GOD OF WAR

Credits roll. Reassembly and time necessary to sort and assemble thoughts into words to be captured on digital paper to describe the experience. Because that is the only way I can describe God of War, first released in 2018 on PlayStation and finally making an appearance on the PC platform. Sony, after its pilot releases, saw that there was a huge market share on PC that had been left untapped for years. The "one console-one ecosystem" barriers have been broken as the gaming landscape has changed radically and is slowly homogenizing. The result is that we can experience gems that stand as worthy representatives, benchmarks for the hobby, the industry, and the larger Art. The following text offers as few spoilers as possible, which is extremely difficult without describing the greatness of the game's narrative.

The Curse of Saturn

For someone who has had no contact with consoles whatsoever, and only a superficial contact with the previous installments in the series, God of War is quite forgiving in introducing them to its spirit. Indeed, I don't know anything about the lore beyond that Kratos was the butcher of the Greek Pantheon, but knowing the background has very little impact on the player's ability to follow the story. Santa Monica Studio's decision was to tell a new story with new mechanics that broke away from the prequels. The main plot that the game deals with is the father-son relationship, the relationship between a veteran warrior (let alone when he is the god of war himself) and a child.

This pattern of history is nothing new. Both literary and cinematic milestones have this binary system as their central figure such as: Road to Perdition, Logan and of course the unsurpassed Lone Wolf and Cub (I refer friends to read the volumes published by Dark Horse) are some of them. The focus is on the hero who has seen it all, who has been through fire and iron to get to where he is alive, but not unscathed. His every skill, every instinct is honed, his bloody art has reached its peak. At the same time, the child is showing his abilities and possibly his potential to follow the same path. Depending on the scenario, he is the personification of youthful impatience, innocence, the raw power of youth, or a combination of all of these. Most importantly, the child is the anchor of the hero's spiritual serenity, the softening of his angles: a reunion with his lost humanity as he tries to initiate him into what it took him a lifetime to learn.

This is the main plot point of God of War. Kratos, fearing the Curse of Saturn to Jupiter when he killed him that his descendants would always have the same fate as him, he retreated to the Northern Lands to avoid his destiny. The game begins years later when we are gathering wood for the funeral pyre we are preparing for Kratos's recently deceased wife. Alongside the "boy" Atreus, son of Kratos, prepares the materials and braces for the fulfillment of his mother's last wish: to scatter her ashes on the highest peak of the world. Shortly before this happens, Kratos receives a visit from the Stranger an enigmatic figure on the verge of paranoia, if he has not already overcome it, who after some cryptic words attacks our hero.

After a subtle and clever tutorial, we are on our way to the highest peak in the world, together with Atreus. Along the way we will find many obstacles, but also allies. But always at the heart of it all, human relationships are examined and how ephemeral they are as much as life itself (even if it is of the gods). In the foreground, Kratos' relationship with Atreus is examined with insightful and inventive direction that aims to stir the emotions. Kratos goes from being a seemingly cruel shark to letting go of his inner conflict, his need to bond with his son despite his own fear of him, his search for and externalization of fatherhood. Gradually he reexamines his value system, and although he does not perform a 180-degree turn to become a... marulocard, he finds his balance with the... boy. Both reexamine their relationship and how it is framed by the secondary characters.

Trip to the Nordic Countries

One very important element that we've only mentioned so far is that the game is set far away from Greece and takes place in some unspecified location in the North. According to Norse mythology this place is the Midgard, that is, the Earth where mortals live. GoW takes a fresh look at all the mythology of the Nordic countries. The true achievement of how much work the game's writers have done on world-building is not apparent until the credits roll. We're talking about a huge undertaking, given that the original material (unlike Greek/Roman mythology) is extremely limited: the two texts from which we draw sources and knowledge are only the Poetic Edda (Codex Regius, a collection of 31 poems) and the Prose Edda (written by the Icelandic scholar, Snorri Sturluson). I had the happy coincidence of reading Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology at the same time (highly recommended as an anthology-reading) and the result was beyond impressive as I experienced it.

Another factor contributed to this: as opposed to the typical practice of "quickly watching the main quest, maybe a couple of side quests" to write the review, I watched almost the whole game. Of course, I couldn't help it, since I couldn't put the controller down (yes, the experience is better with it), but every interval, every trek while exploring GoW's open-world environment was filled with a story, an element from the Norse legends. At about 47 hours (just a bit of way off 100%) I can't say I was bored for a moment. The rhymes between Atreus and Kratos and later access to an NPC offered small but refreshing drops that both quenched and increased my thirst for a little more storytelling. The result was that by the time I reached the end, I had largely absorbed the majority of the dialogue and was engrossed in the game's world. The impact of the ending was even greater... I highly recommend anytime you think you want to see the main plot development, stray. Take the boat and paddle into the main area of the game. Do any side quest. It can only contribute positively to the game's climax, trust me.

The coherence of the gameplay systems

Of course it wouldn't make any sense if GoW excelled in dramaturgy and world-building and didn't have comparable gameplay mechanics. And there's a perception that the game is nothing but a giant cutscene with in-game engine cutscenes of 20 minutes. The latter couldn't be further from the truth: despite the existence of some cutscenes (along the lines set by Fahrenheit with some existence of QTEs) GoW remains a hack-n-slash action title, introducing RPG elements, along with several doses of exploration (along the lines of Tomb Raider for collectibles). Indeed, it will be a very rare occasion when you will be bored and have nothing to do. The map is teeming with places that invite you to explore: lost treasures, high challenge battles with their corresponding rewards, side quests and so on.

Of course, a title with the word "war" could not be without battle. The combat system is the most complete and complete I've come across in a game of this genre in recent years. I was initially quick to compare it to its near-contemporary Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, but that would be an unfair comparison for both, as Star Wars tries to approach combat from a different angle, while GoW is clearly superior. The plethora of moves, different approaches (magic, unarmed combat, axe masteries) and even the moveset itself provide them with the most satisfying experience. And while there is a fairly respectable range of enemies, it alternates to push us on a case-by-case basis to reassess the situation and use the right counters. And for fans of grind and combat gauntlets, the game provides two optional areas in which we can collect materials to build the best possible equipment.

The equipment comes and snaps onto the system of builds. Having Atreus opens up the options and we now have the ability to use rune magic, in addition to the basic stats that determine energy, health, etc. This allows us to customize our playstyle to suit us: either by investing in magic attacks that unleash a lot of damage but are in cooldown (runic attacks), or in attacks that take a more conventional approach. On the plus side, the crafting system remains fairly simple and accessible while resources for end-game armor sets (with the exception of one that is grindable) remain exclusive to them. In other words, you won't have to search for resources and reserve them for an end-game item, because it usually has specific resource requirements that can't be used in turn elsewhere.

If I were to conclude this glowing review (which is what it's all about if you haven't realised) it's that Sony has paid a huge amount of attention to the optimisation issues to make the title run smoothly. Unlike Horizon Zero Dawn which suffered from serious optimisation issues with CPU bottlenecks and stuttering, God of War ran seamlessly at 1440p on a system about six years old (AMD FX-8370 4.34 GHz, 16GB RAM, Win10 64-bit, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti). As the images suggest, quality discounts were negligible, and the framerate was consistently above 42 fps, reaching 55 several times. All of this blends together under the tunes of Bear McCreary (known for his work on Battlestar Galactica, among others), while the sound remains stellar in the voice-overs and their delivery as well.

Ultimately, in a game like God of War, too much talk is too much. The title deservedly holds the title of the year for 2018even against the behemoth that goes by the name Red Dead Redemption 2. In the eye of the cyclone, the binary system of characters, the narrative shines with various tricks. I dare say that there are parts that borrow elements from Angelopoulos himself, leaving the player-viewer to compose the scenes which have not played out before him, as in a well-written book. The scale of the narrative, the divine but always human Kratos, the "boy" who sees everything with childlike enthusiasm, all this offers the player a thrilling story that has at its heart the most human and natural relationship between a parent and his child. Regardless of preference, God of War is a must-see title.