I actually just finished the 2018 game and am of the mind that his character didnt really change THAT much, maybe towards the end arguably.
I actually just finished the 2018 game and am of the mind that his character didnt really change THAT much, maybe towards the end arguably.
Ngl, I never thought about this, and I don’t know why.
You’re completely right, he doesn’t deserve to be redeemed, or anything other than punishment and/or death for all the fucked up things he has done to innocent people. Yet he receives none. Instead he gets to have a new family.
I think the problem is that there is no way of doing that, Kratos is a literal god killer, there’s no way of enacting punishment upon him unless he accepts it willingly and he won’t while having to care for his son. So instead you get this fucked situation where he gets to do anything he wants just because.
That being said, (while not remotely enough) he also regrets what he has done and is a much more nuanced character now, I just don’t know if it is justifiable to keep him around. He can’t be redeemed, and
spoiler
if the end of Ragnarök is where the series will go, Kratos will turn into someone that actually does good,
but again, it doesn’t erase anything of what he has done, and he still deserves to pay for it. Letting him off the hook just makes a story about someone that could do anything, was evil and then turned good, to me it just looks like some idealistic morality slop.
Still, I really want to see him turn into something else, I guess I’m too invested in the character. This shit’s conflicting.
I don’t blame you. When God of War 2018 came out no one really talked about how messed up Kratos is as a character exactly. It was just a bunch of people going “I never played God of War but I really like how mature Kratos is now.” They kinda knew that Kratos was a violent guy but no one talked about how comically evil he was and that Kratos isn’t really the guy for a redemption story.
The only people who brought up that Kratos is a massive piece of shit where Chuds who did so because they were pissed that Kratos isn’t slaughtering and raping his way through Greece anymore.
Kratos in the new games is an appealing character but his past is so messed up that it just doesn’t mash with who he is now. If God of War ended after the first (old) game I wouldn’t even mind the reboot but I just can’t see myself forgiving the guy who whipped out all of Greece. Even if the ending of GoW III implies there is still hope for humanity. That doesn’t really matter, Kratos still killed millions and millions of people.
I never played GOW 1-3 so my preferred way to treat the reboot was that only the events directly mentioned are canon and the OT are legends or vaguely true and distorted
That’s not a bad way to look at it, but I can’t really go along with that. When I was a teenager, I played all the God of War games over and over. My mom was working two jobs to keep the lights on, so she wasn’t checking much on what I was playing when I was just 12. Plus, my uncle, who was kinda careless but cool, hooked me up with his modded PlayStations and a bunch of pirated games.