LogFAQs > #900876731

so yeah i got the platinum for the game five days ago, and i'm actually midway through another playthrough. decided to replay it anyway to see if the pacing and narrative problems that some people bring up affect me as much.

i actually appreciate more the craft in storytelling for one plot thread (baldur and freya's relationship), seeing the small things that affirm that particular climax.

nothing super glaring so far in the pacing, but i do still have a ways to go before the last quarter, which is the part that gets most of the complaints regarding the pacing.

if there is one thing that i definitely missed in the early game, it's just the lack of combat options. makes me wish for a new game plus. of course, i get why the moveset is as basic as it is in the beginning. it took me about 3-5 hours into the game the first time before i got comfortable enough with the combat. maybe some of the moves could have been there from the start though, like the running attacks and the axe cleave?

going back to the narrative, i do empathize with the more big picture problem critics have with it. the story sony santa monica decided to tell was done well enough. it's just that it falls into the same trappings of these kinds of stories. the typical idea of masculinity isn't really challenged in a meaningful way, and it doesn't make for good representation of women. it's nowhere near straight-up juvenile misogynist like in the previous games, but it still doesn't do much for positive, forward-thinking depictions of women. faye is mythologized to be this perfect warrior/sage/saint, and i cannot for the life of me fathom how she ever got into a relationship with kratos and had a kid with him. maybe that's the one thing that makes her seem like a real person - her downright atrocious taste in men, which i say as a joke but even then if taken on face value also doesn't speak kindly for women's representation! freya is just overburdened as the one on-screen female character. there are all these male characters showing a range of personalities and arcs, and there's the one woman who becomes a trope in the end. i don't find it off-puttingly offensive, but it is disappointing.

i also take issue with the game's gestures at "being better" in regard to kratos' violent past. it's just so pg-13 "mature" action fiction to say violence should be the last option while glorifying violence 90% of the time. yes, it's hard to ignore commenting on it when the game is telling a father and son story framed in a much more grounded way, but i can't help but roll my eyes when games try to moralize on that front and still paint protagonists who kill hundreds as heroic all the while making violence feel viscerally satisfying. why even bother when you're not really saying anything new or profound about those conflicting emotions?!

these failings have only made me think more fondly of the last of us. now there's a big-budget sad dad video game that interrogates paternal masculinity and violence without having that disconnect in story and gameplay.

it's probably easier for me to look past those flaws anyway because hey i'm a dude and a person who has been playing video games since childhood without the highest expectations for aaa stories, but yeah, despite my problems with the narrative, i still think god of war is an enormously fun time. the combat really is something special, the exploration loop is rewarding, mimir is the perfect addition to the kratos/atreus dynamic, brok and sindri are incredibly charming, the small moments with kratos and atreus are genuine and heartfelt, the big moments are exhilarating and fist-pumping, the nods to the past games are succinct and impactful, and the valkryie fights are just the best.

i'm going to finish it again, and i will likely still feel positively about it in the future. here's hoping the sequels are better with women????
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