The stun-kill animations can be especially gory and literally bone-crunching affairs. Though Kratos only kills for survival now, he still does so with a flair for brutality. The Art of WarAnd there are battles aplenty.
Yet God of War plays with the assumption that Atreus is always at your beck and call, and the weight of the changes in their relationship are cleverly woven into your battles. His skill tree can also be upgraded to follow up on Kratos’ more powerful attacks. Equipped with a bow and a bottomless quiver of arrows, Atreus will automatically plink away at enemies or jump on them to stun them, and he’ll take a more powerful shot at whatever you’re looking at when directed with a tap of the square button, creating a rhythm as you time taps to match his recharge rate and employ his attacks effectively. Though the two were estranged, Atreus is still Kratos’ son, and so he listens to your directions and behaves as an almost invulnerable extension of your own abilities in combat. What’s so smart about this central relationship, though, is how brilliantly God of War mirrors it onto gameplay from the start. Others make those sidekicks a constant hassle – an extra life bar governed by a sometimes-suicidal AI to consistently worry about in the midst of battle.
Some, like The Last of Us, use that relationship to smart effect, with twists to the gameplay introduced late in the story. That’s a huge relief because, historically, games that force you to stick with a sidekick of sorts for the entire experience have been hit or miss. It’s made Kratos relatable enough that I’ve been caught audibly referring to Atreus as “my son” several times since the opening hours.Ītreus’ impact cannot be understated – he’s both an asset to the story and in battle. That intimacy makes those emotions all the more real and impactful. You’re forced to sit with him – sometimes in silence, sometimes in anguish as a haunting choir echoes around him, and sometimes in relief – through every second of it. At some of the most tense and heartbreaking moments, the camera never leaves Kratos’ mindstate. And fear not, God of War still delivers the franchise’s trademark variety of awe-inspiring locations, and the camera helps them shine through in the story’s quietest moments. By never leaving Kratos’ side, I maintained the perspective needed to instantly convey the intensity of taking on a foe 10 times his size. But as I explored and fought my way through the story, it served to highlight the power of some of the larger-scale monsters. You’re Still Young, That’s Your FaultGod of War’s single-camera shot style that, unless you die, never cuts once from title screen to ending credits – is a subtle effect that didn’t really strike me at first. He gives the long-running character’s stoic dialogue both an intimidating gravitas and nuance you can hear as he grapples with the needs of his son, his internal fears and pain and, of course, the elements and monsters trying to stop him from reaching his goal. He’s now voiced by Stargate SG-1’s thunderous baritone Christopher Judge, who can say so much with a single word or grunt. This depth and complexity is something entirely new to Kratos, and this new God of War transforms him from the previous games’ flat embodiment of the bloodthirsty warrior cliche into someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with some of my favorite protagonists in recent media.
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(He will, of course, unflinchingly beat the life out of anyone who threatens his son, which appears to be the only way he knows how to express affection.) Kratos’ uncertainty of how to relate to a boy he’s both looking to turn into a survivor and yet afraid may turn out like him is devastating to watch. He seems disappointed in his lack of skill and stomach for combat, referring to him mostly as “Boy,” and rarely making eye or physical contact with him.
Kratos loves his son but is cold at first. Here are two people with demonstrably different personalities, one of them young and still innocent, the other old and as blood-soaked as they come, both grieving over the same woman in different ways. That relationship, and how it evolves and changes over the course of the story, is one of God of War’s most captivating qualities. But he is still a stranger to this place, and is forced to rely on the son he barely connects with to decipher its languages and guide him when the swing of an axe or the imprint of his boot on an undead foe won’t do the trick.
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While that history certainly informs who he is now, the character we encounter here has started a new chapter, having found love, a family, and a full bushy beard in this world of Norse mythology.
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If you’ve played the previous games in the series – seven of them, counting two PSP games and one mobile game – you know that Kratos lived a long life of loss, triumph, and plenty of god-killing in ancient Greece.