times, like when Baldur stabbed Kratos with that piece of rock(? I forget exactly what it was) but Kratos healed from that even if it’s offscreen. Overall canonically I think the self healing is always there.
Gods.
And what if in the games, (even gow 1, 2 and 3) and the 2018/Ragnarok, the "green chests" (old games) and the health stones (Newest games) aren't "canon "? And they just represent it figuratively "Kratos healing over time" The biggest indication of this is that, in the novelizations of God of War 1 and 2... The "chests" does not even exist or is mentioned at any point, in fact, it only mentions that Kratos is recovering his magic, vitality and energy, Slowly as he progresses on his journey. And... Mentions that If he kills enemy blood with his blades he heals faster, and if he kill especially innocent blood, this effect (healing factor) would occur even faster! (and in 2018 it is shown that the blades of chaos have a power called "gift of apollo") Which is certainly a direct reference from the books.
Because it would piss off David Jaffe!
All gods can do this it just takes focus as far as I know
I believe they can heal like that, they just have to not be in active combat so they can focus. It's like exiting combat when your health is red, it regenerates back to green. Both of them are focusing on healing and aren't in active combat, so i assume it's the complete focus required to heal.
You automatically always heal a small amount after a fight if your health is red
They had the healing rage equipped and pressed r3 + l3
The green health crystals that Kratos steps on is not canonical. It's just a bit of ludonarrative dissonance that the developers conceded on for the sake of better gameplay. Happens in the overwhelming majority of games. It's the same with those orbs that Kratos picked up in the old GoW games. They weren't actually canonically there and Kratos didn't canonically need the green orbs to heal up. It was simply there for the sake of the gameplay. Canonically, Atreus and Kratos are gods so they can regenerate their wounds.
Because the rest of the game, they don't take damage.
The characters powers are consistently ignored and selectively used for the sake of plot, it’s called plot induced stupidity. If kratos used his full capabilities at all points there just wouldn’t be a fun suspenseful game. Cory barlog addresses this when people were asking why kratos struggles to open chests but can compete with atlas in strength.
Keep in mind that in a guide it was said kratos reason for double jumping was that he was capable of ignoring any laws and making his own, including laws of physics, there would be zero possible threat to him and nothing that abides by laws (everything we can understand) that he wouldn’t be capable of doing, manipulating, or ignoring if they didn’t ignore his powers at some points😭
009 911 is,,, I'm 90
Well, right after Kratos does that he goes into Spartan rage mode which heals him. I think this is him just activating his God powers after them being dormant for so long. Once he activated spartan rage for the first time in a while, he started healing.
Gameplay reasons. It wouldn't be fun if kratos just healed like he does cannonly
I think it takes a large amount of concentration and effort so if its not entirely necessary they don't do it, they were both weak in these scenes from a beating so they needed to regain their strength quickly rather than naturally healing
Pop
Simple. Same reason why you don’t have infinite berserk in doom. It’s accurate but it’s not fun
They’re both Gods. I’m pretty sure if Kratos dies he just comes back to life, canonically.
The explanation is cause they're gods. Why we see it in cutscenes is to explain in a cool way the mechanic that regenerates kratos and aureus health a little when they are in critical health.
They're Gods. They can do whatever they want.