God of War

[deanb]

 

Never been much of a God of War person, but this looked kinda neat, and the kid survived to the end of their gameplay video. Now he's taken out the greek gods seems he's going after the norse gods.

[TheMightyEthan]

I find it really distracting that he's still not wearing a shirt in the frozen wastes of the north.

[deanb]

He has a beard, that's enough.

[Thursday Next]

Weird experiencing the feels over killing a deer, but we're all cool with brutally dispatching the other things in this game. I know that's kind of a point they were making. Hope it gets fleshed out and isn't cast aside like the back story in Days Gone.

[Mal]

The other things are foul beasts, kin to Hadean and Olympian monstrosities. Anyhow, it's an interesting direction they are taking the series. I just hope it's inspired since this Norse ground has been tread before.

[MetalCaveman]

I wasn't a big fan of the first one, but this looks pretty cool. Also, it's dealing with Norse mythology now, and that alone gets me interested. \m/ \m/

[TheMightyEthan]

At first I was mostly joking, but I honestly am having trouble getting past how dumb it is that he isn't wearing a shirt. It makes it impossible for me to take it seriously, which based on the stuff with the kid it clearly wants to be taken seriously.

[Thursday Next]

He's a God. Of War. Why the hell would he need to wrap up warm? Plus, as someone who is not a God of Anything and has gone running in sub zero temperatures, I can assure that he would be plenty warm with all the stuff he gets up to.

[deanb]

 

Some story and gameplay stuff.

[Eleven]

Where is this game at timeline-wise? Was that his kid? Was that his wife? Didn't his wife and children die in the first game? 

[CorgiShinobi]

Like, it's after the original trilogy. We're not sure how far out from the last game, but the gist is that Kratos has moved on and now has a son. Not sure who the woman is, but basically Kratos is now making due with Norse mythology.

[Bogie 2.0]

On 6/14/2016 at 2:18 PM, Thursday Next said:

Weird experiencing the feels over killing a deer, but we're all cool with brutally dispatching the other things in this game.

Zeus must be rolling in his grave, no patricide is as disrespectful as them sappy feefees over your average sacrificial lamb!

 

Newish trailer:

 

I find it sad that one of the last few AAA games that was unashamed of its mindless action-heavy violence right from the get go, is getting the Naughty Dog treatment of pushing up to narrative.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Bogie 2.0
sorry, new guy here

[Mr. GOH!]

This game is very good, at least after the 10-ish hours I've put in after immediately playing through the entirety of GOW 3 Remastered over the last week. 

The combat is different than the previous entries, but I think it is better. It's essentially Dark Souls-lite; it's more deliberate than the previous GoW games, but still waaaaaaaaaay faster and action game-y than the Souls games. The camera is over-the-shoulder and player-controlled, which is far less frustrating that the old GOW games' camera. Kratos now wields an upgradeable magical axe, having ditched the Blades of Chaos at the end of GoW III. 

 

Melee combat is built around the Souls R1 for light attack and R2 for heavy (this can be remapped to the old GoW games' square and triangle buttons if you'd like). L1 raises your shield, with which you can parry-stun some enemies. As you upgrade your equipment and Kratos's skills, you gain access to a bunch of different combos as well as equipment-dependent magic attacks. Ranged combat consists of throwing the axe and then summoning it back to you like Marvel's Thor with Mjollnir. Except Kratos's axe can stick into enemies, which sometimes has a special effect such as freezing the enemy while the axe remains buried in it. The animation and sound of the flying axe are top notch; it feels *incredibly* badass to throw the axe and summon it back to your hand. While the axe is out of Kratos's hands, he is very adept at punching enemies to death, particularly since unarmed combat causes a stun gauge to fill on each pummeled enemy and once it is full, Kratos can do an auto-finisher reminiscent of the QTE finishers in the old GoW games, albeit without a QTE (at least yet).

 

The second aspect of ranged combat is your son; Atreus fires his bow at targets you specify at the press of the square button and, as you level up skills and equipment, assists Kratos in other ways (some of which I have clearly not yet unlocked).  Atreus's ranged attacks also fill the enemies stun gauges, which is helpful. This integrates Atreus and his bow into combat in a very useful, fun way, making him a million times more helpful than, say, Ellie in TLoU or your various henchpeople in the Uncharted games. I am not sure if Atreus can die, really, but he can be overwhelmed and need Kratos's help to escape enemies ganging up on him.

 

There are a lot of different options for armor and runs you can put into the axe to make it behave differently or to give you special attacks. You can also add enchantments and gems and upgrade equipment in other ways. I have just started to scratch the surface of the equipment systems, so I can't really comment on how they work together, but it appears deep and vast. 

 

The first five or so hours of the game is a linear introduction to the basic systems and the game world. The game gets the tutorializing right, balancing narrative and a gradual ramp-up of combat difficulty and options with effective storytelling that is never exposition-heavy .

Spoiler

The second boss fight, with The Stranger (whom the game has suggested is the Norse God Baldur), is extremely fun. Even though he's a human-sized opponent a good foot shorter than Kratos, he feels threatening and the way the fight switches between in-engine cutscenes and live play is great. 

 

The first boss-fight with a huge troll is also quite fun, and is reminiscent of some of the big bosses from earlier GoW games.

 

The game is also committed to the single-take camera, and it has worked so far, particularly in a  specific early boss fight with a human-sized opponent and when Kratos encounters the series' trademark Enormous Monsters. 

Spoiler

Awakening the World Serpent felt truly epic as the camera kept pulling out to get Kratos, Atreus, and the head of the serpent that is wrapped around the world into a single frame. 

The game also looks gorgeous, easily as good as any Naughty Dog game and better than Horizon: Zero Dawn, even on my regular PS4.

 

As many reviewers have said, like BOTW, discovering different areas and game systems is part of what makes GoW so good, so I will put the rest of this post behind spoiler tags. The first tag will hide a very paragraphs about how the game has been structured so far, and the second will go into detail about the narrative so far.

 

Spoiler

The game starts linear but then slowly opens up into an open world by the fifth or sixth hour. The open world hub is big, but not huge, and it's fairly dense with content so far. The best comparison I've heard is that it's like the Hylian Plains in Ocarina of Time rather than the worlds of Bethesda games. There's a hub open world and then rather large "spoke" areas with their own quests and flavor, or so I have read. I have just been exploring the hub, though I made a lengthy detour into a very large secret area I stumbled upon to gather some treasure and complete some side quests. The secret area was a very Dark Souls-y foray into exploring a ruined castle, confronting its undead denizens, and freeing/killing mythic creatures imprisoned there while deciphering what, exactly, led to the "kingdom's" decline and fall. I had a blast! 

 

I get the sense that the main quest will open up different spoke areas, though I consciously have not advanced the main quest to the point such areas would open up. I know my next step to to go to a certain place in the hub that suspiciously seems like main hub area with a shop and so on, like the cathedral in Dark Souls 3. I instead have wandered around doing small sidequests and getting sucked into the large secret area. I will advance the main quest once I get home tonight.

 

Spoiler

The narrative is advanced through dialogue with Atreus and NPCs, as well as through the lore text in the game's codex, which is written by Atreus and is so far excellent. There is no narrator or leaden exposition and it seems pretty clear that Kratos knows very little of the Norse world in which the game takes place despite living there for at least a decade. The game kicks off as Kratos cuts down the last of a number of trees his wife had designated for use to fire her funeral pyre; she died some days before the game began under as-yet unrevealed circumstances. Her last wish was to have her ashes scattered from the top of a nearby mountain and that is the goal of the main quest. I won't spoil any more main story developments; this is all information you learn in the first five minutes.

 

The emotional heft of the story lies in the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. It is clear that Kratos has been a distant father and that Atreus learned most of what he knows at the beginning of the game from his mother, including how to read and how to hunt. In fact, Atreus appears to know way more about the Norse world than Kratos, who clearly could never be bothered to learn about his new world's gods and myths, although he does seem to know about different monsters and their powers. The game even heavily implies that Kratos is illiterate at least as far as any runic writing is concerned; one of Atreus's functions is to read everything from runic clues to environmental puzzles to inscriptions on statues because Kratos cannot. It is also clear that Kratos both deeply cares for his son and has a very difficult time showing that he cares because of just how emotionally stunted he had become over the previous games. It was startling to dive into this game after GoW 3, since he spends much of that game not giving a shit about death and violence and fucking up the Greek world enough to kill thousands of innocents. He's still an emotional void when he interacts with Atreus, so far. When Atreus is in real danger or separated from Kratos, Kratos's anxiety and love for Atreus sometimes come out. In one early scene in which Kratos is frantically searching for Atreus, who had rushed ahead and gotten into trouble, you can hear the desperation in Kratos's voice when he yells out for Atreus and Kratos's growing panic as it appears Atreus has gotten himself into imminent danger. For the most part, however, Kratos takes on the role of teaching Atreus how to fight and survive when up against mythological enemies. I suspect this will develop into something more emotional as the game goes on. Kratos clearly wants to connect with Atreus but just does not know how. There are also moments that make clear that Kratos is discomfitted when Atreus emulates Kratos's rage.

 

Atreus, in contrast, is an active (if recently-sickly) ten-year-old who wants to prove himself to his dad while also having a grand adventure. Atreus is impulsive and emotional like many ten-year-olds, but also quite smart and introspective. I suggest reading the codex entries he writes; they reflect what and how he thinks about Kratos and the mythic Norse world they're navigating and flesh out Atreus's character even more than cut scenes and the dialogue he has with Kratos and NPCs while traversing the world. Atreus is curious and active and way more animated than his father in general. He's never annoying and I have liked all of his interactions so far. He's particularly funny when interacting with a particular shopkeeper NPC.

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by Mr. GOH!

[deanb]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playstation.mimirsvision

 

No idea if this is an app that'd appeal to folk. It might only work on a few phones as it runs off ARCore. Doesn't seem to be a "companion app" in the sense of the PIPboy n Destiny apps have like direct connection with your game for extra controls and more of a fancy wiki.

[MetalCaveman]

How's Atreus gameplay wise? Can he get killed? Is he actually useful in combat or someone that needs to be kept alive?  

[Mister Jack]

I'm not that far yet, but so far he comes in handy.  I don't know if he can die, but you have to equip armor on him so I assume he can at least be knocked out.  Atreus is like a support unit.  If you hit square he'll shoot an arrow at an enemy, which takes their attention off of you for a few seconds.  If you have the right upgrades he can also attack downed enemies for you or do a combo attack with you.  This is all early game stuff, so I don't know what else he's capable of.

[Mr. GOH!]

This game is not a big escort mission. Atreus takes care of himself for the most part. If he gets overwhelmed he may not be available to shoot arrows,  but he's very easy to get back and there's no game over based on Atreus. Only Kratos can die, really. 

[Thursday Next]

This game is bloody awesome! Was worried that Atreus was going to make it escort mission hell, but as others have said, you don't need to protect him at all.

 

I don't think the combat has properly clicked with me yet. I keep forgetting about Atreus, and which moves I have equipped, I spend a lot (probably too much) time hanging back and throwing my axe, and not enough time windmilling in.

[Hot Heart]

2 hours ago, Thursday Next said:

windmilling in.

 

Ha, I think you're the only other person I've ever seen use this expression. The other person got it from an old Paul Kaye ad for the World Cup in 2002.

 

On the actual topic though... yeah, I'm intrigued. I got fed up of the original God of War right at the end so I'm glad to hear this is different. Not that I'll be playing it any time soon...

[Thursday Next]

I was indeed referencing Mr Kaye.

 

 

[CorgiShinobi]

I wonder if any of you guys have reached this point in the story yet. Where Kratos goes back to his home for something.

 

Super vague for a reason. 

[Thursday Next]

I don't think so. I'm looking for/am about to collect a chisel. 

[TheMightyEthan]

4 hours ago, Thursday Next said:

I don't think so. I'm looking for/am about to collect a chisel. 

 

How utterly enthralling this game sounds.

[Mr. GOH!]

I love how banal people can make this game sound when trying to hide spoilers! 

 

Also, @Atomsk88 and anyone who knows what he's referring to:

 

Spoiler

Despite not really liking the other games in the series,  getting the chaos blades was pretty sweet. It also works super well as a story point insofar as Kratos stops pretending to be what he is not and, subsequently, tells his son the truth about his godhood (if not his tendency to deicide). Acquiring the blades is also opens up combat options in new, fun ways. 

 

Edit: I cannot overstate how much I am enjoying this game. Very light spoilers for the overall structure of the game so far (I am maybe 20 hours in and have done all the side quests I can find):

 

Spoiler

I love how the game tricked me into thinking I had almost finished it when I'm probably just about halfway through. From the ways the map changes as your progress, to the way character and gear progression ends up working, I have found myself several times thinking that the game is almost over only to have it surprise me. I like how the game obscures these things so you can't just go into a menu and see that, say, you have half of the skills in a tree therefore you are almost halfway done with the game. Same with character levels; I have no idea what the max level is for Kratos or enemies because the game does not reveal that sort of information. The narrative works in a similar way, which is interesting.

 

I am somewhat concerned, though, about whether Kratos gets to all nine realms in the main game or whether a few may be blocked off the entire game.

 

Also, Mimir is my favorite.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2018 by Mr. GOH!

[Thursday Next]

Ok, yeah, I've been home now. This game is too good!

 

Spoiler

Weirdly, I had getting the blades of chaos spoiled for me by a tool tip that mentioned them. Would have thought this would be locked out of rotation till you got them, but ho hum.