However I have a bone of contention with the sequels: As far as I’m concerned, they have no right to exist. Sure many critics are turning cartwheels over the technological aspects of the game but don’t they always do that? Sure there’s no denying that it looks great, the fun value and the reinvention of Ancient Greek mythology but I’m not buying that. As such I refuse to touch any God of War game that isn’t the first one.
The reason being is the plot: God of War presented a self-contained story that wrapped things up fairly nicely by the end. Kratos was given a decent motivation and enough characterisation and background for him to endear himself to the player in spite of the fact they were controlling a homicidal psychopath. And, like every other narrative protagonist, Kratos went through Hell/Hades (literally!), only to defeat Ares at the end, liberate himself from the curse (which was Kratos’ own stupid fault to begin with) and take the place of the God of War and inspire centuries of warfare forever afterward. That’s settled then!
However, come the sequel, Kratos is bored with being a god and being shunned by the other gods so he tries to start up a war on Earth. Zeus gets annoyed at this, strips Kratos of his powers and sends him back to Hades. This in turn, inspires Kratos to fight his way out of Hades swearing revenge on Zeus on his lips.
So just to recap: Kratos wants to get back at Zeus because Kratos was being a jerk. Riiiiiiiiiight.
Really though, from where I sit, it’s near impossible to build a sequel from a resolution offered by God of War 1. His family is avenged so what now? He’s just going to kill of a lot of things just because he feels like it? This does indeed come across as being a far cry from the complexity Kratos’ character got in the first game – and indeed puzzling that the designers made Kratos a psycho when he has previously been established as being more substantial than that. Sure he had a plausible motivation with revenge but when that’s fulfilled what next? Is he just going on revenge because that’s all he’s good at? Why would you complain about being a God? If you have powers beyond imagination and yet you STILL can’t extinguish the memory of your murdering past then what good are you?
And God of War 3 presents an even more nonsensical scenario as Kratos’ revenge-inspired, god-killing actions justifies the collapse of Greek Mythology. But really that just comes across as being sad: Kratos’ character is even further ruined and the distance between him and the players grows wider still. And having Kratos doing the same things, without any proper reason to do so, reeks of writers struggling to come up with something new. Indeed, it makes me wonder why they even bothered making a sequel – wouldn’t have been easier to come up with something new?
So that’s why I won’t touch the God of War sequels. Seriously, who would want to play a game controlling a dude whose one key achievement in the first game is repeated ever afterward?
My deleted post basically said Kratos sucks. What I will say instead:
ReplyDeleteKratos sucks, because never before have I played a game in which I care NOTHING about the main character. He's an unlikeable, bone-headed, uninspiring moron, who likes to kill things. The first game was kind of fun, though I hated it because of the bastardisation of Greek Mythology. As for the sequels, I also won't touch them. A whole load of rot, they are, in my opinion. Why would I want to play something crap like that, when I could be playing a good, replayable game like Oblivion or Mass Effect? :D