I always thought that Kratos was meant to be detestable. He is the embodiment of pure violent rage and it's ultimately shown that his actions do more harm than good. Seriously, his anger borders on the supernatural: how else could you explain his perpetual scowl even as he is solving block puzzles?
Disliking him as a character is the "right" response, I find. He is not a good person, after all. However you can like him as a protagonist.
It's precisely his repugnant nature that made him so fun to play at the time, what with his brutal fighting style and the fact that he constantly seeks violence. We've moved away from that sort of protagonist in action videogames lately, prefering to have heroes that are relunctant or on some sort of redemption path. But at the time, he was the perfect protagonist to move forward a story that focused on deicide.
However, like I mentionned, we have moved past this sort of story for the most part. We'd rather have a more down-to-earth plot of redemption, even if the backdrop is still fantastical.
I liked the scene in the trailer where he started shouting at his son after he had made a mistake and had to visibly will himself to calm down. And how terrified at times the kid seemed towards Kratos. I hope that the game doesn't shy away from showing how udderly nightmarish it must be to have grown up with fucking Kratos as your dad, being trained in the "Spartan Way"
"Learning to move past your anger problems and be a good dad to your kid and also now you live in Skyrim" is the type of plot that I feel would better resonate to modern gamers. I really hope they don't kill someone and have the game be a standard revenge story.
edited 14th Jun '16 9:17:05 AM by GutstheBerserker
The problem isn't that Kratos is an asshole; he's a badly-written asshole.
I don't really buy the argument that we're supposed to hate him. The creators clearly want us to sympathize with him when he finds out all the Spartans are dead in II, and when he's bonding with Pandora in III. III made a big deal about redemption and hope, too.
The problem is that he's badly written and his character arc makes no sense.
Any who, watched the demo for 4. Will be interesting to see how it proceeds. I noticed there were no blades-on-chains. Also it seems to be eschewing the fixed camera angles.
Sure. They want us to sympathize with him in those rare moments where he's not being a complete and utter asshole because those moments reveal his humanity. They make him three-dimensional, allowing us to feel more disdain and disgust for him when he's acting like a raving beast than we would if he were a cackling cartoon supervillain.
He's given just enough likable qualities to let the audience truly despise him for the choices that he makes. Choices like killing the last of the Spartans he mourned over in his mad quest for vengeance, or allowing Pandora to die because he really wants to punch Zeus in the face and prioritizes that over saving her life. That's not bad writing.
Kratos has all the potential in the world to be a good man. That's what makes him such an effective villain. He is a monster of his own creation.
edited 14th Jun '16 10:38:31 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Okay, Tobias? None of those count!
He never actually found out that he was the last Spartan until after he had already killed him; he actually showed shock that he was there instead of at Sparda like he ordered him to. And the thing with Pandora is, he didn't want to sacrifice her in order to reach Pandora's Box once they were finally there, she insisted on doing it for him despite the fact he legitimately cared about her, and she willingly sacrificed herself to help Kratos against Zeus once the guy found them both by the Flames.
edited 14th Jun '16 11:13:20 AM by Ssj3Gojira
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!They totally count.
He didn't know the guy was the last Spartan at the time but that doesn't matter. He steamrolled over him like he did countless others in his mad quest for vengeance. He left a trail of broken and murdered bodies behind him then stopped at one point to turn around and realize that he actually cared about one of the lives he crushed in his wake. So he stopped, mourned for five seconds, then resumed the single-minded massacre that led to the guy's death in the first place.
And yes, sacrificing Pandora absolutely counts. It counts because Kratos tried to save her. He tried so hard. It was a powerful moment of him rising above himself and going out of his way to protect another. And all it takes is one snippy comment from Zeus, and then Kratos makes a choice. He lets her go, abandoning her to die her pointless death so that he can lunge at Zeus and hit him. God of War III allowed him to experience a father's love again in order to make it more poignant when he willingly casts away that love to indulge in his hate.
Between that and the fact that every game contains a puzzle that must be solved by murdering an innocent person in cold blood, and it's pretty clear that Kratos's humanizing elements exist only to highlight the fact that his cruelty and blind vengeance is unjustifiable. He is not a wild beast or a one-dimensional caricature of evil. He's a man given every opportunity to change, who rejects those opportunities at every turn in favor of his ever-turning cycle of self-destruction.
edited 14th Jun '16 11:43:45 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Even though I'm not going to be playing GOW 4 anytime soon, I'm a big fan of the fact that he doesn't have any swingy chain weapons in the trailer. They weren't bad weapons, but GOW 3 was basically nothing but swingy chain weapons. Even the punchy hammer fists were swingy chain weapons.
Which was something that always bugged me about 3. 1 and 2 had alternate weapons that weren't just swingy chain weapons, but then 3 comes around and its nothing but swingy chain weapons. Seemed like a big step back in weapon design. Sadly, I haven't played any of the non-numbered titles yet, so I don't know how they handled weapons.
Click Click Boom BoomMy prediction is neither. Kratos hooked up with a viking lady for a bit, before going off to go do whatever. But said viking lady got knocked up. So cue 10-12 years later, Kratos gets a message from this woman about his bastard child, and returns.
The way Kratos refers to the kid's mother during the trailer really makes me think there wasn't much between the two, but the fact that the kid call Kratos father a couple of times, despite the apparent lack of love between Kratos and his unseen mother, implies biological descent. At least that's my take on the situation.
Click Click Boom BoomMaybe the kid's a consequence of one of the gratuitous sex minigames the previous games have had.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Because Greece was flooded, then covered in plagues, and then all the plants died.
Kratos's actions destroying the world is an elephant in the room that this sequel needs to resolve at some point.
edited 14th Jun '16 2:44:08 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
I think that's a pretty good argument for any minigame sex partners being dead along with theoretical offspring, rather then them somehow ending up in Norway.
Like, I like the God of War games when I played them, but looking back, that way were pretty immature in their presentation with all the un-ironic Testosterone Poisoning. Kratos being a dick, the sex mini games, all the over-the-top gore.
I guess that's what I'm looking forward to this new installment. It's looking like a move in the right direction.
The funny thing about Norse Myth is while Both sets have a heavy doss of You can't fight fate
Greek Myth favors the Ironic, "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."
Norse Myth seems to lean more toward... its been said it must be done. with attempts to prevent it either being of the ironic nature or straight up it doesn't matter its gonna happen.
I'd like to think the Norse pantheon is less antagonistic toward New Kratos
This is an outrage against Luminara!To the "anti-Kratos" people, not that I didn't want to argue, but I don't really know how to argue what a badly-written character is, or what's considered interesting/likable qualities, without getting everyone's personal view on it and making an even longer discussion out of it - that's too broad of a criticism for me. So to to each their own.
I would say play 3, Ghosts of Sparta, and Ascension if you haven't, those get away from the usual "angry Kratos is angry" characterizations the other games have - you see him interact with other people normally for once.
Suffice to say Kratos is probably a little different this time around, I think. I just don't want them using Ascension's gameplay system, or trying to shove online play into the series again.
Interpretation:
Greek myth will have some ironic twist with a character (Kratos) attempting to avoid his fate but accidentally being the direct cause of it, whereas North myth is more fatalistic? Ragnarok, its the end-times, no if's, and's, or but's.
And that's an interesting point, how will Kratos be dealing with that, will that be a part of his quest this time around? Is this going to be a downer ending? I don't think he can murder a cataclysmic event.
edited 15th Jun '16 5:55:56 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!Given the fact that Kratos murdered the Greek fates. If anyone can no sell an inevitable apocalypse it would probably be him. Though given what happened in 3, he'll probably end up just kick starting Ragnarok instead.
Click Click Boom BoomSo, it kinda looks like God of War meets The Last of Us, with Norse mythology thrown in?
To my own surprise, I'm actually interested in this. And I've never actually played any of the previous God of War games. But the idea of Kratos being given a slightly more Joel-esque weariness, and being given a child he needs to protect, genuinely intrigues me.
So yeah, hopefully they won't fridge the kid in the first twenty minutes - having him be killed, or worse, kidnapped and turned into nothing but a carrot to keep the plot moving along. If he sticks around, is an actual character rather than an annoying little shit, and gets a character arc of his own? Who knows, this game might actually turn out to be something really special.
Of course, The Last of Us is one of my favorite games of all time, so anything that makes any vague promises to give me something similar to that will almost automatically have my attention. The similarities so far seem to be pretty obvious, so let's hope that they actually get what made The Last of Us great, rather than just going "look, a Badass and Child Duo! Heap acclaim upon us!"
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

I found Kratos unlikeable because he was a terrible person that blamed everyone but himself for his problems. Yes, some of them were the fault of the Greek gods but he constantly blamed them for everything, even things that he did himself.