OK, sorry, I know God of War 3 is kind of old now, or at least old news, but I never asked, was God of War 3 the game everyone expected? Was it better? Was it worse? Of course I'm strictly talking about the story and how it played out, how it ended the trilogy. If you were one of the people that disliked it, what were you expecting, and what would you have liked to see instead of what really happened? Personally, from the first God of War, when I had beat it at 5:00 on July 24th, the day after my 15th birthday, I already had my expectations set for how it could end in the best possible way; for me at least.  
 
The way it would have ended, to fit my own personal taste, would have been to take an ending like Gladiator, where you could have took Kratos, walking through the field of Elysium, to finally be with his daughter and wife, and it ends on a happy, yet somewhat sad ending. If you think about, sure Kratos is an ass, and some would say he doesn't deserve a happy ending, but I think it would have been better to me if it ended like that, an emotional ending, other than the real ending in which it just made me think "Uhhh, what the fuck was that shit!?... *sigh* whatever man. *shakes head*". So, how would you have wanted it to go? Or was it just fine as it was?

I was fine with it, it could have been a lot worse.  But I would have really liked to see Jaffe's ending which I think was Kratos just goes off to kill every god in mythology, that could have been pretty cool.

I was fine with it, it could have been a lot worse.  But I would have really liked to see Jaffe's ending which I think was Kratos just goes off to kill every god in mythology, that could have been pretty cool.

I thought it was OK. I'm not particularly interested, nor invested, in the overarching story of the series to care too much. All I'd want from a GoW sequel is to brutally kill more Greek God's in the most absurd fashions possible.. GoW3 gave me that, and so I was satisfied.

@RobotHamster said:

I was fine with it, it could have been a lot worse.  But I would have really liked to see Jaffe's ending which I think was Kratos just goes off to kill every god in mythology, that could have been pretty cool.

I thought they already announced they're making a God of War IV.

I don't know, I really enjoyed the game.  I didn't really care for the ending, but it didn't ruin the game for me by any means. I kind of wish that when he opened Pandora's Box he would have pulled out some crazy weapon, and not just have it be empty, and have the power inside him the whole time. It kind of made the entire quest of the third game redundant.  He beat Zeus with the power of Hope, then he killed himself and released hope into the world? Kratos doesn't seem like the kind of person that would care one iota about the world and it's hope.  Oh yeah, and what you just read was a major spoiler, but if your reading a thread called "How would you have wanted the trilogy to end?" and you didn't expect to find spoilers within, well, your naive. 

The way it was supposed to end.

edit: he starts talking about God of War 3 at 10:40. Here's the link. You should watch it people; it's awesome.

I thought the ending with Pandora was totally ridiculous and unearned. Kratos was a bit sympathetic in the first game, but ever since 2, he has been as big of a dick as the guys he goes around murdering. It was really jarring to go from a innocent child giving platitudes about hope in his mind to save him from despair only to have him mercilessly beat the shit out of his own father in rage. Seriously, I liked the game overall, but the way it ended was laughable. It's fun to stomp around as a monstrous badass, but the dude isn't very likable and the attempts to change that in GoW3 were the worst parts of the game. I kind of like to think of the original as it's own tale and the sequels as crazy, over the top, alternate universe spin-offs.

Kratos gets killed by Zeus after coming to terms with killing his family. Zeus then goes and fixes the world, because hope is useless in a world that is flooded, filled with famine, filled with pestilence, has no sun, and is filled with the dead; a god is needed to fix that mess. Or you could go back a far way back and make it about Kratos coming to terms with his wrath and becoming a better man. The other option is that his wrath only leads to more personal tragedy.

Also, one thing that always bugged me was that Kratos always would stroll out of the underworld when he died, but the immortal gods didn't seem capable of doing that.

Fuck, Jaffe's ending sounds amazingly insane. The more I see of him in general the more I like his brand of unwound.

I love listening to Jaffe talk. Maybe even more than Ken Levine. His ending would have certainly had a bigger impact, and there is no way I could creatively top his story.

Jaffe's ending is not incompatible with God of War III's ending. Should Sony decide to make more GoWs (and you bet they will), they could very well make Jaffe's vision a reality.

Odin vs Ra, anyone? Epicness like you've never seen before.

I don't like how Kratos is such an asshole in this game. He fucks up the whole world and he is responsible for Zeus being a dick, but that's ok because he learns to forgive himself for killing his family.

Everything should end like St. Elsewhere.  Kratos' war against the Gods is revealed to be nothing more then the imagination of an autistic boy staring at a snow globe.

I don't understand why the guys at Santa Monica did not use Jaffe's story. It's just so much better than what we got.

Jaffe's version of the ending.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@RobotHamster said:

I was fine with it, it could have been a lot worse. But I would have really liked to see Jaffe's ending which I think was Kratos just goes off to kill every god in mythology, that could have been pretty cool.

I thought they already announced they're making a God of War IV.

God of War: Ascension is a prequel. They haven't said anything about God of War IV yet, to my knowledge.

EDIT: Christ, I didn't realize this was a necro thread.

i think it should have ended with a developer not rehashing playstation 1 era block pushing ladder climbing pole swiveling platform jumping bullshit through 75% of the game. i thought we had move past that garbage in this generation. i was tricked into thinking that kratos was an ultimate badass who ripped through scores of enemies and climbed mountains fighting on the backs of titans to get his vengeance. what i realized was that he was just another chin scratching arse stuck in the past, twiddling around with poorly designed platforming sections and unrewarding puzzles.
for the next game, i hope they release a trailer that shows the truth of what these games are. show 45 minutes of someone pushing a block up against a wall, running around in circles to pull a lever to get a gate open and jump through it before the time runs out.. and falling into an abyss a bunch of times because the camera angle was fucked and there was no proper perception of depth to be able to calculate the jump properly while he was rushing to get to the door. etc etc.