I finished the new God of War a while back and if you've seen my posts on here about it, you'll know I've been less than thrilled about the whole experience for various reasons. I could talk endlessly about how the combat system isn't very good or why all the Zelda/Resi 4/Metroid/Bloodborne/etc. comparisons are flimsy at best, but there's one particular sore point I have about the game that sticks out to me above all that other stuff which I would like to discuss in this thread today: the tonal shift between this game and its predecessors and the way the character of Kratos is presented.
From the moment it was announced, the entire premise of this soft reboot struck me as absurd: I know many people have brought up this point already, but it bears repeating that the Kratos we know from the first six (!) games is an irredeemable monster. He's the kind of person who would kill completely innocent people if they're just sort of vaguely in his way, and God of War 3 ends with him basically murdering the entire planet because of his daddy issues. You might be tempted to argue that Ares' betrayal is what turned him into this sociopath to begin with, but the original God of War makes it blatantly clear in its flashbacks that Kratos was always a blood-hungry killing machine. Even the word "betrayal" is somewhat stretching it - the death of Kratos' family is tragic, but we can probably all agree that he brought it upon himself and that he's a massive hypocrite.
Putting this character into the role of a father taking care of his child over the course of an entire game, then, always seemed like one hell of a stretch to me. Ignoring all of the weird implications inherent to this concept for a minute, I always had a hard time even looking at this Kratos as the same character, and I couldn't possibly put myself in those shoes knowing his bloody past - he was the perfect anti-hero for a chaotic action game about killing everything on-screen that's not you, but the idea of this guy taking care of a child was nothing short of appalling to me. I've been told numerous times to wait for the final game to explain everything and to make it all click, but now that I've played it I have to say it's even worse than I imagined.
To get to the point, God of War 2018 actually has Kratos being a massive dick to his son for most of the early-game: he's stern, cold, coarse, dismissive… but you also get the sense that he just doesn't know any other way and that he's still really trying his hardest to teach and protect Atreus. His disposition leads to many awkward moments and situations between the two where Atreus essentially directly confronts his father about his shitty attitude and tries to hold up a mirror to him, which will slowly get Kratos to thaw and open up more as the game progresses.
It might be tempting to think this the ideal way of portraying Kratos in this new game, but it's actually where my biggest problem in this regard lies: it feels cheap and dishonest. "Kind of a dick to his son" doesn't even remotely measure up to what Kratos was like in the old games. The game tries so hard to make you think "wow, they're really looking at this character through a critical lens here!" when they're in fact completely dodging so much of what makes Kratos genuinely horrible. He wasn't just antisocial. He wasn't just selfish. I can't stress enough that he was a fucking MONSTER. This new game isn't just a jarring tonal shift, it reinterprets the degree of his depravity as much less than it truly is.
It gets worse as the game progresses and slowly starts to "redeem" Kratos. He softens up, becomes willing to even play around with Atreus and indulge in his son's curiosity, and even scolds him for being "unkind" and "needlessly brutal" as he lets the idea of being a god get to his head (one of the worst parts of the game narratively, but that's besides the point). Disregarding how insanely hypocritical that stuff sounds of his mouth either way, Kratos was already way too far gone in the original series for this kind of "character growth" to still be "acceptable." We wouldn't be willing to give a mass murderer a chance to redeem themselves in real life (not that that's a realistic thing for them to want in the first place), so why is someone like Kratos not held under the same kind of scrutiny? The game even goes so far as to show us flashbacks and visions of characters like Athena calling Kratos just that - an irredeemable monster, something that Kratos himself doesn't even seem to disagree with.
The writers didn't seem to get the memo though with how they essentially made Kratos the sole voice of reason in the endgame. He even goes so far as to give Baldur, the game's final boss, a lecture about how "vengeance won't bring him peace" which is FUCKING HILARIOUS considering how much Kratos himself seems to have mellowed out after finishing his "business" in God of War 3. After killing Baldur (which at this point was more than justified), we're even left with his mother, Freya, swearing revenge on us for murdering her son, and that's such a weird position to put Kratos in to me? Motherfucking KRATOS is now the one being threatened for SAVING people from a violent god's rampage? Given the precedence of the previous games that just doesn't feel right at all and it's another example of this game's writing being all over the fucking place.
There's so much more about the new God of War's narrative that I think is exceptionally poorly done, but this one big point is really what it comes down to me, and I'm left confounded at all the praise it's receiving specifically for how Kratos is handled. Like I said in the title of this thread, the mere attempt of redeeming someone like Kratos is so irresponsible keeping all of the underlying implications in mind. The way they ended up doing it is dishonest to the character and makes light of just how evil he is at his core. Just dropping an odd line like "yeah I killed a lot of innocent people sorry" here or there doesn't even begin to justify the direction they're now taking him in. If you ask me, the only acceptable way for this game to end would've been to fucking kill Kratos off already and leave not a shred of doubt about the fact that he was a bad person.
From the moment it was announced, the entire premise of this soft reboot struck me as absurd: I know many people have brought up this point already, but it bears repeating that the Kratos we know from the first six (!) games is an irredeemable monster. He's the kind of person who would kill completely innocent people if they're just sort of vaguely in his way, and God of War 3 ends with him basically murdering the entire planet because of his daddy issues. You might be tempted to argue that Ares' betrayal is what turned him into this sociopath to begin with, but the original God of War makes it blatantly clear in its flashbacks that Kratos was always a blood-hungry killing machine. Even the word "betrayal" is somewhat stretching it - the death of Kratos' family is tragic, but we can probably all agree that he brought it upon himself and that he's a massive hypocrite.
Putting this character into the role of a father taking care of his child over the course of an entire game, then, always seemed like one hell of a stretch to me. Ignoring all of the weird implications inherent to this concept for a minute, I always had a hard time even looking at this Kratos as the same character, and I couldn't possibly put myself in those shoes knowing his bloody past - he was the perfect anti-hero for a chaotic action game about killing everything on-screen that's not you, but the idea of this guy taking care of a child was nothing short of appalling to me. I've been told numerous times to wait for the final game to explain everything and to make it all click, but now that I've played it I have to say it's even worse than I imagined.
To get to the point, God of War 2018 actually has Kratos being a massive dick to his son for most of the early-game: he's stern, cold, coarse, dismissive… but you also get the sense that he just doesn't know any other way and that he's still really trying his hardest to teach and protect Atreus. His disposition leads to many awkward moments and situations between the two where Atreus essentially directly confronts his father about his shitty attitude and tries to hold up a mirror to him, which will slowly get Kratos to thaw and open up more as the game progresses.
It might be tempting to think this the ideal way of portraying Kratos in this new game, but it's actually where my biggest problem in this regard lies: it feels cheap and dishonest. "Kind of a dick to his son" doesn't even remotely measure up to what Kratos was like in the old games. The game tries so hard to make you think "wow, they're really looking at this character through a critical lens here!" when they're in fact completely dodging so much of what makes Kratos genuinely horrible. He wasn't just antisocial. He wasn't just selfish. I can't stress enough that he was a fucking MONSTER. This new game isn't just a jarring tonal shift, it reinterprets the degree of his depravity as much less than it truly is.
It gets worse as the game progresses and slowly starts to "redeem" Kratos. He softens up, becomes willing to even play around with Atreus and indulge in his son's curiosity, and even scolds him for being "unkind" and "needlessly brutal" as he lets the idea of being a god get to his head (one of the worst parts of the game narratively, but that's besides the point). Disregarding how insanely hypocritical that stuff sounds of his mouth either way, Kratos was already way too far gone in the original series for this kind of "character growth" to still be "acceptable." We wouldn't be willing to give a mass murderer a chance to redeem themselves in real life (not that that's a realistic thing for them to want in the first place), so why is someone like Kratos not held under the same kind of scrutiny? The game even goes so far as to show us flashbacks and visions of characters like Athena calling Kratos just that - an irredeemable monster, something that Kratos himself doesn't even seem to disagree with.
The writers didn't seem to get the memo though with how they essentially made Kratos the sole voice of reason in the endgame. He even goes so far as to give Baldur, the game's final boss, a lecture about how "vengeance won't bring him peace" which is FUCKING HILARIOUS considering how much Kratos himself seems to have mellowed out after finishing his "business" in God of War 3. After killing Baldur (which at this point was more than justified), we're even left with his mother, Freya, swearing revenge on us for murdering her son, and that's such a weird position to put Kratos in to me? Motherfucking KRATOS is now the one being threatened for SAVING people from a violent god's rampage? Given the precedence of the previous games that just doesn't feel right at all and it's another example of this game's writing being all over the fucking place.
There's so much more about the new God of War's narrative that I think is exceptionally poorly done, but this one big point is really what it comes down to me, and I'm left confounded at all the praise it's receiving specifically for how Kratos is handled. Like I said in the title of this thread, the mere attempt of redeeming someone like Kratos is so irresponsible keeping all of the underlying implications in mind. The way they ended up doing it is dishonest to the character and makes light of just how evil he is at his core. Just dropping an odd line like "yeah I killed a lot of innocent people sorry" here or there doesn't even begin to justify the direction they're now taking him in. If you ask me, the only acceptable way for this game to end would've been to fucking kill Kratos off already and leave not a shred of doubt about the fact that he was a bad person.
