God of War | A Favorite Game Retrospect

Earlier in the year, I did a bad thing. Don't worry, it was nothing to get canceled for. It was just a ordinary everyday person bad thing. 

When I do a everyday bad thing, I tend to go through a process. That process has a lot of self-loathing and guilt involved. I hate to do someone wrong, and I feel like a failure for it. 

Of course, a necessary part of that process I've been trying to get better at is self-compassion. We are merely human, and we as rational individuals are only trying our best. However, practicing self-compassion is easier said than done. 

I think that is why art has no shortage of narratives about people fucking up and trying to redeem themselves. And in the world of video games, there is no greater fuck up than my man Kratos. 

*It's also God of War's 20th Anniversary which I wasn't aware of until partway into starting this retrospect. Oh well, I ain't changing the intro. 

So in this blog, I am going to look back at the original God of War. I will explore the character, the subtle synergy of narrative and gameplay, and all the fixings that makes the first God of War almost pure perfection that no sequel or spin off could ever top. 

The Monday Night Raw of Video Games 

I don't know if Gen Z or younger can relate to this. I am starting to get to that age where younger people are less understandable than the Coneheads. But when I was younger, it was not uncommon for a household to only have one console. I feel this is what exacerbated the console wars throughout the 90s and 2000s. Unless you were wealthy, you had to pick a side: Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. 

I was a Nintendo kid growing up, and I had no regrets. The N64 and Gamecube are still some of my favorite consoles. However, this caused some friction among my non-Nintendo friends. They were adamant Playstation fanboys. And often, they would dismiss my love for Nintendo. Yadda yadda, needless competition over nerd shit, anti-social issues growing up, you get the idea. 

That aside, I really love the Playstation. As a kid, I wished for a PS1 and PS2 because they had their fair share of awesome games. Of those, there were four I desperately wanted to play. Spyro the Dragon, Kingdom Hearts, Sly Cooper, and God of War. 

Naturally, three of those I wanted to play because they played to my sensibilities. Mascot platformers were my bread and butter growing up, and Sly Cooper and Spyro filled that niche. I also loved Disney and was unaware of how cringy I was, so obviously Kingdom Hearts tickled my fancy. 

That leaves God of War as this outlier which begs the question. Why did God of War capture my attention-omg alright I won't beat around the bush with this rhetorical nonsense. It had titties. Oh god, there are so many titties. 

One of the things I was into as a kid was Friday Night Smackdown. One of the episodes was just like any episode until something wild happened. During a match, two wrestlers suddenly appeared. Those two were Big Show and Kane from another show I haven't heard of until that day, Monday Night Raw. 

This quickly became a core memory for me. Imagine being a kid whose into wrestling and learning on a random day that there was an entire world of wrestling you were unaware of. But unfortunately, my parents didn't have cable, so that world would be out reach for my entire childhood. 

God of War was essentially that for me. While I still love my Nintendo products, God of War was one of the first times a whole new world of video games opened up to me. One that carried edge, attitude, and an ungodly amount of titty flesh. And like Monday Night Raw, it would out of reach beyond JO-ing to some particular clips online. 

For the record, I know I keep harping on the sexual aspect, but pre-teen me went through it during this era. I would be lying if I said I sought God of War initially for its thematic depth. 

You gotta understand too I was the target audience for most games at the time. And around this time, the target audience revolved around pre-pubescent boys. Because of this, games were hella hedonistic. Ultra violence and sexual objectification were the norm. And unfortunately, this left a lot of games dated with these immature qualities. And worse still, it created an audience that now bitches when games have stopped pandering to those addled by porn addiction and toxic masculinity. 

This is a big part to why I like God of War so much. Because despite God of War being made in a time where unbridled sexuality and violence were encouraged, and happily obliging that culture, it manages to think long term about presenting that content in a more meaningful context. Let's talk about that context.

Kratos: A Character Study on a Savage Fuck Boy

God of War is famous for having one of the best opening levels in all of gaming. I don't think it bares repeating that the second enemy you face in this game is a giant hydra breaking through a Greek ship. As many have said, God of War 1's tutorial level would be the final level in most other games. 

So I won't go into the game design of it and instead talk about how the tutorial is also a wonderful narrative showcase in introducing a truly great protagonist. 

Oh yeah, spoilers if you haven't play it already. PS2 emulation is great nowadays. You have no excuse. 

Anyway, one thing that stood out on my recent play through is that the game makes no attempt to get you to like Kratos. I completely forgot that they don't fully reveal his backstory until much later in the game. Instead, you get it piecemeal, and I really like the game not showing its full hand. Most narratives wouldn't hesitate to show this in an attempt to get you to sympathize with Kratos, but it doesn't. You get hints here and there that Kratos is carrying some kind of guilt, and you know that guilt must be awful considering his general disregard of life throughout the game. In the tutorial level, he needlessly kills a man when he provides him with a key. Certain gameplay sections encourage you to murder randos running around to get health. The dialogue is my favorite part when it comes to elaborating on Kratos' character. He carries so much disrespect. Even with the gods, he seems to only act slightly respectful to them cause he knows that's the most efficient way to get what he wants and would gladly treat them the same way if he could. 

Selfishness becomes a core aspect of Kratos and is interwoven into everything God of War is trying to accomplish. Game feel especially accomplish this. 

God of War is a hack and slash game. Some would call it a spectacle fighter. But for the purposes of this, I am going to use its other name, character action. 

Some find that name kind of silly. "Yeah a lot of games have a character doing action," but I think that's not what the name is getting at. 

Character action is a continuation of the beat em up genre. And while beat em ups are fantastic, they were rather simple in conveying a narrative. Compared this to Devil May Cry, the game many consider the originator of the character-action game. Here you have Dante not only hacking and slashing but doing it while coming off as cool and in control. You could only show someone a few minutes of gameplay footage of Devil May Cry, and they would know exactly what kind of person Dante is. 

Likewise, God of War applies the same method with Kratos. Attacks are savage and to the point. His finishing moves are animalistic constantly aiming for the neck or head when disposing of enemies. The type of enemies convey this too. Usually enemies are small and are intimidating by having multiple of them. Almost all of God of War's enemy roster are twice the size of Kratos or have an athleticism or supernatural ability that can prove fatal to Kratos.  Let's not also ignore the fact that game only has three bosses (ones with a boss health bar), and it's telling that two of these bosses are associated with Herculean feats. As many have said, these bosses would be final bosses in any other game. And yet, Kratos dispatches almost everything with little struggle. Well, assuming you are playing on normal mode, but we'll get to that. 

It's interesting how dignified God of War is despite playing to rather low brow sensibilities. It's gorey and ultra violent, but it all meaningfully reinforces the narrative. The game is famous for having a sex minigame that would be an obligatory addition in every game before being rightfully discontinued with the Norse-era God of War entries. But even something as superficial as a sex minigame has meaning in this debut title. It reinforces Kratos pursuit to fill a void he created. It gives you a large amount of experience which establishes the game's upgrade system. And hey, it gives you practice for the quick time events. Cause in God of War, getting maimed and killed is more punishing than disappointing a woman sexually. 

This game is a perfect case study of bottom up design. I struggle to think of a single franchise that has such a rich foundation as God of War. The Greek setting, Kratos as a main character, and the hybrid of puzzle solving and combat create so many opportunities to explore creative and interesting ideas. Ill get to those. But first, let me express some Kratos like wrath at some of the problems. 

Ways This Game Pisses Me About

Im getting the problems out of the way because I don't know any other way to segway to it. 

If you ask me what the ideal way to play God of War is, it would be two things. Don't play it on hard mode and don't bother fighting the final boss. 

Now, I like a meaty challenge. I have beaten all fifteen Gold Stakes in Balatro at the time of writing. I have beaten all the bosses in Elden Ring. I play Pokemon on set mode. Challenge is very important for my play style. 

The thing is that Im particular on what kind of challenge Im provided. If the challenge doesn't enhance the experience, I feel it will leave me cold. 

God of War 1 unfortunately doesn't satisfy the way I prefer difficulty. To me, there has to be more to difficulty than enemies hitting harder and having more health. 

It lends to a common situation with these difficulties where the game becomes piss difficult early on. But once you come across more broken moves and spells, the game reverts back to being normal. Except, in normal, the enemies are less spongy. In other words, you are working hard only to be rewarded by a worse version of the game. 

It's frustrating, because God of War is very well designed in its enemy encounters. The enemies synergize where you can't brute force them. In the words of Josh Strife, it's never just one problem. I felt if they had more time they would've taken more cues from Devil May Cry and remixed some areas with different enemy combinations on higher difficulties. It still wouldn't relieve the problem of the enemies being too spongy, but at least I know I would be getting a different experience. 

The game overall suffers from random difficult spikes, and the tedious kind to boot. Unfun platforming sections in the Underworld. That sequence where you have to move a box while some stupid shit keeps interrupting your progress. And most notoriously, the final boss being the absolute worst. 

Ares is the major black mark on this game. The game does so well at building up to your final encounter with Ares, and the payoff is so underwhelming. God of War is at its best with a variety of enemies. Again, you are dealing with overlapping problems. The crowd control is a big part of what makes God of War a step up to me than the first Devil May Cry. Ares has none of that. It feels like a poorly designed Soulsborne boss. Except, unlike those, the camera is terrible at giving you feedback on how to dodge or block his attacks. It's a very trial and error affair, and thank the Gods you can skip all the cutscenes. I loath the alternate reality where this is a Kingdom Hearts or Paper Mario 2 situation. 

I also don't like the in-between sequence. I know a lot of people like it for story reasons. You have Kratos giving a chance to redeem himself by saving his family only for Ares to cruelly latch it away. But, from a gameplay standpoint, it's really annoying ESPECIALLY on harder difficulties. 

And once that's done, the game rewards you with an even worse Ares section. You know the Blades of Chaos that are so fun to use? Yeah now you are using some crappy sword with almost no range. Oh yeah, and you now share a health bar with Ares. So if he hits you, he gains his health back. 

That's about the only things that annoy me. Honestly, I don't have many problems with this game. The fact that a debut title of a series is lacking in issues is reflective of the kind of care that went into this game. They had EVERY excuse to just make an ultra violent, sex fueled, indulgent experience. And likely, it would have worked because the audience was more than happy to buy into that kind of experience. 

Instead, every detail is carefully considered to give the player more than that. Let's talk about those things in the form of mindless gushing. 

Ways This Game Makes Me GUSH

The central pitch of God of War during development was a mesh between Devil May Cry and Ico. Ive mention Devil May Cry's influence, but I want to get into Ico's influences. 

One of my favorite things narratives can do is have a minimalist approach in their foundation. In particular with video games, I love games that take place mostly in one location. Let's name some examples! Portal, Luigi's Mansion, Zero Escape, Gone Home, Resident Evil 1, Return of the Obra Dinn, Batman Arkham Asylum, the Forgotten City, and of course Ico. 

God of War, while not quite a one location adventure, shockingly has very few locations for a story about an odyssey reminiscent of Greek's greatest narrative tales. There's five to be exact: the ship in the beginning, Athens, The Desert of Lost Souls, Pandora's Temple, and the Underworld. There are technically more, but let's not get into semantics. 

Anyway, that's almost half of an average Super Mario Bros. game. It's impressive how much they get out of their locations. 

This is where the Ico influence comes in. Pandora's Temple would have been a one sequence affair which I feel is the common expectation if you play a lot of action games. Instead, Pandora's Temple is practically where most of the game takes place, and Pandora's Temple has the scale similar to Ico where the size looks almost incomprehensible. 

It lends itself to an interesting structure for the game. It doesn't rush to Pandora's Temple. Instead, it slowly builds up to it before having one of the most satisfying payoffs in the form of introducing the location on the back of Cronos. Man, I wish I can watch that cutscene again for the first time. One of the coolest moments ever. Then, they stretch out how long this temple is. Normally, I would call this padding. But for one, the sequences within, excluding the bad box moving challenges, are really varied and well done. And narratively, it makes sense why Pandora's Temple is long and arduous. It's fucking guarding one of the most powerful artifacts in this universe, and the Gods aren't going through the tedious shit of making seven distinct colored mcguffins. 

Pandora's Temple also has a lot going on narratively. I didn't catch until my latest playthrough a lot of parallels between Kratos and Pandora's Temple. The architect, Pathos Verdes III, has a similar arc to Kratos. One of hubris to serve the Gods only to lose his humanity and his family in the process. There is also an undercurrent narrative where the Gods use humans as pawns for their own gain. It adds an extra angle to the tragedy. Sure, Kratos and Verdes should be held accountable, but they're also victims. Victims to even crueler entities. Yadda yadda. They parallel us and how we marginalize and exploit animals and lower class people. Capitalism bad. Ill spare all the retreads thousands of essays have touched on when it comes to Greek mythology. Point is, God of War is a story about siblings sicking a vicious dog on their dickhead brother by wiring him with explosives and chainsaws. 

This is why Im not fond of the ending, but I will get to that in the next section. 

Anyway, let's talk about titties some more. 

I love the enemy designs. The team wanted the enemies to feel like fauna hence them exposing their genitalia. Again, this could be seen as another excuse to show tits, but the game doesn't draw attention to it. Instead, it does exactly what they intended. It takes a Greek setting and makes it gives it a sense of place. It makes me think of that scene of Lord of the Rings where they reproduce the orcs, and it's so icky it adds to the savagery of the bad guys. I get the same sense with the enemy designs. The fleshiness adds to the eeriness of Ares' army. 

In Regards to God of War II & III

I thought I had an idea of what I would write for this section. But before I wrote this, I played God of War: Valhalla, the expansion for Ragnorok. Well, I didn't play it. I watched a longplay of it. I was too lazy to download a large file for a DLC, and I didn't have the patience to go through its combat. 

Anyway, the narrative, and Ill minimize spoilers, is basically a rebuttal to Kratos actions throughout the Greek entries. In ways, it makes me retroactively appreciate a few of the choices in the God of War sequels. Though, the cynic in me has another side to it. 

But first, let me lay out my initial criticisms of the God of War sequels. 

My problem with God of War is that it suffers the same problem many forced horror franchises suffer from. You got a story that works perfectly as a standalone narrative. Kratos seeks vengeance for being tricked into killing his family. He succeeds in killing Ares. But as a result, the void remains there driving Kratos to suicide. And even more chilling, he was used as a pawn in the Gods plan to remove Ares from the picture. It's a tragedy where Kratos, with arguably little agency in his story, is tormented by the trauma of violence.  

It's why Im a little down on the actual ending where Kratos takes the mantle of the God of War. It's feels more like a need to leave things open for a sequel. It doesn't' feel like the honest end to Kratos, you know? The way I see it Kratos story should have ended when he jumped off that cliff. 

That said, I could see a reality where Kratos becoming the God of War could actually make for an interesting concept in the sequels, but my suggested approach might not be a popular one. In my opinion, the direction of God of War 2 should have been similar to Legacy of Kain or Metal Gear Solid and just have a different protagonist and Kratos taking on the role of either a side character or antagonist. 

Instead, God of War's narrative fell victim to a bad case of sequelitis. 

I felt the question of what can they do with Kratos was asked a lot throughout the sequels, and the answers were underwhelming at best. What can we do for God of War 2? Uhh, I guess Zeus takes Kratos power after he goes on power trip, and Kratos doesn't like that. Basically Kratos is a playable villain in the second one. But it begs the question, why did they make Kratos the God of War in the first place? I suppose the idea is that Athena was pulling the strings throughout the trilogy as a power grab as indicated by the end of God of War 3. But it's so sloppy and feels incongruent to everything the first game sets up. 

While the gameplay was iterated and polished very well, the story fails to do the same. And while I enjoy the Norse entries on their own for its narrative, it feels more like a bandaid to a series a games rather than a proper exploration of a character. 

God of War-I mean Jesus Christ. Im going to have to save this for another entry. I have way too much to say, and I am straying further from the game I want to talk about. I guess to tie it back to the first game. I can say that at least the first game stands on its own. Minus the ending. God of War doesn't feel tainted by its sequels, because it feels complete and meaningful on its own. 

Conclusion

God of War was a watershed game. It managed to take queues from the pioneers of the hack & slash genre and evolving into its own giant that other games would try to stand on with varying degrees of suck. Because let's be brutally honest, all the ones Im aware of are mediocre at best. Like I replayed Dante's Inferno shortly after this playthrough. And yeah, yuck. Dante's Inferno is embarrassing, but I digress. 

So yeah, I will obviously have more to say about God of War in the future. But for now, go play the first God of War if you haven't already. Like I said, PS2 emulation has gotten very good. You kids have it good. Back in my day, my computer would lag trying to get N64 games working properly. Now, fucking PS3 games can be emulated, and someone recently made a decompiling tool for XBOX 360 games. It makes me optimistic for the future of gaming despite the dystopian everything else in our society. 

Anyway, the only image in my head is a God of War game where Kratos storms the Capital, so I will leave yall with that.