God of War: Chains of Olympus is the fourth (chronologically second) installment in the God of War series, released for the PlayStation Portable in 2008.
Taking place ten years before the original God of War, Kratos curses the heavens after two months of servitude to the gods. To his surprise, the sun suddenly explodes and quickly plummets to the ground, sending him on a strange adventure to save the sun god Helios, as his absence is allowing the dream god Morpheus to put several other gods to sleep.
Chains of Olympus contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: Persephone in mythology was once of the nicest goddesses of the pantheon, and her marriage to Hades is known as one of the more stable and happy ones. Here, Persephone is the Big Bad, and hates her Arranged Marriage to Hades.
- Always a Bigger Fish: One of the first things you do is try to open a door via Button Mashing tutorial... only for a Cyclops wielding a giant pillar to smash through immediately and teach you about Button Mashing and Press X to Not Die. As if that wasn't enough, then a Basilisk smashes in and devours the Cyclops whole.
- And I Must Scream: By the end of the game, Atlas is forced to carry the world on his shoulders for all eternity.
- Artifact Title: Ares is nowhere to be seen or heard. But seeing as this is a prequel, he's still around offscreen
- Bag of Spilling: At the end of the game, Helios and Athena strip Kratos of all of his weapons and equipment.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kratos has successfully defeated Persephone and saved the world... but because of his actions, is permanently banned from Elysium and thus will never be able to see Calliope again, even after he dies.
- Call-Forward/Futureshadowing:
- Upon his defeat, Atlas warns Kratos that they will meet again.
- Athena and Helios leave an unconscious Kratos at the very same cliffs where he will attempt suicide ten years later.
- Culture Chop Suey: The Persian King controls an Efreet, a demon from Arabian mythology. However, it's implied that the king captured the Efreet during an invasion of Arabia.
- Doomed by Canon: You know Kratos will win in the end, because its a Prequel to the first game
- Fog of Doom: Morpheus' fog.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Morpheus is the Big Bad, having kidnapped Helios, plunging the world into darkness forever unless he is stopped but Persephone plans on directly destroying the world with Atlas' help.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The initial encounter with Charon, who cannot be beaten without Zeus' Gauntlet, which you get from a statue of Zeus in the Tartarus (after Charon gleefully tosses your defeated ass down there).
- Locked in the Dungeon: The Jails of Tartarus is a prison (or rather, bondage) cell where all of the prisoners are bound in chains. Kratos gets tossed there after he lost to Charon in a Hopeless Boss Fight above.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Persephone had just gotten Kratos to cast aside his blades and renounce his powers as the Ghost of Sparta so that he can be with his daughter in the Elysian Fields. All she needs to do in order to win is leave him alone for a few hours so that her plan can be completed while he's playing with Calliope. Instead she makes a point of telling him that she's the villain of the game (Something he didn't have the slightest inkling of until she explained her plan), and that thanks to his actions the world will soon be destroyed, and that the Elysian Plains and all the spirits living there will be destroyed with it. This motivates Kratos to reclaim his powers and save the world.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Calliope uses this on Kratos, when he's forced to leave her forever in order to become the Ghost of Sparta again so he can defeat Persephone. The game even twists the knife by making his pushing her away into a button-mashing minigame!
- Power Fist: Kratos can obtain Zeus' Gauntlet. It is a gauntlet of a deity obviously, but Kratos had to wear it with his whole arm because it's just that large. It provides additional combat mechanics, and is instrumental in killing certain bosses.
- Sadistic Choice: Kratos is given the choice of staying by his daughter's side and let the world be destroyed or stop Persephone and Atlas and forsake his daughter. He chooses the latter, which causes him to hate the gods even more for taking his daughter away from him again.
- Self-Deprecation: In the remastered PS3 version on God of War: Origins Collection, the trophy obtained for finishing the game is called "
It's Over Already?" - Shout-Out: The second phase of Persephone's battle is a massive one to Ganondorf's Tennis Boss mechanics.
- Shoo the Dog: Actually made into a QTE, as Kratos pushes Calliope away from him so he can acually bring himself to leave her side again, in order to regain his powers and defeat Persephone.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Persephone is so disgusted and embittered by Zeus' betrayal and her Arranged Marriage with Hades that she decides to side with Atlas and destroy the world.
- Tennis Boss: Persephone.
- The Unseen / The Unfought: Morpheus. Until Persephone shows up at the very end, it is pretty much outright stated from the very beginning that he's the Big Bad, but he never appears onscreen, and if not for the narrator, we wouldn't even know of his involvement.
- Titanomachy, Round Two: Persephone, Hades's niece and wife, secretly releases the Titan Atlas from Tartarus so he can destroy the Axis Mundi (portrayed as a large pillar underneath the Earth that holds the entire world above).
- World Pillars: The world has held by a single pillar until it was destroyed by a Titan named Atlas.
