The righteousness of his decisions builds up throughout the sequel, all the while cleverly developing a dangerous mindset of callousness and single-minded fury that we see carried out in the third game. The Kratos we see in God of War II is vital because it bridges the gap between the simmering powder keg we see at the end of the opening game and the raging beast that is only quelled by his own hand at the end of the original trilogy. Kratos didn’t often smile or laugh, but the nature of actions, in their cleverness and brutality, spoke to the enraged glee that shone through the storm clouds of his grief and anger and loathing. What set him apart from the borderline sociopathic space Spartan, demon slayer, and duel-wielding archeologist mentioned prior is that Kratos possessed a sort of malicious madness and black humor not really seen since the likes of Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The Kratos of the sequel is a broken man, yes, but has stepped into the role that straddles man and monster that other such protagonists have done as well. It becomes an exposure of the gods’ arrogance and shortsightedness: in attempting to crush the moniker and legacy of the Ghost of Sparta, they only serve to make him stronger. The genius of Kratos’ character arc presented in God of War II is that he lands in the role of “hero” by effectively taunting his “peers” to the point that they strip him of his immortality and their borrowed power, allowing him to retake the reins of his own strength and set to defying them in his own way. But when God of War ends, Kratos’ great determination has been locked away into a position of stagnation. The hero isn’t the one with all-encompassing power it’s the one with power lesser than the enemies they face, and yet renders nearly any advantage their foes wield obsolete through sheer audacious determination and focus and a shattering of mortal limits. The Kratos we see at the end of God of War is one who has experienced all these heartbreaks and more, but becomes shackled by becoming the very thing he loathes: a god. Lara Croft (the modern iteration) stumbles across her father’s apparent suicide and grows up watching his legacy smeared through the mud. The Doom Slayer/Doomguy is witness to butchery and horrors of an eldritch origin. The Master Chief is kidnapped and experimented on as a child.
One of the most defining features of some of video gaming’s greatest heroes is that they are broken in such a way that they appear whole. The visuals were incredible for its time, the cinematics were dramatic, with swelling musical numbers befitting the Greek tragedy playing out on our screens, and the visceral bloody giblets, consistently shirtless Kratos and lovingly rendered ladies made the game into a well-guarded, highly coveted treasure for both the playground and the office.īut for all its beauty and joy, the Kratos we see in the first God of War isn’t quite the Kratos most of us fell in love with. And to its credit, the original God of War was very much a masterpiece in its own right. One may wonder why it’s God of War II being praised and not simply the first game.
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