Virtual 100 – Game 16

Warning: This write-up contains story spoilers.

Welcome back! It’s been a little while, huh? I bet some of you were probably thinking I forgot about this whole thing, or that I lost interest and let it die a slow, painless death. Well, I’m not that easy.

No, I was dividing my time amongst a few different games, not really making much progress in any of them, before I finally settled down and forced myself to dedicate all my time to one specific game. Ya know, so that I could actually get some shit done.

That game was God of War Ragnarok, and man it took some time to actually get said shit done. I knew it was a bit on the lengthy side, but the first God of War was pretty digestible once I sat down and actually played it, so I figured this would be the same. Man, was I wrong. GoW Ragnarok was a 20-hour game stretched across a good 40+ hours.

This game has more padding than the Charmin girl. I couldn’t decide, during a playthrough that spanned almost a month, whether I loved or hated it. I flipped back and forth more than a few times, to be honest. There were times that, when GoW Ragnorok hit, it hit hard. And then there were other times when I scratched my head and asked myself, just… why?

I even almost quit the game a time or two. Not kidding. Ultimately, though, after the credits rolled and I was treated to an endgame quest that I had absolutely no energy to explore, I turned off the game late last night with the notion that I would sleep on it, and see how I felt about it in the morning. That is why I am sitting here, coffee in hand, jotting down my thoughts, and why they seemed a bit scatter-brained. As it stands right now, the caffeine having not quite kicked in yet, I feel like I liked God of War Ragnorok and I almost loved it. I wanted to love it. But every time I started to get there, the game would do something that would temper my feelings and bring me back down a peg.

I’m going to preface the rest of this write-up by saying I never had much interest in the God of War series, though I have played through them all. Even the PSP games (except for that weird multiplayer one). But they were something that I enjoyed as part of my hobby; I was never a huge fan. But I have a comfortable familiarity with Kratos’ history (even if it did get a bit convoluted at one point) and I like to think I know his character pretty well. But I haven’t followed the series in the media, so I went into Ragnarok having not really read any reviews or not even really knowing what the overall feelings were toward the game. As such, my opinions on this one haven’t been swayed by public opinion, and I went into it not really knowing anything about the story whatsoever. In fact, even though I probably would’ve bought the game eventually, the only reason I have it is because it came with my PS5.

I have no bias toward God of War, is what I’m trying to say. So to someone who does have a love for the series, and might consider themselves a fan, this write-up might seem a bit harsh. Because while I did like my time with Ragnarok, holy shit did I have some issues with it.

The question is, where do I start? I guess I’ll start with the thing that I had the biggest problem with— the combat. For the record— I played on “Give Me Balance” which I’m assuming is “normal” difficulty.

I personally think the combat in Ragnarok is poor. I didn’t think it was great in GoW 2018 either, but I managed to get through it without nearly as much frustration as I experienced here. This isn’t so much a problem with the responsiveness or the tightness of it; Kratos handles just fine, but the crowd control can be extremely frustrating, and the battle can sway dramatically one way or the other depending on which enemy you happen to see first. Your allies will frequently and consistently warn you of incoming threats, and there are still the flashing arrows on the screen that will tell you if you’re about to be hit, but you still have react. And whether you manage to do it effectively or not, it’s still irritating as hell having to constantly interrupt your own combos to dodge or roll away because some asshole is shooting an arrow at you from a ledge. Sure, you can turn your attention to that one and throw your axe or spear to get rid of them, but then you’re being attacked by the enemy you just turned away from. And so goes the back and forth, the endless rolling, the parry-parry-parry-dodge of a slew of attacks that sometimes never seem to fucking end, and you can maybe understand why this gets exhausting after a while. Stretch this out over forty-plus hours, and you might understand why it took me so damn long to get through this game. At the best of times, it was mildly annoying, and at the worst, I was setting my controller down so that I could throw a silent rage tantrum. There were times where I’d boot the game up, play for a half an hour and then have to turn the game off again because I just couldn’t be bothered.

On top of that, the game commits a crime that, I will be fair, a lot of games do. Especially super-hero games. It’s the crime of nerfing your main character so that they don’t tear ass through everything that moves without breaking a sweat. It’s why Wolverine’s adamantium claws don’t slice a guy in half with one swipe. It’s why Superman doesn’t turn a guy into a red goo with a single punch. And it’s why Kratos will get slammed through a mountain, with nothing more to show for it than some dirt on his shoulder, only to get staggered by one swipe from a lizard. I understand why it is what it is, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

It doesn’t just apply to Kratos either. Freya, Valkyrie Goddess that she is, absolutely lays the smack down on Kratos early in the game. He and Atreus fear her. They truly believe she will kill them. But then, suddenly, once she’s fighting alongside you, it’s ‘pew-pew’ with her arrows and an occasional swipe from her sword. Her presence on the battlefield is relatively unnoticeable. Her and Kratos fighting side by side should absolutely be wrecking shit, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake, without breaking a sweat. Yet here I am, rolling around the battlefield, running away from a lizard the size of a dog so that I can get to the green health crystal laying on the ground, so that I don’t die a sad pathetic death.

Like I said, I get the why, but it’s still irritating that Kratos is practically indestructible when it serves the story, but every other time it’s like, “watch out for that plant, Kratos, it shoots darts!” It’s a silly dichotomy that only works if you turn your brain off to it.

I’m sure I’m gonna get some shit for my opinion, and probably more than one “get gud” comment, but honestly I didn’t have a problem dodging or parrying, and most of the optional boss battles I fought, like the berserker graves and the draugr holes, may have taken me a few tries but once I saw their pattern, I got through them well enough. But group combat in the game was annoying any way you slice it. Pun definitely intended.

While the combat was my biggest gripe, it wasn’t my only one. The next thing that bugged me was the incessant need to find and do all the things. That’s because weapon and armor crafting and upgrading relies on materials found in the world. These things can drop from monsters and bosses, but most of them are acquired by completing “favors” (side quests) or by opening chests. There are many different kinds of chests that have different requirements for opening them, which I won’t get into, but its usually a mystery just what will be in these chests until you actually open them.

Now, this is something in which I can’t really say for sure, because I’ve only played through this once, but without these upgrades, Kratos’ gear essentially stays low-level and relatively weak. Meaning these “optional” activities aren’t really that optional, unless you’re one of those masochists that likes to run through Demon’s Souls naked with a stick.

It’s something that I hated about the Tomb Raider reboot series. I loved those games, and really wanted to play through them multiple times. But her story progress is tied to her gear, and in order to upgrade her gear, you need to harvest supplies. Which means if you want to mainline the story and just enjoy it, you have to keep stopping what you’re doing to search for supply boxes. The first time through a game is fine, but every subsequent playthrough, you just kinda feel like doing it less and less. I wish it was optional.

And maybe it is in GoW Ragnarok. I hope it is. Because I would be willing to play through it again for the story without the endless grind for loot. This game is padded as shit, and I would love to mainline the story without the need to find all the things, every time.

Speaking of the story…

I thought the story was great, but it wasn’t perfect. Granted, no story is ever “perfect” but there were a few leaps in logic here, along with a deus ex machina, a red herring or two, and one hell of a macguffin.

I’m not going to go into the intricacies of the story because honestly, I don’t really have the desire to, but it all centers around a prophecy, with the main focus being Kratos and Atreus’ desire to subvert said prophecy, while also making sure it comes true. It’s a contradiction that they’re all-too aware of, and they’ll make sure you’re aware of it too. Repeatedly.

Where they really dropped the ball though, is that Atreus is driven by a particular part of the prophecy; one where Kratos is dead and Atreus is embracing Odin, the All-Father and overall big bad guy. The weird part is that, while this is a key motivation for the majority of Atreus’s actions, never once did I ever feel like Kratos was in danger. Nor did the writers ever really hint at a key pivotal moment where the story diverts from this pre-destined path. I kept waiting for this moment where Kratos is at the mercy of Odin, and the prophecy is on the verge of coming true, but it just never happened, and at the end of the day I was wondering what it was all for.

Also, at the end of the game, Kratos witnesses another mural that shows the aftermath of Ragnarok, with Kratos seemingly being worshipped as a leader of the nine realms (at least that’s what I got from it). So which is it, Giants? Does he die, with Atreus joining Odin, or does he bring about Ragnarok and lead the nine realms?

It seems to me like the Giants were less about prophecies and more about just drawing shit on walls to see what happens.

Or maybe I’m just missing the plot completely. That may be the case, and if so, perhaps I might have been able to track it better had I not had to take multi-hour side trips to random places to try and get enough shit to upgrade my gear. It’s not my fault, is what I’m saying.

With all that bitching aside, I will say this: the acting in the game is fantastic. I know Teal’c himself did the voice, but whoever did the facial capture for Kratos fucking nailed it. There were parts of the game where the camera focuses on him. No words are said, just quiet moments where the subtle changes of expression on his face speak volumes. These are by far the most powerful moments in the game, where Kratos struggles with his emotions, whether they are suppressing his rage, or fighting back literal tears. When I said at the beginning of this that when GoW Ragnorok hits, it hits hard, this is what I meant. It was the moments when there was no action on screen, no words were being spoken, and literally nothing was happening aside from Kratos sitting in a tent, watching his child sleep, or contemplating his late wife’s words while hanging up his axe, that were the best in the game. I would challenge anyone who would disagree.

Most of the character arcs and personal stories worked well enough, though I do think they tried a little too hard to shoe-horn some of the other mini-stories in. Thor was an interesting character. He was Odin’s muscle; the guy the mob would send to your house to collect. As such his character arc was a bit predictable, though the actor did a great job of giving him that down-trodden, curmudgeonly charm that you would see from an actor like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

It was Odin that I had the problem with. Not that the actor didn’t do a great job as the character. It’s just that they didn’t do a very good job portraying why he was such a bad guy. Every time we see him, he’s playing Good Uncle Odin to Atreus, and the only reason we have any idea that he’s a bad dude is from the stories and the opinions of everyone else. For most of the game, he was basically a boogieman; the reason for everyone’s suffering, but we only really get to see him show his true colors at the very end of the story. Before then, we just kind of had to take everyone’s word for it. Even Thrud, Thor’s daughter, makes this point to Atreus. His entire opinion of Odin had been formed by the others around him, who all held a grudge for one reason or another. In short, they all hated him and both us and Atreus really just had to go along with it. Odin equals bad, for reasons.

Of course, Odin really did turn out to be a shady, bad dude, because of course he was. And I couldn’t help but be disappointed that it really was just that one-dimensional of a story, because man, I would have loved it if, at the end, it turned out that Odin really was trying something for the legit benefit of the nine realms, and they just caused Ragnarok and killed him and fucked it all up for everyone. Then they would have to live with the secret that everyone could have prospered without their meddling, and that maybe, just maybe the entirety of the universe actually would have been better off had the original prophecy come true and Kratos had died.

I think that was what disappointed me the most. That the entire game, it was believed that Odin was evil, and it turned out that Odin really was evil. It was so cut and dry that it was kind of a standout, seeing as how everyone else in the game had some form of character redemption arc. Kratos had one and Atreus had one (I guess you could say that Kratos and Atreus had each other’s). Freya had one. Thor had one. Hell, even Sindri had his own mini-arc. But Odin, the big bad, was the flattest of them all.

I totally expected this to be the middle chapter of a trilogy, and I suspect we’ll still get a third game, considering Atreus/Loki sets out on his own solo quest, and Kratos himself sees a new path set before him. But damn, I really hope they scale it back a bit. I would love to still have that over-the-top ridiculous set-pieces the franchise is known for, but pared down just a tad to keep some of the fluff out. I don’t need to follow a girl around picking fruit for an hour.

But this has gone on long enough, and I’m sure I’ve ruffled more than a few raven feathers out there with my… critique. But it is what it is, these are my opinions and nothing more. I’m not a reviewer. Just a dude playing games and bitching about them. It’s what I do.

That wraps up game number 16. I’m almost to 1/5th of the way through this! Shoot me now lol. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a money-saving endeavor above all else. It’s a good thing, dammit. A good thing!

*sobs in corner*