The old games are a fun action romp through Greek mythology. I too grew up believing that they were shallow gore games, but when I actually went through the first last year, I was surprised by the amount of strategy involved in the combat, including choosing whether to sacrifice EXP orbs for health/magic or just tough it out. I had a great time with 1 and I'm planning to really dive into 2 when I have more free time this weekend.

So yes, I do believe that the gaming press has given them an unfairly bad rap, and the arrival of the new "mature" one hasn't helped this at all.

The first game gives him a little more depth than you might think with the way Giantbomb talks about him, but for the most part he is little more than an angry vicious man angrily viciously murdering things.

God of War 1-3 may have had things to say, but Kratos was always a shallow asshole.

I think the game may make some points about the nature of violence. Any credit given to Kratos should be as a device, though, and not a character.

I feel like those articles are reflecting the way that Sony Santa Monica stopped treating Kratos as a cruel villain. Kratos was an antihero in the previous games. People didn't like him because he was a bad guy. Full stop. Kratos was cruel and mean, you were only meant to empathize with him at key moments. Being an antihero definitely made him different though. That take was fresh because antiheroes are rare in this industry. It was far more unique than him turning into yet another hero with a dark past looking for redemption that this game turned Kratos into.

Even if I like Kratos as a character more now, I don't particularly care for the idea that people liked this new game because they made Kratos a more likeable, generic character. It's more agreeable to me that the nuance they added to him as a parent and teacher are the things that people gravitated towards.

The Boss battles are better in the trilogy. One of my serious complaints with the new GoW is the lacklustre bosses. Outside of the beginning and ending, the bosses are practically identical with slight element gimmicks. Magni and Modi were cool, though.

Something to keep in mind is a lot of the evidence provided that GoW has always been deep comes from the lesser known games in the series. I don't blame people for checking out before playing Ghost of Sparta, Chains of Olympus, or Ascension because the PSP wasn't very popular and the first few mainline PS3 games really did have a lot of "RAH MAD AT DAD".

That's not to say I disagree with the points in the video. That was an interesting watch and really highlighted the fact that the GoW series has both blockbuster hits and hidden gems. And yes, the 2018 game is definitely not the first time that Kratos has had some depth.

Kratos was a bad man in a world full of much worse so he was a decent anti hero IMO. I'm still shocked at how the games are being perceived today honestly, they were almost universally praised when they game out and for good reason. Still want to play this new one though.

This was kind of the way the original trilogy started too though. Who were the awesome bosses in that one? The Hydra and Medusa? The only god you fight and kill is Ares. Both Baldur fights in 2018 God of War are, to me, better than anything that was in the first game. Magni and Modi, as you said, was a cool fight with the snowblind move, and the dragon was all kinds of cinematic and God of War cool. Sure there were a bunch of Duadis thrown in to fill it up, but I thought of them as more of just super enemies and less of bosses.

I just think this series is always going to have strong detractors no matter what direction it takes because of its focus on family revenge, and I think a lot of people with close relationships with their families take that kind of personally. There was also a lot of female objectification in the original series, and you've begun to see backlash to those moments bleed over into the audience's reaction to Freya's role in the new game. Waypoint featured a particularly passionate take on this (In God of War, Moms Come Last) that I ultimately didn't agree with much (though I'm also one to argue no individual story should be tasked with rejecting the systematic flaws surrounding it, so in some ways the article lost me before it began) but it does obviate just how little women have ever mattered to this series, even the women who are Gods. They are keys that open doors for the plot and pathways to negative feelings for the men in the story and the players of the game.

Granted, the majority of game players weren't thinking about video games on that level in God of War's heyday, but it's not hard to believe a lot of people who now do think about games like that look back on a game they haven't played in thirteen years and all they remember is Kratos kicking and screaming while his wife and child exist only as ash and the point of everything around him is to become vapor as well.

@cerberus3dog:

Yea, a lot of people don’t see that perspective. They assume that since you are playing the game then you must be the good guy. I honestly wouldn’t even consider him an anti hero because that warrants some redeeming qualities, which imo Kratos just doesn’t have. But there’s nothing wrong with that and I actually believed that was a very fresh take as opposed to being the hero in the story. Kratos was the villain of those games and it’s really interesting to see that perspective instead.

I saw that video last week, I don't like that guy or the way he so smugly puts down people who disagree with him... someone thinking the older GOW games weren't deep doesn't make them a coward. I do think people, including the video game media, can be easily swayed and have group-think, plus the shiny new thing is always appealing, so a mixture of those things did have people downplaying or underestimating how good the older GOW games used to be. It kinda reminds me of Bungie saying Halo 2 was hot shit when they were promoting Halo 3.

In-comparison to the most popular video game heroes: Master Chief, Lara Croft, Mario, Marcus Fenix, Gordon Freeman, Solid Snake, Link, etc Kratos is more developed and deeper than all of them besides maybe Snake. If someone wants to compare him to a TV or movie character then he's shallow, but by that logic and comparison so are all the other video game heroes. Kratos isn't really a hero, especially not in GOW3, but like that Youtube video says, that was the point of GOW3 and it was on purpose. God of War has always been at the forefront of storytelling in video games - that didn't start with GOW4. If I could pick a video game series that would get turned into a movie (and it would have good writers, directors, etc) it would be God of War since it's so cinematic and unique. Bioshock would probably be second.

I love the newest GOW, but in hindsight it feels very, very small. GOW4 spoilers: I liked Mimir but he's a d-list god along with Thor's two sons. Baldur and Freya are somewhat major, so it was a God of War game that showed two major Norse god while mentioning "Thor" 100 times and "Odin" 5,000 times but not showing either one, so that felt like a cock tease. Also, a problem with the Loki twist is that some of the popular characters from their mythology are his children (Hel and Fenrir), since he's a kid we aren't going to see them unless they skip forward in time or change their parents. The world serpent is his kid too, but he got sent back in time. I liked the game a lot, but I wanted to see more Norse gods. It sometimes feels post-apocalyptic and you got their after all the cool stuff happened.

The first game is a tragedy, and it starts (ends?) with him attempting suicide only to have that taken away by the gods as well. Emotionally, his arc was completed during that first game and then second and third games are just bullshit excuses for a shitty person to be shitty to people around him (even though God of War 3 tries to pull some last-second "hope is the ultimate weapon and it lives inside you" balogne). That being said, it's fun bullshit, though it was definitely time for the series to change.

Yeah, I was more referring to two and three--I actually don't remember much about the first God of War. The dragon fight in GoW looks cool and had a neat scale, but the fight itself is crappily simple and acts more as a tutorial for the thing it introduces than an actual fight.

Yes, I agree he is deeper than many put it as. I think the quality of some of it isn't on the same level, so it tarnishes some of it too. That said, despite GOW3 trying to make some point, I also agree that Kratos went too far, and he went from one of my favorite game characters to least at the time. The new God of War was fine. To be honest, it's probably not going on my top five of the year (that is unless we don't get many better games this year). I also agree that it is derivative. The first two God of War games are still my favorite. The PSP games are good, both deepening Kratos' character but to be honest are kind of forgettable. Ascension was okay. And I am not a fan of three. God of War 1, God of War 2, God of War (PS4), Ghost of Sparta (though I don't remember it much aside from some highlight moments), Chains of Olympus, Ascension, GOW3. I also played the mobile game but didn't finish it. I liked these games in this order because of their story and the locations they bring you.