No spoilers except maybe a boss name but it's the first of the many troll sub-bosses you fight.
Yeah they have great dialogue, its really all of the extra chests and hidden items that really interrupt the flow of the game imo.
Optional boss fights are also fun and challenging.
I love soy too!
it must just be down to personal preference, because the game flows so well for me that i just get accidentally sucked into finishing all the available side missions before going on to the next main quest. The game has such good pacing and flow that it's hard to put down once you start playing
Better than Knack 1?, hmmm might give it a try when I get around the getting a PS4.
My dad used to read my brother and I Norse myths as bedtime stories when we were kids so I REALLY wish I had a PS4 to enjoy this on.
First I'd have to play through all the other games though.
I was never interested in the God of War games because I generally hate beefcake characters, especially ones where the character's seemingly only defining attribute is "Angry".
Kratos's characterization here actually interests me though; It's the whole idea of what the hero does after their big adventure is done. His whole life has always been about killing the Greek Pantheon, what does he do when that's all over? He's started anew, had a son. He's older, wiser, a little less full of generic rage. That's way more appealing to me then "Generic Angry Male Power Fantasy Character"
...is it weird that I think that way?
No, it's generally a common take as the writing of game characters evolve in a similar way to other mediums. The transformation of characters from rather static and nigh on invulnerable to layered and malleable is what comes of decades showing what consumers gravitate towards or something.
I've only seen a no-commentary Let's Play of this game (No consoles here) but I gotta say, that world serpent's voice is fucking incredible. Always was sitting in awe and eagerness whenever the size of that lad appeared on my screen, and was just astonished whenever that absolute unit spoke.
It definitely comes down to personal preference, I try not to compare this GoW to the previous titles because to me the gameplay of the older titles is just better, I just have more fun with that style of game. Huge fan of the new Kratos though.
There's a bit of a major misunderstanding of Kratos' development here. It's like saying Captain Walker's entire life in Spec Ops The Line was about shooting up Dubai. So I'll try and correct it.
Kratos' life was not as a whole about killing the pantheon. The part of his life where he went and slaughtered everyone was a very short lapse towards the end. The point of Kratos as a character is that he went through a ton of shit, and it was a singularly bad decision that lead him to a downward spiral. Namely, he could not take defeat and swore servitude to a god in exchange for survival, which went to bite him in the ass near instantly.
Besides that, Kratos' defining characteristic is not exactly that he's angry but rather that his demigod traits are constantly abused and taken advantage of by scheming gods around him, baited with promises which are never delivered upon. The gods made him half-insane from the moment he killed his family by giving him constant visions and nightmares of what Ares forced him to do, which did not go away pretty much up until he killed all of them.
As for a list of times Kratos was promised something and then tricked:
The gods offered him to go back to a simple life without being plagued by visions if he killed Ares, so he killed Ares and the gods then went back on their deal and chose to leave him with the visions, but made him a god (ie they coaxed him into causing even more destruction even though he just wanted to go home and stop)
The same godhood he was given was then used against him as Zeus began to conspire against him to take away all of his power and destroy his home (which Kratos could only really interact with by commandeering them from Olympus)
The Titans offered him revenge on Zeus, but then ditched him into the river Styx because he was deemed only a means to an end and not worth saving
Athena offered Kratos a chance to stop it all without telling him about the consequences of his action and then used his increasing lack of sanity to make him murder basically everyone, and then tried to use him in his weakest moment to become an all-powerful god herself
Out of six games in the franchise not counting the new one (because I don't know what happens in it), Kratos only acts out of his own volition in two games, and they are both spin-offs. Besides those, his entire life past Ares' shitty deal is defined by being coaxed and used and his waning sanity stripped away further. Which imho makes him a much more interesting character than just "angry bald man". He's a greek hero, an over the top one but a greek hero nonetheless.
If it's one thing God of War gets right is staying true to the epic-ness of lore when it comes to Greek and Norse mythology. Absolutely one of my favorite things about this series.
While these details may be true, it still doesn't change the fact that the character can still be summed up as "Pissed off Male Power Fantasy". Sure, he has reasons, but he's still most recognizable before this game as a brawny angry dude.
Make that three of us.
The side missions... have better content than a lot of game's main content.
You know this guy's review trustable when you hear Crypt & Graveyard from Medievil playing at 0:26
You missed one: After Kratos swore his life to Ares, the god tricked tricked him into killing his family.
Anyway, there's a bit more to it than that. Kratos always had a thirst for blood and world conquest, and the only reason he ever wanted to stop (by killing himself, not going home) was because of the visions. The reason he was betrayed by Zeus was his own fault, once he was given freedom and power through godhood he went back to his old ways and tried to take over Greece with the Spartan army again.
For people that finished the new game.
To continue with this idea. I think Faye had a child with Kratos only to get revenge against Odin. Loki was prophesied to bring Ragnarok which kills all the old gods.
im willing to wager Faye wanted to use Kratos in the beginning, but in the process of trying to get him to father her child, she probably fell in love with him. Which explains Kratos' strong attachment to her in the beginning of the game. I mean, a giantess who wants to take revenge against the Aesir, and then a dude who massacred his pantheon of gods shows up. Basically a match made in heaven. Also kratos has been screwed a billion times already by the gods and others, if Faye was screwing him over the entire time, he would've figured out earlier before they had the kid.
Kratos wasn't a completly generic male power fantasy character, imo. It's true that his defining attribute is "Angry", but there's more to it than him just being angry for the sake of it. His special in the sense that he's not just an antihero, but a straight up villain protagonist. He's just a total cunt throughout the the first three games, (although he has his reasons for it, whether that excuses him is up to you to decide).
Kratos is not a typical ""Pissed Off Male Power Fantasy"" character because its clearly shown that him being that is highly detrimental to himself and everything around him (For Example: The entirety of God of War 3, every single thing he does is shown to have completely fucked things up but he's too angry to stop), he's clearly being depicted as a straight up asshole, and his temper tantrums constantly bite him in the ass.
Also he's supposed to be a traditional Greek Hero who's Hero status was determined by power and feats rather than moral standing.
That's a really base level judgement of the character. I mean as you say here, you were never interested so I can only assume you either only played the first game or not at all:
To rebut your point though, Kratos was never explicitly about being an angry murderer just for the sake of being an angry murderer. Within the first 10 minutes of God of War 1 they're already setting up Kratos' tragic past, as well as the fact that he's a pawn of the gods and being ordered around by them to do their bidding. The common theme of Kratos is that he consistently gets himself into worse and worse situations because of his temper and rage.
I do think you would enjoy GoW 4 though, as it is an exploration of these themes of recurring mistakes, as well as a self-reflective exploration of toxic masculinity, and everything from the gameplay to the story reflects that
I disagree because it's not too complicated at all to make a POMPF and then write in consequences and context.
They could have written him without making him pissed off and gorey (in fact, the best parts of the series are the moments where he isn't, and those stand out, such as the psyche section of GoW3), but for the most part, they did write him pissed off and gorey.
That said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but only because it already exists. Seeing POMPF again and again gets very tiring, and it's not bad to see a change in pace in Kratos.
He's the poster child for the trope, and works it satisfying, imo. GoW knew that it was doing that, and did it well.
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