They screwed up Kratos
They shat… They screwed up Kratos. In the new Kratos games, they were able to transform everything they had built into trash. They destroyed the character, ruining his future. Made Kratos something he never was meant to be, but as they did, now it’s impossible to say that the original games have a good protagonist, because it would be impossible that a good character to become the 2018 Kratos.
Rotten Chicken
There is a problem when it comes to consuming any product that is spoiling the ending of it. There are many works that have good development but lack a good conclusion. The best example I know is Shingeki no Kyojin, but there are still fans who complain about Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Far Cry 3 and so on. A waste of good works.
Some souls still dare to say that “The ending is bad, but it doesn’t make the whole work bad.” Well, isn’t the ending part of the whole? If the end is not important, why is the middle? or the beginning? Imagine eating the best chicken in the world and at the last bite discovering that the meat was rotten. Will you forever remember the best chicken you ate, or that you ate rotten chicken? I imagine you remember both, never one without the other. And if in your concept of good, there is a piece of rotten chicken, I don’t want to hear your recommendations. But then, does everything need to be perfect in a work for it to be considered good?
No, of course not. A work of art has several facets that can be measured in different proportions. We treat games as a complex work of art that mixes script, actors, music, combat, interface, audiovisual, SFX… This will never end. Even the title of the game is part of the work. The engine used to make the game can hinder everything else in the product. Just imagine several lines of quality, belonging to the various aspects that make up a game, superimposed on top of each other. We seek the balance between these qualities to know the score of a game.
Now, it’s obvious that there are different weights for each aspect. The interface of a game is not as important as the rest, although it can make a lot of difference (games like Nier, Persona, Metal Gear Solid and even Guitar Hero). It’s an aspect that makes no difference when implemented effortlessly, as in most Souslike games, but that can complete or ruin a game. We add, then, different weights for different aspects in different games. Because of course, the script of Guitar Hero is not that important, just like the character development in the game Tetris.
Still, they are details that make a difference. Sonic was an arcade game that had good character development. If Guitar Hero had a well-founded story, well mixed with the gameplay, perhaps it would not have failed (and of course, if the big game and copyright companies didn’t like to screw things up). That said, our graph improves for this:
The script isn’t important for our example, so its points have receive a buff. However, the gameplay is highly important, it goes in disadvantage, since the public already excpects that from this game. It would be like saying freedom of act in GTA is the minimum, while freedom on a story game, like The Last of Us, would be appreciated with extra points. Balancing the points, we get this purple line, defining the game overall quality.
Where do I want to get with all of that obvious stuff? One ending can, surely, ruin everything that was built from the beginning. It just needs to be bad enough. It’s easier in the case of the supposed god of war, which has delivered two games to ruin the main three games from the series. Didn’t mentioned other two factors about rating games, which I didn’t want to draw because I don’t know well how would I do it, honestly.
Each person have your own notion of quality for each game. Someone who just plays story games can have (or not, what sustain even more my point) a better investigation for details from the genre. I don’t have any ideia on how to judge a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. I wouldn’t know which one is better and by any means. I would say I’m good judging story games and, I have friends who understand much better than me and could prove me wrong in multiple ways. And definitely there are people better than them. Therefore, we can always be failing to judge certain aspects and wrongly measuring weights for other ones.
Specially in story games, some moments can have different weights. For instance, isn’t expected a very well-written script for a sidequest, or even for the main quest when it is on 20%/30% of the game. But at the ending, the weight of the script quality, the acting, the character and etc, gets higher. And other aspects can be less important, like the gameplay. This is still no talking about series. It makes no sense a game having a worse story than his antecessor.
The moral from that, then? Was the last game bad due to its ending? The last game broke all the series?
Kratos?
Given that God of War is about all the games of the same character, all the games are part of the same product. That said, my discomfort is in the neglect of the character by the new franchise. They destroyed Kratos’s personality since 2018, thus destroying the entire God of War series.
Our former man of war has now become a clown in another mythology. Someone who entirely defeated one mythology needs help to kill 2 Nordic gods. I don’t know what is worse, if it is the fact that they humiliate Kratos or humiliate the Greek mythology itself. In the last games there were very simple things: some weapons, some enemies, some magic, much blood, much combo, much violent scene. Now, you are going to spend 80 hours listening to 2 dumbasses, kill countless repeated enemies (that is, of course, if your number is greater than the one above their head) and get thousands of items with different properties, to spend a lot of time deciding which is the best for each situation. But of course, besides that, there are also the main missions! How could I forget needing to fight a bear, save Tyr, spin his temple, enter the middle of the war of the elves, walk with Angrboda, walk with Thor at Odin’s service, save the pig, insignificant fights against Baldur… Anyway, that’s not the problem, nor will I comment on the puzzles, the talking, the yellow paints and etc. That the games are bad compared to the first ones, they are, but that is not the biggest problem of the games. The problem is that they shat on Kratos.
They killed the personality of our god of war. They changed the main character, they changed the game. Before who was nervous, angry, brute, animalistic, grumpy, fierce and strong, now is calm, fearful, worried, tired. Kratos no longer exudes power in actions, in speeches, in appearance. Even height the god lost. Before he did not back down to titans, now he obeys the imbecile son. What happened to the imposition of power, which has always existed since the first game? The fury awakened not only in actions, but in the very soul, in the spirit, converted into the blood of enemies, war cries and hot blades. The way I speak it is almost comical, but all the beginnings of the first trilogy games were like that. If you still haven’t understood what I’m saying, compare the scenes:
Don’t get me wrong, there are two or three scenes of the new Kratos angry or furious, but it’s a minority, while before it was the necessary, the standard, what made the character be the character. Now he is belittled by his son, by enemies, by other characters (including poorly developed ones).
I really like the idea of changing ideas, morality, psychological evolution. In fact, it is a fundamental part of character development. Farcry 3 and 4 do this very well, for example (of course, there are other problems in these games). They change ideas and mature the personality, maintaining their soul, their core. Ajay and Jason do not stop being good people, partygoers, with fears and worries, when they get used to assassinating and surviving. Like children, they learn new things, project new ideas and root them in their personalities. They did not become psychopaths, crazy people, antisocial or calm villains like Gus Fring.
They didn’t tell Cory Barlog, director of the new series of games, that there was a possibility of evolving ideals without erasing the character’s personality. In fact, what they should have been told is that it is impossible to change the personality of an adult, except through trauma or hypnosis, perhaps. This is different when it comes to children, or even young people, because they are still in the development of personality. But once rooted, except for traumatic causes I don’t have an example of someone who changed overnight, even after years. Someone calm and controlled, at 25 years old, does not reach 35 being someone energetic and uncontrolled. I will not become a serious guy, who doesn’t make jokes when he can and stops having a beer when he’s with friends. People change, personalities dance, hobbies vary, and someone can even become less shy or more cheerful. But there is a core, there are things that make that person that person. This was lost in the new Kratos. The only thing he carries from himself is the past, which takes 2 games to accept.
I don’t care about Kratos being a pacifist, more intelligent, avoiding risks, avoiding his anger. I am bothered by the Kratos belittled by enemies, afraid, holding back all the time, not wanting to be himself. It was an attempt to mature Kratos’ personality, trying to overcome his own past. And that part worked, actually, but it came accompanied by a new character. Following this idea, I even think it would have been better a complete redesign of the character, like a real timeskip. This way, at least they would not be responsible for developing the protagonist’s humorous change, but would already have it as a result and work on top of that.
That said, I will go back to playing God of War 3, the best game in the franchise, which I have finished countless times. But I will not convince myself that it is worth it, I will not recommend it. I play because of the attachment I developed and, obviously, the inherent quality of the game. But I also play sad knowing that this character is a farce, is a good prototype of failure, is a chicken that will rot.