This write-up contains story spoilers for God of War. If you are looking to avoid spoilers, I’d suggest doing what I did, and avoiding everything GoW related and playing the shit out of it until you at least complete the story.
That said, I have to be honest and say that there really wasn’t much that could have been spoiled. Sure, there a few epic set pieces, and one of them would’ve definitely been been ruined, had I expected it to happen.
But as far as truly shocking, game-changing story events go, God of War plays it surprisingly safe, and I was fairly surprised when the end came and the multiple things I had expected to happen, never did. That’s not to say I was disappointed, but when you reach the climax of a game without realizing it’s the climax, something is a little unbalanced.
I’m not going to sing the praises of the game. Hundreds of gaming critics have already shouted them from the highest peaks of Jotunheim by now, so if you’re reading this, you already heard that it’s a fantastic game. And it is, but it’s not without its flaws.
If you read my early impressions a while back, you remember my initial frustrations with the combat system and its controls. While I’m glad to say that I eventually grew into it, the learning curve is still pretty steep for anyone not accustomed to Dark Souls or anything in that genre. Shoulder buttons for attacks are just weird, and as an extra nuisance, the Dual Shock 4 controller doesn’t really seem to be up to the task of having someone mash the R1 button a thousand times in an hour. About halfway through my playthrough, the button started sticking and not popping back up, which made the combat fucking impossible. I thought maybe I’d had something on my hands or gotten the controller dirty, but after looking up the solution on the internet it was apparent that it’s a known thing. Luckily it was an easy fix, but still something that shouldn’t have happened. I’ve beaten the shit out of my XBO controller for the past five years and it’s still going strong. Not the game’s fault, but still an issue I thought I’d mention. So keep the Q-tips handy.
I was pretty down on the thought of having a kid following me around everywhere, but it actually wasn’t too bad. They toned down a lot of his banter from the initial E3 preview, and thankfully it wasn’t nearly as grating as it was then. In all, Atreus is pretty helpful in combat and his thirst for story-telling is one of the better parts of his interaction with Kratos and Mimir. Which is nice, because if rowing around the Lake of the Nine was a silent one, it would be an awfully boring slog back and forth to the various locations in the hub world. It was a wise decision by the designers to fill those gaps with lore and backstory to the different races and beings that inhabit the nine realms.
The Lake of the Nine serves as the hub, and it’s masterfully crafted to change as you progress through the story, unlocking new areas naturally and keeping some off-limits until a certain skill is acquired. It’s in this area where the game lets the player decide just how much they’re going to do and how much of a challenge they want to endure. It’s a cool system and largely works, but for someone like me who has this light OCD when it comes to finding everything in an area, it’s a nightmare. Chests are scattered quite generously throughout the map, and Kratos will seldom have the requirements to unlock it, but without any proper means of keeping track, the player is sure to forget where every single skipped chest is located.
Another one of my peeves is with the Destiny-like dependency on newer, better gear to “level up.” This was a frustrating point for me, as I am someone who just isn’t very good at these games. New, better gear is important for me if I want to have a chance to kill, say.. a Valkyrie or nine. The better gear starts being added to the store later in the game, and all of them require rare materials that you can only get from specific places or by completing certain challenges. Not up to that challenge? Well, then prepare to be stuck with whatever Level 5 gear you have for the rest of the game. Forget about maxing out your axe and blades as well.
There is a bit of disharmony when it comes to the side quests and the main story as well. Not in that they don’t work well together, but that the side-quests are often much more difficult than anything you’ll do in the story. This was a bit misleading for me, since I was getting my ass handed to me readily by level 8 monsters, thinking that I really needed to upgrade and fix my shit if I wanted to have a chance to beat the game. When I finally ended up conceding and deciding to continue on with the story, I was level 6, and I found very little challenge in anything. I felt both over-prepared for the story, and under-prepared for the side stuff, all at once.
I get it, though. Everything that was stupid difficult was optional, and that’s great. I didn’t feel stuck on something I had to do, and I can appreciate that. But at the same time, there was so much more optional content outside of the main story that it felt as though I was missing out on the meat of the game. I know that’s a strange thing to complain about, but when you finish the game and have a long, long list of inventory items and you don’t even know what they’re for, the game kind of comes off as something that might have been a more grand vision that they decided to scale down and tighten up.
Which bring me to the actual spoiler-y part of this write-up. It’s obvious that they weren’t going to make just one God of War. Anyone with half a brain knew this was going to be a trilogy at least, and we get confirmation of that as the game proper ends with the first signs of Ragnarok, along with Thor’s reveal at the end of the epilogue (which I personally didn’t see, because after the credits rolled and I returned to Midgard, I turned the fucking game off to write this.) I had it pegged after the final fight with Baldur, though, as I’m sure anyone else had as well. As Kratos and Atreus were sprinkling Mother’s ashes, there was no boom from the sky. No last-second fight with Odin himself, no enraged Freya, nothing. Everything in this game just seemed like a setup for something more grand.
It honestly felt a bit anti-climactic. The fight with Baldur was much easier than I expected, and despite the spectacle of a re-animated giant looming overhead, it definitely didn’t feel like a end-game battle. After that, as I was running Kratos up the long path to Jotunheim, I knew there was going to be something waiting for me. A fight with a giant? Odin himself. Something was going to be waiting for me up there. Only there wasn’t. After the surprise dragon boss, the optional Valkyries, and the fucking brutal first Baldur fight, were my expectations just set too high? What were my expectations?
I don’t really know, maybe I was expecting to be knocked back down again, or have to turn around again, because it had already happened so many times already. Just walking up to the peak and spreading the ashes couldn’t be that easy, could it? It turned out, it was, and it felt like I had cheated just a little. Like when an enemy you’ve been having trouble with gets stuck on a rock and you wail on it until it dies. Yeah, you won! Congrats!
I know, I know. I’m finding things to complain about. That’s fair, because God of War is an excellent game. I was planning on beating it as quickly as possible so I could trade it in and get a discount on something else, but now I’m not so sure I want to get rid of it. There was so much I left undone, and part of me really does want to try to defeat the Valkyries.
But then the other part of me realizes I’m terrible at these games and that I write Rant-astic! articles for a reason.
