Line #5 VideoGame/GodOfWarI


1	[[quoteright:453:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ezgif_5_ca044fdad6_2.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:453:''[[TagLine The epic adventure of conquest, destiny and revenge.]]'']]
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4	The first game in the popular ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' series, released for the Platform/PlayStation2 in 2005.
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6	The player controls the protagonist Kratos, a Spartan warrior who serves the Olympian Gods. The goddess Athena tasks Kratos with killing Ares, the God of War, who is responsible for Kratos accidentally killing his family. As Ares besieges Athens out of hatred for Athena, Kratos embarks on a quest to find the one object capable of stopping the god: the legendary Pandora's Box.
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8	Chronologically, ''VideoGame/GodOfWarGhostOfSparta'' is a direct sequel, taking place around a year later.
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10	!!''God of War'' contains examples of the following tropes:
11	* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The Sewers of Athens are a large complex which connects Athens to the Desert of Lost Souls.
12	* AccidentalMurder: Kratos accidentally killed his wife and [[OffingTheOffspring daughter]] while attacking a village of Athena's worshippers under Ares' orders; [[spoiler:Ares in fact orchestrated the event, believing that it would free Kratos to be the perfect warrior. Needless to say, [[GoneHorriblyRight it worked spectacularly]]]].
13	* AdaptationalWimp: Medusa is actually weaker than the generic Gorgon enemy you meet shortly after. The Gorgon's eyes also shoot a beam that can turn you to stone if you stand in it for too long, rather than instantly when you look at their face like the original myth, likely for gameplay balance reasons.
14	* AntagonistTitle: [[BigBad Ares]] is the titular god of war. [[spoiler:Until the ending, that is.]]
15	* ApocalypticLog: The Temple of Pandora is littered with notes and warning from its chief architect as he grows in despair over the death of his sons and the apathy of the gods.
16	* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Athens is built near sheer cliffs (implied by the narrator to be part of the mount Olympus), as well as the adjacent Desert of Lost Souls.
17	* AtlasPose: One puzzle requires you to take a statue of Atlas holding the world on his back and get him to throw the world into a wall to break it down.
18	* AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: Ares is in a giant form throughout the game. During the FinalBoss, when Kratos opens Pandora's Box, its power causes him to grow to giant size as well, evening the playing field.
19	* TheAtoner: Subverted to a point. Kratos may be on a RedemptionQuest, but it's only because he wants to be able to sleep at night without being assaulted by memories of the awful deeds he has committed in the past, including [[spoiler: murdering his own wife and child]]. He has no qualms about slaughtering just about everybody he encounters, either.
20	* AwesomeButImpractical: Rage of the Gods. It grants Kratos invulnerability and increases his damage. However, it takes a long time to charge. And even when you do fill it up, it's best just to save it for the nearest boss fight, because once it's on, you can't turn it off.
21	* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: During the FinalBoss, Ares invokes this on Kratos, forcing him to see an illusion of his family die:
22	-->'''Ares''': I have taught you many ways to kill a mortal, Kratos. Flesh that burns, bones that break. But to break a man's spirit is to ''truly'' destroy him!
23	* {{BFS}}: Halfway through Artemis bestows her Sword to Kratos, which he can use as a secondary, more-powerful weapon which actually inflicts a DiagonalCut on certain enemies. [[spoiler: There's also the Sword of the Gods used to kill Ares, which was actually employed as a giant bridge before.]]
24	* BigBad: Ares, the eponymous god of war, is the master of the various harpies, undead, and minotaurs who are attacking Athens and forcing the gods to send Kratos after Pandora's Box to stop him.
25	* BittersweetEnding: Kratos gets his revenge on Ares by killing him, is forgiven of his past misdeeds, and made a god. But the nightmares still haunt him and his attempt to use death to escape them fails when he is made immortal.
26	* BlackAndGreyMorality: Kratos is a SociopathicHero up against a rogue God of War.
27	* BladeReflection: One of the game's flashbacks scenes is kickstarted when Kratos sees his reflection in his inexplicably clean blades and feels another bout of self-hatred.
28	* BloodyBowelsOfHell: Hades is portrayed as such here, the River Styx being a river of blood.
29	* BossTease: At one point during the Challenge of Hades segment in Pandora's Temple, the player passes a [[BigDoor huge set of locked doors]]. Later, in the end of the Challenge, these doors unlock and immediately something starts to hammer them from behind. After passing a SavePoint and walking through a door that closes behind, it becomes obvious to the player that the room they're returning to is actually a BossRoom. When the player reaches the gate, the doors swing open and suddenly Pandora's Guardian, a 20-foot-tall undead minotaur clad in nigh-impenetrable armor, emerges from behind them.
30	* {{Bowdlerise}}: In the Japanese and European versions of the game, the [[HumanSacrifice sacrifice]] required by Poseidon was changed from a normal soldier to an undead one.
31	* BreastAttack: Performing a finisher on the Sirens (the ones met after the desert) results in Kratos [[https://gfycat.com/browneagergilamonsterstabbing stabbing both his blades through the Siren's breasts]] before extending the chains and slamming her in the floor.
32	* ChekhovsGunman: The Grave Digger is first introduced digging a grave in the midst of Athens, claiming that said grave is Kratos' own. [[spoiler:That very same grave is later used by Kratos to escape from the Underworld.]]
33	* ComeBackToBedHoney: The two women whom Kratos slept with on his way to Athens ask him to stay "just a bit longer."
34	* ConveyorBeltODoom: You'll have to do battle on more than one conveyor belt pushing you towards some spikes if you want to earn the power to kill a god. In fact, the very final challenge in Pandora's Temple is a room with a floor of alternating conveyor belts, walls entirely covered with spikes, and a mix of flying and ranged enemies harrying you with attacks that can stun you long enough for the belts to push you into the spikes.
35	* CorridorCubbyholeRun: The second half of the game is littered with hallways, caves, and valleys with some sort of DeathTrap activating and de-activating regularly.
36	* CurbstompBattle: The flashback shows the Spartans being outnumbered and overpowered by the Barbarians, forcing Kratos to become what he became.
37	* CutscenePowerToTheMax: Minor example in the Minotaur's MookDebutCutscene, which as them run at great speed after an Athenian soldier to finish him off. The Minotaurs fought in game will usually move slowly all the time, safe when performing attacks or leaping in the air.
38	* CreepyMortician: The Grave Digger, who nonchalantly digs a grave as Athens is falling apart around him.
39	* CrueltyIsTheOnlyOption: There are two points in the game where the player has to kill scared civilians to continue.
40	** First, you have to electrocute a scared soldier hiding from Ares' army to open a bridge to where you need to go.
41	** Second, you have to take a prisoner who has been locked in Pandora's temple for who know show long and slowly drag them up a slope to an incinerator. He'll beg you to stop the whole way, until he just starts crying and praying right before the end.
42	* DealWithTheDevil: Kratos made one with Ares to serve him in exchange for the strength to defeat his enemies in the past. He ditched Ares after the latter duped him into killing his family in an UnstoppableRage.
43	* DecapitationPresentation: Kratos beheads Medusa and presents her head to Aphrodite to get [[TakenForGranite its power]].
44	* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Ares explodes upon defeat.
45	* DegradedBoss: Gorgons. Medusa serves as the introduction to the enemy type as well as a demonstration of how to perform a special grab kill, but every Gorgon you meet from that point on is not only a standard enemy, but ''stronger than she was''. Even the ones you meet just a few minutes later.
46	* DespairEventHorizon: Kratos crosses it after being told that, despite what he believed, [[spoiler:the gods cannot or will not take away his nightmares.]] Subsequent games strongly imply that he never truly recovers.
47	* DirtyBusiness: When forced to push a caged human sacrifice up a cliff, listening to him scream for mercy the entire way, Kratos is openly disgusted.
48	-->'''Kratos:''' The gods ''demand'' sacrifice... from ''all'' of us.
49	* DrivenToSuicide: At the very end of the game, Kratos jumps off of a cliff in [[DespairEventHorizon despair]]... only to be [[InterruptedSuicide rescued by Athena]] and made the new God of War in Ares' place.
50	* DungeonCrawling: The Temple of Pandora is as classic a dungeon as you can get. An abandoned temple to the gods filled with traps and monsters set by an insane architect to guard a magical treasure that adventurers have flocked to for ages to plunder.
51	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
52	** Most of the Gods are redesigned after this game (Poseidon was originally a bald old guy, Hades had a demon face, etc).
53	** There's a notable shortage of bosses when compared to the rest of the games. Not counting enemy type intros, there are only three: the Hydra at the beginning -- which works as a tutorial boss -- and the Pandora's Guardian and Ares piled at the end. Compare that to ''VideoGame/GodOfWarII'''s ''fourteen'' bosses.
54	** Kratos is notably soft-spoken, or at least using an "inside voice", in most scenes, with an additional tendency to talk to himself semi-frequently (after flashbacks to his past), compared to later games where he has NoIndoorVoice with very few exceptions and only speaks when someone else is present.
55	** Also, you can't turn off the 'Rage' power once you activate it, unlike later games.
56	* EasterEgg: There are two secret videos you can find, one gotten through a secret code, and the other gotten through [[spoiler:destroying the two statues in the throne room at the very end of the game]].
57	* ElaborateEqualsEffective: The Blades of Chaos start with a rather bland and smooth design, gaining a more vicious and barbed edge with each upgrade as the [[FlamingSword fire trail they leave]] grows brighter and hotter. Also, the Sword of Artemis grows bigger when upgraded, its aura turning from blue to purple to red. The same goes for the undead soldiers, from an half-naked zombie with a rusty sword to a massive, armored warrior DualWielding a broadsword and a scythe.
58	* EscapedFromHell: Kratos is actually [[spoiler:killed by Ares after retrieving Pandora's Box, but fights his way out of the Underworld to continue his mission.]]
59	* EscortMission: Twisted; at one point, Kratos needs to push a cage containing an Athenian soldier up an enemy-infested ramp. Of course, he's only protecting him in order to burn him alive at the top of the ramp and move on in the temple. He pleads for his life the whole way up.
60	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: After beating the Hydra, you hear a cry for help and find the captain inside the monster's throat hanging on for dear life. Kratos pulls him up, rips off his necklace, and then drops him to his death. His pointless cruelty establishes that you're ''not'' playing a good guy.
61	* ExactWords: Athena promised that Kratos would be forgiven for his sins if he killed Ares. She never said he would be free of his nightmares.
62	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: The game seems to take course over a single day. Kratos arrives at Athens at night, leaves for Pandora's Temple once it turns to daytime and we only return to nighttime as Kratos goes to kill Ares.
63	** The narrator states that Kratos took three days to climb up Kronos to Pandora’s Temple, so the timespan is certainly longer than a single day - the player, however, sees nothing of Kratos’ climb as it cuts straight to him arriving at the temple
64	* EyeballPluckingBirds: At the end of the cutscene when Kratos climbs up Pandora's temple, a vulture feasts on the fresh corpse of a Greek soldier and it plucks out an eyeball just before Kratos reaches the platform it's standing on.
65	* FinalBossNewDimension: The second phase of the final boss starts off in a normal house whose walls explode to reveal that it's floating in some psychedelic colored void.
66	* FightingDownMemoryLane: During his final confrontation with Ares, after direct combat has failed, Ares sucks Kratos into some kind of mental plane, where he forces Katros to relieve the Spartan's most defining moment - the day Kratos unwittingly murdered his own family. Or at least, Ares tries - Kratos has to fight off a horde of 'clone' Kratoses while protecting his family. If he fails, Kratos will simply collapse with a moan of "No... not again..."
67	* FissionMailed: After a long quest to retrieve Pandora's box, Ares impales Kratos with a giant slab of wood, and Kratos gets sent to Hades. Of course, this doesn't stop him in the least.
68	* {{Foreshadowing}}: The gravedigger, implied to be Zeus in disguise, addresses Kratos as "my son" several times. [[spoiler:The sequel reveals that Zeus is, in fact, Kratos' father.]]
69	* GoneHorriblyRight: Ares personally took Kratos in and trained him. Then he [[spoiler:duped Kratos into killing his wife and daughter, the only things holding him back from being the perfect killing machine.]] Sadly, he trained Kratos a little ''too'' well, which costs him his life.
70	-->'''Ares''': That day... I was trying to make you a great warrior!\
71	'''Kratos''': You succeeded. [''finishes Ares off'']
72	* GreenEyedMonster: Ares attacks Athens out of jealousy over Athena being [[ParentalFavoritism Zeus' favorite]].
73	* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: The second phase of the final battle has Kratos protecting his family from clones of him. If he fails, the family dies, Game Over. If he wins... Ares takes his blades and rams them both into his family anyway.
74	* HerdHittingAttack: The Wrath of Poseidon is the best magic option for dealing with groups of enemy, since it creates a sphere of electricity around Kratos where any enemy within is damaged for each second they're within it.
75	* HeroWithBadPublicity: [[AntiHero For a given value of "hero"]]. Due to the past atrocities he's committed, Kratos has a bad reputation, to the extent that people are actually more scared of him than the monsters trying to kill them. When fighting the Hydra, one sailor locks himself in a room and tells Kratos point-blank that he'd rather die than be saved by him. Later, in Athens, one woman is so freaked out by Kratos that she runs away and ends up falling off a balcony to her death.
76	* HowWeGotHere: The game [[InMediasRes opens up]] with Kratos attempting suicide, with the remainder of the game explaining why.
77	* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Kratos at the hands of Ares. [[spoiler:He escapes the underworld, though, and gets him back for it in the final battle.]] Also worth mentioning the deaths of the Hydra King (impaled through the head with a mast) and Pandora's Guardian (impaled by a flaming log and pinned to a gate).
78	* ImprobableAimingSkills: Ares impales Kratos by throwing a giant column all the way through the city of Athens and the Desert of Lost Souls; ending up at exactly the same place where the entrance to temple, and by extension Kratos, are (said temple is constantly being transported by Cronos on his back, making this feat even more ridiculous). Possibly justified, as Ares is a god.
79	* KillEnemiesToOpen:
80	** Whenever a battle starts, every possible escape route is covered with a wall of flames, which only vanish after all enemies are slain.
81	** In the Trial of Hades, you'll be trapped in a labyrinth until you kill every single monster turning corners searching for fresh prey.
82	* LavaPit: Platforming through the Trial of Hades is mostly a challenge of watching out for the floor to pull out beneath you and sending you plummeting into insta-death lava.
83	* LateToTheTragedy: Kratos can find several journal passages from the architect who constructed Pandora's Temple. They don't serve to forward the plot at all, but it's very interesting nonetheless to watch him design the temple, slowly go mad, kill his sons, turn their skulls into keys you use to unlock doors, and eventually pull a murder-suicide on his wife.
84	* LoneWolfBoss: The very first boss in the game is the Hydra, a monster that has been terrorizing the seas for a long time and has no relation with Ares. Kratos simply fights it while sailing on his way to Athens.
85	* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: After he saves her, the Oracle of Athens reads Kratos' mind to see the man he truly is... and is horrified to discover that Athena's chosen "hero" is/was a brutal, bloodthirsty Spartan warrior who committed all manner of atrocities.
86	-->'''Oracle''': By the gods! Why would Athena send one such as you?
87	* {{Mooks}}: Undead Legionnaires and their numerous variations are the standard mooks encountered by Kratos on his quest.
88	* MookMaker: Cerberi can spit out Cerberus Puppies which, if left unchecked, will grow up into new adult Cerberi who in turn can spawn more puppies, and so on. To cap it all, Cerberi are quite annoying and tough foes to face in combat. Later games omit this power.
89	* MultiMeleeMaster: Not to disappoint, Ares shows proficiency with many weapons, usually on fire, such as his SpiderLimbs, a blazing axe, a massive, spiked warhammer which can shoot fire and a colossal fiery sword.
90	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Offscreen, Pathos Verdes, the architect of Pandora's Temple. While at first he appears to be fanatically proud of his work, he becomes less enthusiast after the death of his second son and by the time he kills his own wife he has make a full turn from the way he was.
91	* NonStandardGameOver: During the final battle in the first game, Kratos is hurled back to the moment he killed his family, only to find them alive... whereupon Ares conjures up an army of Kratos clones. The family has their own health bar in the following battle; should it run out, a cutscene starts, showing Kratos collapsing in abject despair and sorrow, murmuring, "Not again..." The Kratos clones then gang up and chop him apart.
92	* OneHitKill: The final room in Pandora's Temple has its walls lined with fire-traps that kill Kratos if he spends too long to close to a part of the wall. They don't do damage, they just outright kill you.
93	* OracularHead: Aside from Ares and Athena, the gods only appear to Kratos as glowing, two-dimensional heads that block doorways to where he needs to go.
94	* OurHydrasAreDifferent: Kratos fights a hydra supposedly descended from the Lernaean one, which unlike the original is explicitly a SeaMonster.
95	* OurSirensAreDifferent: Sirens are superficially attractive women who summon men to their doom with their voice, as per the usual. Unusually, they inhabit a desert instead of the coast, and following their voices is actually necessary to win the game.
96	* PaintingTheMedium: The armored minotaur starts off with his lifebar being similarily armored: once you break through the minotaur's armor with the [[BossArenaIdiocy convenient burning log launcher]], it starts to show cracks, and after you do it again, the cracked armor covering the lifebar shakes when you damage the minotaur before it finally falls off piece by piece, at which point you can finally hurt him.
97	* PowerFloats: Your first magic attack lets you know the magic can be as flashy as your blades by having Kratos float several feet of the ground as lightning ricochets off him.
98	* ProductDeliveryOrdeal: Subverted. After finding Pandora's Box, Kratos is tasked with pushing the box [[BeyondTheImpossible all the way off of Cronos to Athens]]. After a minute of the player moving it for a while, Ares finds out and throws a wooden spike all the way to Kratos, who is sent to the Underworld.
99	* ProngsOfPoseidon: Nearly every statue of the Poseidon in the game has his famous trident by his side. This helps those unfamiliar with the myths understand why a large golden fork lets Kratos breathe underwater and swim like a mermaid.
100	* ProtectionMission: There's a section right in the middle of the final boss where you have to protect some people from a near never-ending hordes of enemies. The enemies are as tough as you, so your only solace is you can heal your wards by holding O next to them. The significance of it is [[spoiler:Kratos is stuck in a nightmare where he must protect his family from duplicates of himself.]]
101	* RashPromise: We see through flashbacks that Kratos was so addicted to victory that he promised his life to Ares with no thought of what being a slave to war god would entail. We learn that this service lead to Kratos slaughtering his own families.
102	* TheReveal: Fans of the series may be surprised to learn that the source of Kratos' nightmares isn't revealed until shortly before the final boss. You get little hints and build-up to it throughout the cutscenes, but they don't explicitly say "Kratos sliced his family" until after you get Pandora's Box.
103	* SeaMonster: The very first boss, the Hydra, setting up the tradition for the remaining games of having a giant starting boss.
104	* SequelHook: While the game's ending is self-contained, it did leave some clues where the series would go next:
105	** In the chamber keeping Pandora's Box, there is a painting on the ground showing a warrior defying Zeus. Its significant since the caption says this is a vision of the future and the background music pauses during this time.
106	** Two of the bonus videos showed Kratos discovering his true heritage and vowing revenge against his real father, and the existence of a brother that he thought had died but sought revenge against him. These two plot points would be later used in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarGhostOfSparta'' which was developed after the trilogy was concluded, but technically served as a direct sequel to the first game.
107	* SequentialBoss: You [[spoiler:fight Ares. Then he sucks you into a portal where you find your "family" and must donate your health to them while being attacked by versions of yourself. THEN, you fight Ares again, only without any of your upgraded weapons or magic.]]
108	* ShockAndAwe: The third magic attack you learn is Zeus's Lightning, which lets you throw lightning like the man himself at an enemy within range. The more upgrade it, the more lightning you can create and the faster you can throw it.
109	* SmashingHallwayTrapsOfDoom: Spiked walls smash into each other at regularly irregular intervals all over Pandora's Temple. Connoisseurs of the deadly will also appreciate how they're decorated with crimson blood and dismembered pieces of failed heroes felled by them before.
110	* SpikesOfDoom:
111	** Pathos Verdes III loves his spikes. He designed walls, floors, and pillars covered in spikes and then decided, hey, what if I made all of those things move of their own volition?
112	** Perhaps the biggest challenge in the Underworld is climbing up three rotating pillars all lined with spikes. The spikes don't do much damage alone, but they'll knock Kratos off the pillar and careening to the bottom to climb up again.
113	* SuperNotDrowningSkills: Just by holding Poseidon's trident, Kratos can breathe dusty water and ancient blood as if it were fresh air on a Sunday morning.
114	* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: You can slaughter droves of panicking Athenians for some health orbs or for your own twisted amusement.
115	* VideoGameVista: Has a Scenery Gorn example: after making his way through Athens, Kratos emerges from a tunnel through a cliff face, where he can see down into a huge valley where a ferocious battle is raging as a [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever gigantic Ares towers overhead]].
116	* TheWallsAreClosingIn: Yes, even this old standard appears among the many traps in Pandora's Temple. At the very least, only one spiked wall comes in to crush you, differentiating this from the common two-room crushers seen everywhere else while also giving you more room to slaughter the enemies blocking your escape.
117	* WellDoneSonGuy: Revealed towards the end to be Ares's motive. He shouts to the heavens of his deeds, asking why Zeus favors Athena.
118	* WhatHaveIBecome: In a rare moment of self-awareness, Kratos, at the sight several butchered bodies, quietly reflects on what he's become.
119	--> '''Kratos''': [''horrified tone''] By the gods... what have I become?

Context VideoGame / GodOfWarI