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God Of War Is More Than Game Of The Year- It’s A Celebration Of Second Chances
- Thread starter patapon
- Start date
No, I'm going to tell you they're both fantasy and not realistic at all. Because they aren't.
I'm playing the game for the first time now, and the combat does feel pretty hack and slash to me. I actually had to up the difficulty, since on normal, it just felt like an R1 / R2 masher.
The game's initial hurrah (boss fight versus the tattooed man) is actually half cutscenes with no player input needed, so I can see where esserius is coming from, to some extent.
Just because neither is strictly realistic, doesn't mean one can't be described as more realistic than the other. Hell you yourself said the following with respect to added fidelity.
"God of War is not unique in that it has combat finishers. Some games have these. Very few, however, have them with anywhere near the level of... let's say, "fidelity" as God of War"
Ah, I didn't know it was a binary thing. Thanks for clearing that up. Does that apply to any other adjective or is it just "realistic"?
I did not know the exact words to use there, because my own thinking on what happens in God of War's combat has a lot to do with the infliction of violence in such an absurd and over the top manner. I can tell you that it had nothing to do with them being realistic however. I've never seen a game that, as I said previously, seems to take such glee in tearing creatures apart (regardless of whether or not Kratos does, the game certainly seems to).
Didn't say it was a binary thing, but thanks for putting words in my mouth!
I simply don't see the fantasy violence of God of War as any different from the fantasy violence of Doom 2016 or Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. They're all over-the-top and are focused on spectacle, promoting it as either style or substance.
I don't think you get the story or Kratos.
Kratos himself tells the boy he shouldn't kill gods. Anything else is fair game as long as it doesn't lead to something similiar to what Kratos did in GOW3 or killing lower creatures that doesn't attack them first. He says this himself. I forgot the exact quote but he says to Atreus to "close his heart to their suffering".
You never played the game right?
Faye's wish was for Kratos and Atreus to spread her ashes. We don't know the traditions and customs of the world they inhabit. That type of thing could be held very sacred, not giving him an option to call an audible and do it any other way. Faye forced their hand by marking the tres for her pyre that would break the protection spell of their home. They couldn't stay where they were and never found a "safe" place. There was also a hint that the mission was more urgent. Kratos is clearly less powerful than he was previously, he even said towards the end of the game that they should hurry and do this while he still had strength. It's possible he feared his strength was diminishing and at some point it would be impossible for him to do.
That's fair (didn't play GoW2 or GoW3), and I certainly think there's a way to interpret Kratos as grooming rather than protecting the boy. I just don't feel a connection with that contradiction as it's so ever-present and never really discussed at any length. It leaves me with a question of, "is this a story about the boy becoming a man (like Kratos), Kratos dealing with his past, god superpower war"? And it simply seems frayed at the ends due to being pulled in so many directions (with little resolution, given the ending).
And if any of these maybes became explicit I'd have less of an issue with it. They'd still be plot contrivances though. XD
SSM went through a period of turmoil, they turned that around. Does that not qualify for the premise that the article is suggesting?
if they fucked up God of War, their only major IP, after already cancelling a huge ambitous IP that they worked on for 4-5 years...what else would be left to do for them? Let them try again with a new AAA IP? Would Sony greenlight that....
I don't think a immediate closure would be the consequence, but definetely a restructing of the studio, doing smaller less risky projects (maybe VR Games) and close them in a few years (similar what happened to Evolution)
What directions are you talking about? The story is about a father and son bonding at the time of losing a loved one and with both of them teaching each other humanity and god hood. You also have the thing with the stranger which is a parallel to Kratos and his father. Not sure how that's confusing.
Kratos isn't protecting Atreus, he is going with him on an adventure like his wife wanted and teaching the boy to take care of himself when he grows up. That means making him a ruthless warrior like Kratos was but without the mistakes he did like killing his family, father and brothers along with dooming the whole Greek world because of revenge. He isn't trying to turn Atreus into someone who doesn't kill or isn't violent, he is training him to use that violence to survive because the world they live is violent and Atreus feeling pitty for lower creatures like animals or other mythological beasts doesn't work in this world. That's what the story is about.
I dunno. It seems to me that smooth sail is the rarity for AAA development in this day and age. Big projects always fuck up a couple of times before they are set straight.
I don't think the violence is ever steeped in ritual or survival however (Kratos, at least historically, seems wholly uninterested in ritual). Survival is an aspect of it but that frequently gets lost as the story progresses and the story proper has much more to do with the coming of Ragnarok and the resultant changing or destruction of the world as a result of it. You have what amounts to a fetch quest in the middle of it to get a head to provide you with more info. The story is frequently not about their growth (Kratos or Atreus) as people, nearly so much as fantasy battles and end-of-world chicanery. There's also the strange thread of Atreus starting or being presented as being "weak" (I don't remember if this was ever explained) initially and yet after the first mentions of it, Atreus says he's fine and it's not brought up after that. There's a lot of threads that get established like that, and the only one that really gets tied off is Baldur's (and Freya's, to a certain degree, by proxy). Maybe those will pay off in the inevitable sequel, but the story at least doesn't provide direction to a lot of those and storytelling suffers a lot for a lack of pointing in a direction where they build up rather than fade away.
Yeah but this wasn't just one project for SSM, this was a couple. Ascension's critical and sales disappointment, a cancelled new IP which resulted in major layoffs.
AAA studios have been closed for less.
It's not even just God of War, but video games in general. I enjoy deeper analysis and critical theory about games, but compared to literature and film, it's still a relatively young medium that doesn't have a wealth of more..."serious" games that warrant that deeper level of critique.
Sometimes a game's narrative is a delivery device for the actual mechanics of playing the game. Games that have deeper narrative experiences often get dismissed as walking simulators or "not really a game".
And yes, I'm well aware I'm getting into "Is it the Citizen Kane of games?" territory
Read the bolded.
Overall I do not see what you expected, the game was marketed as an adventure between a parent and his son and as a new beginning for the franchise. It wasn't supposed to explain everything in the world but it explained the stuff that was directly connected to Kratos and Atreus quest.
it was a huge AAA Project getting canceled after years of development...thats not a simple fuck up. That was a disaster
I thought this was about second chances for people like Kratos, who were shitty people but found a way to become better.
I see some of the stuff you see, but I think I see it from a different perspective. I don't see the "growth" that most do. The boy's significant change is in respect to godhood and learning about Loki, but that's also another issue. Most of the significant changes are motivated by what amounts to magic (and in some cases, the tie-offs to threads are literally magic, as in the case of Baldur). I appreciate the moments in which Atreus and Kratos share, particularly the banter in the boat or when they're climbing walls. But that's not really the thrust of the story, it's incidental to it. Which is also what makes the story difficult to relate to. I do not particularly care about the story insomuch as it impacts the world, and while we're told constantly we should, the effect it has on the characters we care about is honestly... pretty minimal? I mean, most everyone trying to kill Kratos and Atreus doesn't seem to significantly change from beginning to end, so their state regarding survival or improving their odds of getting out of the whole mess seems... pretty static? I don't feel like the world is impacting them in spite of how drastic the changes seem to be to the world (particularly when those changes are lead by them). And that seems... off.
Haha, you think MCU movies are only $100 million... (I'm kidding, no need to derail)
Games come out with the same camera view and now they're a formula lol
By extension, all FPS are forumaltic clones. That is what I learned from the logic in this thread this thread.
Also any game with a narrative is a forumula.
Sony can't get away with this. We need to stop this trend of narratives.
/s
By extension, all FPS are forumaltic clones. That is what I learned from the logic in this thread.
Also any game with a narrative is a forumula.
Sony can't get away with this. We need to stop this trend of narratives.
/s
"Just because we have high quality facial models, use motion capture footage, and have a story about relationships and how they can fail us DOES NOT mean we were made by Playstation!" - Red Dead Redemption 2 developers say
Someone should change the images toDid you make this image?
Uncharted 4: Drake swinging on his rope gunning down enemies
God of War: Kratos using is frost axe powers
The Last of Us: Joel throwing a brick to distract the clickers
Days Gone: Deacon riding his Harley
Horizon Zero Dawn: Aloy sliding aiming her crossbow towards a large mechanical T-Rex
Suddenly this meme paints a different picture. Expand original meme by adding the new Ass Creed games, RDR2, and any other games with forests in them
Pffft see that's why RDR2 didn't win GOTY. According to some in here, it was too much of a Sony clone...
with those cinematic moments and the option of that tighter camera angle.
/s
Well, it's nice that the author enjoyed it, gonna have to agree with a few of the people in here that I wouldn't say God of War doesn't dp things I haven't seen before from the likes of other Sony Studios etc. Didn't really care for its combat either but that's that.
"I prefer this other game"
Yes, completely related to a topic on God of War winning GoTY and being a vital life line for Sony Santa Monica.
I'd love to know where this delusion comes from. You can't be serious. These days making a single player only game isn't considered safe haha.
I don't think you played the game at all, did you? It's pretty apparent that Kratos doesn't want his son involved in any of the stuff they go through but it's a matter of necessity. He knows that Atreus is part god, and he knows that Baldur is out look for them and trying to kill them. He can't stick around in his little log cabin any more, nor can he just leave Atreus there. The point of no return is the stranger fight, they have no option but to go out into a world that's filled with things trying to kill them. Kratos knows that despite what he wants, there's no keeping Atreus out of this, he needs to take him with him and do his best to protect him while teaching him how to survive as a god in this world.