I have been slowly making my way through Giant Bomb's game of the year podcasts. Today I started up episode 2 where they talk about God of War for the first 34 minutes. Abby brought up a point that I had never considered before: This game doesn't treat women well. Consider that there are basically three women (or groups of women) in the game. The first woman is Kratos's wife/ Atreus's mother who's dead when the game starts. The wife is dead, we never see her, and rarely ever hear her name. She exists only to motivate the two surviving male characters to embark on a quest.
The next woman is Freya, who starts out as a very cool character, until we find out that she's the mother of the main villain of the game, Balder, who's furious at her for making him immortal. In the game's final confrontation, Freya gives Balder permission to kill her. Balder strangles his mother, intent on murdering her while she says 'I love you' to him over and over. Freya doesn't fight back and Kratos grabs Balder and kills him. Freya cradles Balder's corpse and calls him 'my dear sweet boy' and then tells Kratos 'I will rain down every violation imaginable upon you.' When Atreus points out that Kratos saved her life, she answers 'He robbed me of everything!'
This video should run at the right time, if it doesn't for you, put it at 20:07.
Finally we have the Valkyrie. Female warriors who have been corrupted by Odin. You spend the game hunting each one down, killing their bodies, ripping off their wings, and then having their spirits leave their bodies and thank you for it. You can say they have a story reason to justify this, but the optics are bad here.
Taken on their own, maybe none of these are that bad, but all three together, combined with the fact that there aren't any other women in the game, and this seems like a bad look. And perhaps more disturbing, why isn't anyone talking about this? This game is winning game of the year awards everywhere, including likely, here. Everyone wants to talk about the game, but nobody wants to talk about the way it treats women? And this isn't an attack on the game. I LOVE the game. I haven't submitted my game of the year list yet, but I've had this hovering at the top spot. But I think despite my love for this game, this might be worth talking about.
The next woman is Freya, who starts out as a very cool character, until we find out that she's the mother of the main villain of the game, Balder, who's furious at her for making him immortal. In the game's final confrontation, Freya gives Balder permission to kill her. Balder strangles his mother, intent on murdering her while she says 'I love you' to him over and over. Freya doesn't fight back and Kratos grabs Balder and kills him. Freya cradles Balder's corpse and calls him 'my dear sweet boy' and then tells Kratos 'I will rain down every violation imaginable upon you.' When Atreus points out that Kratos saved her life, she answers 'He robbed me of everything!'
This video should run at the right time, if it doesn't for you, put it at 20:07.
Finally we have the Valkyrie. Female warriors who have been corrupted by Odin. You spend the game hunting each one down, killing their bodies, ripping off their wings, and then having their spirits leave their bodies and thank you for it. You can say they have a story reason to justify this, but the optics are bad here.
Taken on their own, maybe none of these are that bad, but all three together, combined with the fact that there aren't any other women in the game, and this seems like a bad look. And perhaps more disturbing, why isn't anyone talking about this? This game is winning game of the year awards everywhere, including likely, here. Everyone wants to talk about the game, but nobody wants to talk about the way it treats women? And this isn't an attack on the game. I LOVE the game. I haven't submitted my game of the year list yet, but I've had this hovering at the top spot. But I think despite my love for this game, this might be worth talking about.
