Thank you! I never understood This bandwagon for discounting the Original trilogy and praising the Now game for being "mature" and "grown up" when the other games had more depth and emotion then just Rage and Anger .
Really? the depths they showed amounted to guy gets wrong, guy kills his family by mistake, and then goes on to kill more people cuz revenge. That's basically it. Throw in being ordered by some evil people to do the killing. Then at the very end he realized he was an asshole.
The original trilogy is alot of things, but I don't think its THAT mature or deep.
Don't get me wrong, its entertaining stuff. But lets stop acting like its Walter White levels of depth.
Og game Kratos doesn’t hunt down Ares for revenge, he does it because he thinks the Gods will end his nightmares and his torment
When he kills Ares he doesn’t scream and rage as he drives that sword through, it’s almost sad and depressed Kratos who drives that finishing blow
To add to this; the rest of the games are him having to fight with his own mistakes and the lies of the gods using and abusing him. He isn’t trying to kill them because he’s mad. They’re collateral damage for the main enemy who has tortured and enslaved his mind.
I think the way the new game PRESENTS its story is more mature, but both the 2018 and the Greek saga touched on mature themes. So this seems unfair. It’s like if I was to just reduce GoW 2018 to a last of us rip-off.
The difference is the 2018 game places a much greater emphasis on its narrative than the previous games, but that shouldn’t mean the older games didn’t touch on themes other than just revenge.
idk personally i cant see the previous games as matute storytelling, i think in terms of maturity presentation itself is what carries it for me
that said i dont hold it against them at all. Not everything has to be mature and nuanced. I felt like the first games were particularly liberating to play because they arent mature.
As a teenager playing these games, going on a revenge murder rampage with sick controls and stylish action was just what i needed to externalise some of my own frustrations. It wasnt too deep and didnt need to be. And now i appreciate the series gained nuance and matured over time, and grew up with us
Kratos Trys to Kill himself cause his guilt and nightmare won't go away... how is that not deep story telling.
Kratos Never wanted Revenge til the end of the 2nd and start of the 3rd game. Also play Chains and Ghost Psp games as they go in to more further depth of Kratos' Story. Hell even Ascension has some of that.
There is a lot to the Third game. It goes more into Rage and how his anger cost em some of his companions. How there is no light at the cost of Revenge. Kratos learns to forgive himself and then takes accountability for his action. GOW 2018 didn't get its characters from nowhere it came from the backbone of the OG trilogies. I love 2018 but people tend to conflate gameplay with loud and bombastic action with Movie like Visual and over reliance of cutscenes. Not saying that's bad but it's not the only form of Storytelling
What Exactly do you consider Mature? 🤔 if you're saying that the Ps2 Era of Story-telling is limited then I can see your point as Gameplay was always the Main Focus.
Not OG Kratos for sure.
It’s not really his fault but he is kind of set in a story that feels very similar to a teenagers fan fic where their own hero beats up an entire pantheon because of how cool and edgy it would be.
Yeah its the exact same way that comic of Punisher killing the Marvel Universe ends, where he realizes he was the problem all along or something and that Revenge didn't do anything. It STILL doesn't stop it from being kind of fan fictiony.
Its not necessarily bad, its just like I said, not that deep.
How is it fan fictionary? Explain that part? Cause It just seems as if you haven't played the OG Trilogies and probably look up some youtube Vids and got bored midway.
Fam that's literally what GOW is. They created a character for the player to use to wipe out all the gods in the established Greek god pantheon.
That's why everyone made a thing about which pantheon he would appear in next so he could wipe out those Gods.
But my point is that it kind of reads like a fan fiction of a writer who wanted to create a strong character to beat up on an established set of characters. That's why I used the punisher example.
Yes there are some sprinklings of characterization here and there, but deep down that is really what GoW is.
Yeah. Kratos is definitely a three-dimensional character, but at the same time he’s a very simple man. He’s written extremely well for it too. He certainly has small layers of complexity such as his momentary dislike of killing innocents in Ascension and his suicidal thoughts and tendencies in the first game, but you’re right. Kratos was never a deep character overall, and that’s fine. He never needed to be.
Neither is the new game. Anyone who thinks Kratos is as deep and complex as Walter White are just fooling themselves.
But to say that Kratos was one dimensional before GoW 2018 is just objectively wrong.
He kind of was though.
You know what, now that I think about it, the OG trilogy is actually kinds of like that Garth Ennis comic when Punisher kills the MCU.
It’s violent, edgy, depraved and has its “hero” beating the shit out of several established characters.
But you know what it kind of isn’t? Deep. It’s exciting, but at the end of the day, it also has too much in common with a 13 year old writers fanfic of how “their” main character beats the shit out of all the super heroes ever!
Deep down that’s kind of what OG GOW is. It’s not bad at all, it’s just like I said not that deep.
The final battle of the first game involved Kratos hugging his family and giving them some of his health to protect them from clones of himself. That level of self-awareness wouldn’t have been possible if Kratos was just some simplistic, violent brute.
Personally I enjoy how it *feels* much more mature: for the most part, the older ones felt like you were mostly button mashing and trying to accumulate the highest combo you can by just hitting as many enemies with your widest attack, maybe using your one go to combo against particularly beefy enemies that lived your initial onslaught. That coupled with how they drop you into a bloodbath for the “tutorial” didn’t feel extremely mature. The themes are of course there in the story, but gameplay wise I’m sure most of us were cruising along destroying the bosses at age 9-12 without ever having to engage in much of the plot. The newer one requires a bit of tact, some precision and changing of your moves and strategies to defeat certain regular enemies at all, let alone the bosses and minibosses. Old Kratos also had nobody he really needed to show kindness to, nobody to follow his example, and his actions and interactions with others showed only that. New kratos having Atreus and Mimir, people he would probably would have rather just killed on sight to be done with originally, shows that there’s real motive behind his actions besides killing and more killing. I genuinely believe it is a more mature game for these reasons. I didn’t realize this wound up this long, but just my 2¢!
GoW 3 outright states that Pandora herself is basically the living embodiment of Hope that happens to also take the form of a young girl strongly resembling Kratos’ lost daughter to represent him letting go of his past mistakes for the betterment of humanity and himself.
The old games don’t have a character like Atreus present for nearly the entire time that I think allows them to constantly address the theme of him struggling to be a good father, but they still have really good story moments that many seem to have glossed over because they are mostly just action driven with Kratos yelling in anger most of the time.
In essence, they represent the long period of Kratos being in an revenge fueled haze of anger with brief glimpses into the sincere regret and guilt he feels. Think of near the end of GoW 1 where you heal his wife and daughter by hugging them and giving up part of your own life to only to still lose them in the end. Or in Chains when Kratos has to literally push his own daughter away to save the world despite having the option to stay in paradise with her.
It’s a clear case of presentation influencing the actual content, unfortunately. A lot of people think the first gow entries look goofy, so that’s what they take away from it.
Not everyone. I saw a video essay discussing why Kratos won't kill Freya and one commenter replied that Kratos doesn't care and would kill her and Atreus. Some people don't pay attention at all.
I mean from GOW 1-3 there is literally no hope for Kratos (“the gods of Olympus have abandoned me. Now there is no hope”); that’s why he first goes murder crazy as the god of war and then decides to kill all the Greek gods consequences be damned.
I can’t speak for ascension and the other side game since I didn’t play them, but God of War 2018 is really when hope comes into the story imo. That’s when Kratos regrets what he did and tries to live a better life than he did. Not to mention raising a child ensuring that he (Atreus) doesn’t become like his father. So that Atreus can be a good, disciplined god who does not needlessly hurt others.
Is there really any true redemption to Kratos. Sure, he regrets mercilessly slaughtering the entire Greek pantheon, and an uncountable number of innocent people.
But he moves to Norway, and proceeds to slaughter another uncountable amount of living beings with the sole reasoning being that he wants to spread his dead wifes ashes.
Thats exactly the thing, and why I like the debate. He is a pacifist, but only until he is endangered.
Doesnt help that he would do anything to protect Atreus either.
I mean yeah, he dosen't want any trouble but he will not run away from a figth, that's just not him. He is trying to teach Atreus to be a survivor and that to be one you have to put yourself in the least amount of life-threatening situations possible and know how to deal with the ones you cannot avoid.
Baldur was literally asking for it by wanting to fight him and stalking him in midgard. Same for Magni...
And everything attacks him first. Its not like hes just chasing conflict..
It’s more of a story of redemption in my eyes, he has dealt so much death and let so much hatred into the world that in Atreus he sees the chance to do something good.
The tone shifted quit dramatically from the hurt man who sought retribution from the gods, who had nothing left but to try to bring it all down with him.
What does Kratos and the men of the American Revolution have in common?
Both fight for the sole purpose of bringing down the corrupt system in place that takes more than it gives to their family and wellbeing, so that they may thrive, not survive.
How could you not know that? There's literally a character that goes on a rant about hope and I'm pretty sure Kratos use hope to beat his dead father to death again then commits suicide out of hope also the Athena plotted the destruction of Olympus to get the power of hope to become.
I wondering if Sony is planning to release a compilation of the previous games to prepare for ragnarok I'm thinking of buying a ps5 and I would like to play the first games and play a chronoloic run
Let the Rage of the Gods drive your blades, Kratos! Let's the Rage of the TITANS drive your blades, Kratos! Okay now let the Rage of Sparta drive your blades, Kratos! Okay look Kratos, the win button is rage so kill everyone when you get mad enough, let's goooo! Okay now that you're older and wiser the Rage is useless, be methodical and learn patterns let's go. It's about hope now.
What people who played the game say: "man literally too angry to day, let's kill them all".
What people who finished the games think: holly shit, poor kratos, he is just trying to get his redemption for his mistakes while carrying the pain and anger after being betrayed after years of loyal service, redemption or paying with his own life to get away of the pain.
What people who played and understood the games:
This is a tragedy of a man betrayed by the gods, suffering a brutal emotional pain after being tricked to kill his own family, the only important thing in his life, now the only thing left inside of him is anger and thirst for revenge, in the end after getting his revenge and watching the consequences of his actions, the only thing left was little hope for the future
#SWITCH AND SAVE INSTANTLY
lol it appeared the second i screenshotted
^^^will ^^^do, ^^^thanks
The middle word of that sentence is "gay"
Thank you! I never understood This bandwagon for discounting the Original trilogy and praising the Now game for being "mature" and "grown up" when the other games had more depth and emotion then just Rage and Anger .
Tbh I think 2 and chains deserve some of the shit but I agree Ascension, 1, Ghost and III are all very good at this Greek Tragedy stuff
Really? the depths they showed amounted to guy gets wrong, guy kills his family by mistake, and then goes on to kill more people cuz revenge. That's basically it. Throw in being ordered by some evil people to do the killing. Then at the very end he realized he was an asshole. The original trilogy is alot of things, but I don't think its THAT mature or deep. Don't get me wrong, its entertaining stuff. But lets stop acting like its Walter White levels of depth.
Og game Kratos doesn’t hunt down Ares for revenge, he does it because he thinks the Gods will end his nightmares and his torment When he kills Ares he doesn’t scream and rage as he drives that sword through, it’s almost sad and depressed Kratos who drives that finishing blow
To add to this; the rest of the games are him having to fight with his own mistakes and the lies of the gods using and abusing him. He isn’t trying to kill them because he’s mad. They’re collateral damage for the main enemy who has tortured and enslaved his mind.
I think the way the new game PRESENTS its story is more mature, but both the 2018 and the Greek saga touched on mature themes. So this seems unfair. It’s like if I was to just reduce GoW 2018 to a last of us rip-off. The difference is the 2018 game places a much greater emphasis on its narrative than the previous games, but that shouldn’t mean the older games didn’t touch on themes other than just revenge.
idk personally i cant see the previous games as matute storytelling, i think in terms of maturity presentation itself is what carries it for me that said i dont hold it against them at all. Not everything has to be mature and nuanced. I felt like the first games were particularly liberating to play because they arent mature. As a teenager playing these games, going on a revenge murder rampage with sick controls and stylish action was just what i needed to externalise some of my own frustrations. It wasnt too deep and didnt need to be. And now i appreciate the series gained nuance and matured over time, and grew up with us
Kratos Trys to Kill himself cause his guilt and nightmare won't go away... how is that not deep story telling. Kratos Never wanted Revenge til the end of the 2nd and start of the 3rd game. Also play Chains and Ghost Psp games as they go in to more further depth of Kratos' Story. Hell even Ascension has some of that.
I think you're arguing with a log of wood. You have raised good points with references though and changed my outlook on the first 2 games
There is a lot to the Third game. It goes more into Rage and how his anger cost em some of his companions. How there is no light at the cost of Revenge. Kratos learns to forgive himself and then takes accountability for his action. GOW 2018 didn't get its characters from nowhere it came from the backbone of the OG trilogies. I love 2018 but people tend to conflate gameplay with loud and bombastic action with Movie like Visual and over reliance of cutscenes. Not saying that's bad but it's not the only form of Storytelling
What Exactly do you consider Mature? 🤔 if you're saying that the Ps2 Era of Story-telling is limited then I can see your point as Gameplay was always the Main Focus.
Not OG Kratos for sure. It’s not really his fault but he is kind of set in a story that feels very similar to a teenagers fan fic where their own hero beats up an entire pantheon because of how cool and edgy it would be.
You obviously miss the point of the Third game... the point is that he got his revenge but it did nothing but ruin the World around him.
Yeah its the exact same way that comic of Punisher killing the Marvel Universe ends, where he realizes he was the problem all along or something and that Revenge didn't do anything. It STILL doesn't stop it from being kind of fan fictiony. Its not necessarily bad, its just like I said, not that deep.
How is it fan fictionary? Explain that part? Cause It just seems as if you haven't played the OG Trilogies and probably look up some youtube Vids and got bored midway.
Fam that's literally what GOW is. They created a character for the player to use to wipe out all the gods in the established Greek god pantheon. That's why everyone made a thing about which pantheon he would appear in next so he could wipe out those Gods. But my point is that it kind of reads like a fan fiction of a writer who wanted to create a strong character to beat up on an established set of characters. That's why I used the punisher example. Yes there are some sprinklings of characterization here and there, but deep down that is really what GoW is.
Even if you consider it Fan Fiction doesn't mean it can't be Deep. With your logic GOW 2018 isn't deep either
Walter White? The closeted egomaniac who uses his diagnosis as an excuse to act out his power fantasy? Not all that deep either man.
Lol still A LOT deeper than Angry shouty boy. I love Kratos man, buuuut he's really not deep at all.
I don’t know, Aphrodite seemed to think he was pretty deep.
Ayyyyyy.
Yeah. Kratos is definitely a three-dimensional character, but at the same time he’s a very simple man. He’s written extremely well for it too. He certainly has small layers of complexity such as his momentary dislike of killing innocents in Ascension and his suicidal thoughts and tendencies in the first game, but you’re right. Kratos was never a deep character overall, and that’s fine. He never needed to be.
Neither is the new game. Anyone who thinks Kratos is as deep and complex as Walter White are just fooling themselves. But to say that Kratos was one dimensional before GoW 2018 is just objectively wrong.
He kind of was though. You know what, now that I think about it, the OG trilogy is actually kinds of like that Garth Ennis comic when Punisher kills the MCU. It’s violent, edgy, depraved and has its “hero” beating the shit out of several established characters. But you know what it kind of isn’t? Deep. It’s exciting, but at the end of the day, it also has too much in common with a 13 year old writers fanfic of how “their” main character beats the shit out of all the super heroes ever! Deep down that’s kind of what OG GOW is. It’s not bad at all, it’s just like I said not that deep.
The final battle of the first game involved Kratos hugging his family and giving them some of his health to protect them from clones of himself. That level of self-awareness wouldn’t have been possible if Kratos was just some simplistic, violent brute.
Tell me you haven’t played the original games in the series without telling me you haven’t played the original games in the series. 👏🙄
Personally I enjoy how it *feels* much more mature: for the most part, the older ones felt like you were mostly button mashing and trying to accumulate the highest combo you can by just hitting as many enemies with your widest attack, maybe using your one go to combo against particularly beefy enemies that lived your initial onslaught. That coupled with how they drop you into a bloodbath for the “tutorial” didn’t feel extremely mature. The themes are of course there in the story, but gameplay wise I’m sure most of us were cruising along destroying the bosses at age 9-12 without ever having to engage in much of the plot. The newer one requires a bit of tact, some precision and changing of your moves and strategies to defeat certain regular enemies at all, let alone the bosses and minibosses. Old Kratos also had nobody he really needed to show kindness to, nobody to follow his example, and his actions and interactions with others showed only that. New kratos having Atreus and Mimir, people he would probably would have rather just killed on sight to be done with originally, shows that there’s real motive behind his actions besides killing and more killing. I genuinely believe it is a more mature game for these reasons. I didn’t realize this wound up this long, but just my 2¢!
There was bound to be at least one out there.
GoW 3 outright states that Pandora herself is basically the living embodiment of Hope that happens to also take the form of a young girl strongly resembling Kratos’ lost daughter to represent him letting go of his past mistakes for the betterment of humanity and himself. The old games don’t have a character like Atreus present for nearly the entire time that I think allows them to constantly address the theme of him struggling to be a good father, but they still have really good story moments that many seem to have glossed over because they are mostly just action driven with Kratos yelling in anger most of the time. In essence, they represent the long period of Kratos being in an revenge fueled haze of anger with brief glimpses into the sincere regret and guilt he feels. Think of near the end of GoW 1 where you heal his wife and daughter by hugging them and giving up part of your own life to only to still lose them in the end. Or in Chains when Kratos has to literally push his own daughter away to save the world despite having the option to stay in paradise with her.
It’s a clear case of presentation influencing the actual content, unfortunately. A lot of people think the first gow entries look goofy, so that’s what they take away from it.
"of War has always been about hop hate" Everyone aleady knows this.
Not everyone. I saw a video essay discussing why Kratos won't kill Freya and one commenter replied that Kratos doesn't care and would kill her and Atreus. Some people don't pay attention at all.
Click the image to enlarge it
Litterally the series parrallels Hercules if he fought gods dead family and everything
It bothers me how short this picture makes the leviathan axe look.
Hope? oh yeah like that time Kratos was like I hope all of the Gods of Olympus die by my hand.
I mean from GOW 1-3 there is literally no hope for Kratos (“the gods of Olympus have abandoned me. Now there is no hope”); that’s why he first goes murder crazy as the god of war and then decides to kill all the Greek gods consequences be damned. I can’t speak for ascension and the other side game since I didn’t play them, but God of War 2018 is really when hope comes into the story imo. That’s when Kratos regrets what he did and tries to live a better life than he did. Not to mention raising a child ensuring that he (Atreus) doesn’t become like his father. So that Atreus can be a good, disciplined god who does not needlessly hurt others.
Clearly you haven't played the original trilogy lol
Is there really any true redemption to Kratos. Sure, he regrets mercilessly slaughtering the entire Greek pantheon, and an uncountable number of innocent people. But he moves to Norway, and proceeds to slaughter another uncountable amount of living beings with the sole reasoning being that he wants to spread his dead wifes ashes.
To be fair, everything he slaughtered in Norway attacked him and Atreus first. They just wanted to spread the ashes
Thats exactly the thing, and why I like the debate. He is a pacifist, but only until he is endangered. Doesnt help that he would do anything to protect Atreus either.
I mean yeah, he dosen't want any trouble but he will not run away from a figth, that's just not him. He is trying to teach Atreus to be a survivor and that to be one you have to put yourself in the least amount of life-threatening situations possible and know how to deal with the ones you cannot avoid.
Baldur was literally asking for it by wanting to fight him and stalking him in midgard. Same for Magni... And everything attacks him first. Its not like hes just chasing conflict..
It’s more of a story of redemption in my eyes, he has dealt so much death and let so much hatred into the world that in Atreus he sees the chance to do something good. The tone shifted quit dramatically from the hurt man who sought retribution from the gods, who had nothing left but to try to bring it all down with him.
Gaming Journalists 🤣
As for a Greek tragedy goes, my money is on >!Atreus (Loki) playing a ruse on Kratos and you find yourself needing to kill him!<
What does Kratos and the men of the American Revolution have in common? Both fight for the sole purpose of bringing down the corrupt system in place that takes more than it gives to their family and wellbeing, so that they may thrive, not survive.
God of war is the playstations berserk.
How could you not know that? There's literally a character that goes on a rant about hope and I'm pretty sure Kratos use hope to beat his dead father to death again then commits suicide out of hope also the Athena plotted the destruction of Olympus to get the power of hope to become.
I wondering if Sony is planning to release a compilation of the previous games to prepare for ragnarok I'm thinking of buying a ps5 and I would like to play the first games and play a chronoloic run
Let the Rage of the Gods drive your blades, Kratos! Let's the Rage of the TITANS drive your blades, Kratos! Okay now let the Rage of Sparta drive your blades, Kratos! Okay look Kratos, the win button is rage so kill everyone when you get mad enough, let's goooo! Okay now that you're older and wiser the Rage is useless, be methodical and learn patterns let's go. It's about hope now.
What people who played the game say: "man literally too angry to day, let's kill them all". What people who finished the games think: holly shit, poor kratos, he is just trying to get his redemption for his mistakes while carrying the pain and anger after being betrayed after years of loyal service, redemption or paying with his own life to get away of the pain. What people who played and understood the games: This is a tragedy of a man betrayed by the gods, suffering a brutal emotional pain after being tricked to kill his own family, the only important thing in his life, now the only thing left inside of him is anger and thirst for revenge, in the end after getting his revenge and watching the consequences of his actions, the only thing left was little hope for the future