the eponymous bollock wrote:The other gripe is the story, the whole reason for antagonism between you and anyone else just felt really weak and I think I would have enjoyed it more if that was given more focus as opposed to walk to scatter your wife’s ashes. Obviously that’s not the story they were trying to tell but whenever it bled into it through the Baldur stuff is when I was most interested.
Just so we've got it straight.
It turns out that's all down to who Kratos' wife was, right?
I actually thought it kind of kicked into place at the end actually.
Wow, just figured something late into the game I wanna kick myself for. Thought every Realm Tear led to a fight but only just realised today some of them give you items for upgrading "">,> Pretty sure I've just missed loads too.
Ok so I hadn’t seen the proper ending, it’s really strange the way they leave it to the player to finish the game completely or at least see the final story beat.
I also forgot to mention above that another of my favourite things about this is the music. It is strawberry floating brilliant.
Just for the record, you can keep exploring and doing side quest after beating the game right? There are a lot of high level enemy fights and Hidden chambers I'm planning to do after. Or is it worth doing them before finishing?
I should have expected that you get to end up using the Blades of Chaos but after using the Axe for so long I dared to believe it. It's funny, because the combat of the older games never clicked with my interest and using them in this game so suddenly is kinda reminding me why. They feel so much better of course but just don't seem nearly as satisfying as the axe. Hoping further upgrades warm me up to them more.
It's a good thing for an industry that has struggled to be taken seriously as a cultural hobby and as an art form unto itself. Many connotations and stereotypes still exist about the arrested development of gamer culture. Even though the new God of War has plenty of violence for the bloodthirsty, the story of Kratos wrestling with the emotional difficulties of parenthood is a potent olive branch to the culture at large.
Disclosure: I don't yet have the game (I'll wait for a sale), but I have watched a complete playthrough on YT, from start to end.
Last night, I watched this video:
I dunno. I can understand the wall-to-wall praise for the game from some perspectives, but I still remain cynical. The guy in the video above just seems to me to be overdoing his praise to the point of becoming embarrassing. I get that it's a great-looking game, I get that it attempts to deal with a few sensitive issues around loss, regret, unresolved issues and the whole father-son thing, but at the end of the day this is just another game where a very large, very aggressive man runs around murdering hundreds of things with a Very Big Axe. It's bloody, visceral and - frankly - lacks nuance in several departments.
I'm interested in that dissonance - the disconnect - between a game being praised for its 'emotional' content and the jarring fact of its undisguised violence. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice left me with the same misgivings. Yes, it claimed to be tackling difficult issues, but the game was mainly a girl running around slaughtering countless enemies in a variety of extremely violent ways. I'm not saying either of these games don't stand out for their production values, their scripting, their sheer quality, but I can't square that circle between the reverence they seem to garner for their emotional storylines and the obvious mayhem of their actual game mechanics. Don't people see the paradox?
To be clear: I think God of War looks great and I look forward to giving it a go when it drops to a reasonable price but is it really a 10/10 (on all counts) or can anyone reasonably suggest that imperfections and inconsistencies might remain?
Cal wrote:The guy in the video above just seems to me to be overdoing his praise to the point of becoming embarrassing. I get that it's a great-looking game, I get that it attempts to deal with a few sensitive issues around loss, regret, unresolved issues and the whole father-son thin
Partly how I felt about The Last of Us.
I'd all but lost interest in games in that point, I'd sold my Xbox 360 and the PS3 was nothing more than a Blu-ray player for the lounge.
The Last of Us completely pulled me back in, reassured me that games had grown up with me rather than being left behind by me.
Games are becoming more accepted whether old farts like it or not. We're still a young, evolving medium with much to learn and it's Games like GoW that are help pushing it forward.
HaruKazuhira wrote:Games are becoming more accepted whether old farts like it or not. We're still a young, evolving medium with much to learn and it's Games like GoW that are help pushing it forward.
By the time most of us are in our 60s, say 2050, they'll be universally treated and respected just as movies and music are today.
Just think, at some point in the future middle-aged contestants on quiz shows won't pull that stupid face when a videogame question comes up.
It's a good thing for an industry that has struggled to be taken seriously as a cultural hobby and as an art form unto itself. Many connotations and stereotypes still exist about the arrested development of gamer culture. Even though the new God of War has plenty of violence for the bloodthirsty, the story of Kratos wrestling with the emotional difficulties of parenthood is a potent olive branch to the culture at large.
Feels like there's always hot takes like this whenever there's a big-budget, AAA, "mature" character-driven game.
the eponymous bollock wrote:I also forgot to mention above that another of my favourite things about this is the music. It is strawberry floating brilliant.
Kratos' voice sounds amazing too, especially through decent speakers.