God of War: Managing Expectations
I’m having a difficult time wrapping up my thoughts on God of War. I completed the main quest along with most of the optional content recently, and I’ve been pondering it ever since. It’s a good game, and it finishes pretty well, but there’s a few things that stick out as I think back on the fresh content that I finally got to see this time around, and I wonder if the knowledge of rave reviews without further detail didn’t set me up for a bit of disappointment.
On my first attempt at the game, I got to the point just after visiting Hel for the first time, where Kratos finally reveals his nature as a god and thus the boy’s heritage as part god himself. I think I witnessed part of a conversation where Atreus was deciding that, since they are gods, they have no need to care about the trivial concerns of mortals. It’s believable. His identity was upended, and his only frame of reference for how gods are supposed to act are the behaviors he’s witnessed in the awful Norse gods and, more importantly, his own father. It makes sense, then, that he begins to become blunt, superior, arrogant, and dismissive of those around him. The Norse gods have been more explicit in their poor example of godhood, but Kratos hasn’t done the boy any favors either, remaining distant, brusque, and seemingly apathetic towards everything that doesn’t serve his quest. Kratos is pretty clear, even as the player takes on side quests, that the reward had better be worth it, or that it will serve to provide them with additional resources for the quest. Kratos is extremely utilitarian in this regard. And even though the player has seen moments where he struggles with how to express his feelings for his son, Atreus doesn’t see that struggle. While Kratos disapproves of the way the Norse gods do things, his regular comments about disliking all gods generally – likely meant to invoke some reference to the Greek pantheon from previous games – combined with his general attitude appears to have the effect of demonizing all things equally. It comes across to Atreus not as “they are bad for doing things this way” and more like “I don’t like anything at all”, which isn’t teaching the boy anything except that gods don’t like things. Atreus takes the example and runs with it. It’s heartbreaking, because we can see that Kratos is trying to make sure his son does better – he even specifically says that Atreus must be better, at one point – but the boy isn’t hearing it, instead heading down a path that’s taking him further away from the person Kratos is hoping he will become.
The problem is they take it too far, I think.
What I witnessed initially was just the start, and as I began to get into new territory this time through, I saw Atreus become downright cruel. His enthusiasm for learning new things about the world around him, his friendly concern for the dwarf brothers’ relationship, his willing obedience, and his laid back attitude about the urgency and adventure of their quest are all gone almost like a switch was flipped. His personality was almost completely inverted, becoming dour, heartless, aggressive, and sullen. I don’t know how scripted this moment was, but one of the things that really hammered this home to me was during a fight, Atreus began to use his abilities without my prompting. Normally the kid wouldn’t use the ability until I pressed the square button, but when I went to use it during a fight, I noticed he’d already done so without my prompting. He was becoming independent in a way that no other medium could express, and it was concerning. Hats off to Sony Santa Monica for pulling that off, but at the same time the personality shift was so extreme in such a short amount of time as to be hard to swallow. And then the switch back to him being the same generally happy, curious, adventurous kid was equally rushed when Kratos and Atreus were thrown once more into Hel. Seeing his own behavior on display via some phantoms in the realm of the dead was enough to snap him out of it somehow, but I do wonder if there wasn’t meant to be something more as the boy repeatedly protested “that wasn’t me”, as if he were supposedly possessed or something. It wasn’t really touched on again after that, so either that’s a thread left dangling for a sequel, or maybe some cut content that was supposed to explore the Extreme Makeover: Personality Edition. I also wonder if, with the revelation that Atreus is meant to be Loki, the drastic personality shift is meant to hint at his mixed heritage somehow. Overall, getting Atreus back to normal was good, but it felt as rushed as his shift into apathy to begin with.
It almost sets the pace for the rest of the game at that point. To be fair, by this point I’d done 90% of the side content that I wanted to do already. There was a final quest for dwarf brothers Brok and Sindri which also wrapped up another quest to find some dragons, but then it was kind of just barreling towards the end. Further exploring Tyr’s temple and flipping it upside down, taking a boat ride down a giant snake’s gut, then being thrown literally into the final boss fight. The final fight with Baldur was extensive, and so it was clear somewhere near the beginning that this was the end, but it bordered on too long, even though the combat was varied enough to keep me engaged in more than just mad button pressing. And then it’s over, and we’re in the falling action portion of the finale, finally making the trip to Jotunheim to spread Atreus’s mother’s ashes, revealing that she was a giant all along, and that the name she wanted for him was Loki. It was a nice period of wrapping up the story, of bonding between Kratos and Atreus, but here again it felt like there was a lot going on in a short span of time. I do appreciate giving players multiple off-ramps to finish up whatever content they want, but by this point I was ready to head back to their family home and roll credits if only to get a breather from the break-neck pace of things. And then there’s a tease for the upcoming Ragnarok, with Thor showing up spoiling for a fight, but leaving things open-ended.
I don’t know if the rush to the end I felt was shared by others or not, and it’s entirely possible that if I’d done things in a slightly different order, it wouldn’t have felt so hurried. Overall I really enjoyed the game – enough that I’m considering going back and playing the older ones, or even making Ragnarok my one game purchase this year. I just can’t help wondering if the pacing issue I ran into was a result of cut content or the nature of a non-linear game. I know that this reboot had to be something of a gamble for Sony, but I feel like it paid off, and I’m hoping that this success gives the developers all of the time and resources they need to make Ragnarok even better.
Ultimately, I’m not sure what I was expecting from the end of the game. I’m glad to have played through it again, and to have finally beaten the game. It clearly deserves a lot of the praise that’s been lavished on it. And yet I feel like something is missing. Maybe it’s just my own familiarity with Norse mythology, or the constant references to Odin and Thor’s campaign against the giants that had me anticipating one of them showing up in this game. I think Baldur was the right choice as the final boss, in the end, simply because bringing in one of the others would have felt tacked on without more of their direct involvement in the story. But especially after the revelation that Atreus is supposed to be Loki, it felt odd to have Thor be relegated to villain that we never see outside of a tease for the next game. I get that they are setting up for a sequel, probably a trilogy, and planting seeds for games beyond that (I’m not the only one who noticed Egyptian hieroglyphs on Tyr’s hidden Jotnar shrine, right? That would give even stronger Teal’c vibes if they keep Chris Judge around – as they should.) It feels a little like they’re saving all their best stuff for the next game though. Which, if true, is going to make Ragnarok amazing. But it also means that everything from this game is really just prologue to the main event, appetizer to the main course. It’s a little off-putting getting that appetizer when you think you’re getting a full meal, though not enough to sour the entire experience.
While the game was mostly satisfying overall, I think it also serves as a reminder that managing expectations is an important part of the puzzle as well. The opening set a certain tone, and the game lived up to it. The main body of the game set a certain pace, and the ending didn’t really hold to that. And ending with a certain level of the larger narrative being left up in the air was kind of a let down, though I’ll admit the expectation of a wholly complete story was something I brought to the game myself. I feel like that’s a reasonable expectation though, and the developers didn’t really do anything (that I caught, anyway) to dissuade that. It does make me wonder if the God of War games simply being installments in a grander story is normal for the franchise though, and by not having the larger context of the previous games I didn’t have realistic expectations.