I got to the part with Poseidon's...er, princess in my god of war 3 playthrough.
From my memories, when I first played it, it didn't affect me much. I never liked Kratos, but it seemed to me to just be a more polished iteration of "and here is where we make Kratos do something totally fucked up in order to progress". The first game you burned an athenian soldier alive in a cage, in GoW2 you killed the translators. In GoW3, you actually do the burn alive thing again at the very start of the game, but that guy is slightly villainized in how he talks in derogatory terms to Kratos.
Playing it now tho...ugh. In case you haven't played or don't remember, (I'll spoiler it because it's pretty heavy in violence against a sexualized young woman) Kratos needs to push giant wheel up in order to open a gate. If he lets, the wheel rolls back and the gate closes and there is no way to make it through in time before it closes. So, Kratos looks around and finds Poseidon's princess, where she's clearly an abuse victim and it's unclear whether she's simply a woman he's taken a liking to or if she's his daughter, as the princess connotation implies. In either case, she's barely wearing anything and her breasts are exposed as she's chained up. To solve the puzzle, you have to drag her through the halls of enemies, get her to hold up the giant wheel, and when you walk away, she's crushed under the weight of it, and the blocks the gear wheel from turning and your allowed to pass. You go back, you see her twisted body in the pool of blood under the wheel.
So, it's the fact that they basically invented a woman sex slave character, didn't give her a name or any significant design identifies that aren't about emphasizing her sexualized body, have her alternatively be too scared of you to ask for help and then beg for help when she has no other choice, and then have her murdered by severe mutilation. And GoW is a series that's mean and it's sold on it's meanness. People bought god of war specifically so they could play an absolute asshole. But still, there's throwing the boat captain into the hydra belly when you don't have to, and this. Because, if they wanted to do this, she didn't need to be sexually objectified like this. She could have just been a regular servant girl or whatever, which may have still held the connotation of violence against women, but she wouldn't have been sexualized. The sexualization only makes sense if we consider one possibility...I think the purpose of the sexualization is to dangle the possibility that Kratos would ahve sex with her...which would have been rape though I doubt the developers would admit that that's the fantasy they were dangling in front of players...Which would be more in line with the original achievement for it, "I didn't do it but I wish I did"...
this is disgusting. But also, one thing I distinctly remember during either marketing or after game behind the scenes is how Kratos spares Hera. They specifically go to mention that Kratos is a bit chivalrous towards women, so he's willing to go easy on them unless they're outright enemies. And to the extent that he's talking about the scene with Hera, that's somewhat true. He is willing to let Hera go, up until she calls Pandora a whore. At which point, he kills her, but it's far more restrained than his usual kills, it being a simple neck snap, compared to the over the top gory violence we've had in other scenes. But that's out of tune with what he did to the poseidon princess, which may not be the most graphic violence in the game, but...she was just a scared girl begging for not to be killed, and Kratos didn't even blink at having her mutilated in order to hold open a door. But Hera and Pandora, both conservatively dressed, are given mercy up until Hera calls Pandora a whore, at which point that (which isn't even a meaningful threat of violence) is when Kratos decides Hera needs to die. Hera dies for (falsely) accusing Pandora of sexual promiscuity, of all things.
I'm....getting...a vibe here that maybe the developers had some fucked up ideas about female sexuality. Which isn't even getting into Aphrodite...
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