Extra Credits: No Redeeming Value

[CheckD3]

I thought GoW3 was a fantastic game, however, I agree that the story did fall short compared to the first. I feel like the 3rd game was more for the look and the kills, which it did beautifully. Anyone else 'gasm when they fought the bosses? Each boss was well designed, and from the point of gameplay GoW3 shines bright. But story wise, it did fall short compared to the 1st, and the 2nd one felt empty, possibly because of the cliffhanger

The 2nd and 3rd games shifted to the gameplay over story, I feel like that's the problem that GoW suffered from as it grew. Especially because it conflicts with the final words of the original game V

Spoiler

And for all time, where ever there was war, it would be looked over by the new God of War, Kratos

(that above it not the exact quote, but close to what is said)

 

[Atmos Duality]

Let's not forget that in GoW3 he's looking for more power to slay a Zues, a god. You know, one of those guys that he's been tearing up for the past 3 games. It's like they (The development team) didn't even care. They recycled the adventure from the first game and pulled a Lucas.

The gameplay was fun... but I can't recommend it because of these aspects like all the reviewers did.

Spoiler

Also, the people that are saying that he killed himself in the end forget that the body disappears which; 1. leaves it open for more games, and 2. Leaves it open to interpretation as to what really happened.

How much you want to bet option 1 (in the spoiler) leads to him

Spoiler

Fighting through Hades AGAIN?

 

[jericu]

It was a very good video, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. You raised many good points throughout, but it felt to me like these videos are better when they teach us about the industry as a whole and how it can improve, instead of just on particular games of series and how they can, or could have improved. Still, other than that, this was, again, a very well made, well thought out video. Good job, and I hope you're able to keep this level of quality up over the long term. After all, nothing is worse, or sadder, than a series that starts to rot away after an extremely long string of well made episodes.

 

[The_Echo]

Though I think GoW 3 tried to do to much storytelling. Then again, it had to because it was supposed to wrap everything up. But if the developer creates situations where Kratos allows a poor slave girl to be crushed by a door and seconds later he gets all emotional and worried about Pandora, then they can't expect us to buy into that with a straight face.

While Kratos showed much apathy towards who he kills or who he allows to live (albeit only a slim few), I think it's safe to say (along with the game's implication) that Kratos connected Pandora to his daughter. Through the course of the game he becomes more protective of her, to the extent that he even changes his mind about his using her. Perhaps somewhere in the rage-filled brain of his, he felt he could partly redeem himself in this way.

OT: I'm not entirely sure you explored the first-person moment enough. When I played through it, I just kept mashing the button, expecting it to force me to stop at some point. But it didn't. The scene only stopped when I did. I probably sat their slamming into Zeus's face for two or three minutes before I thought to myself, "How long am I gonna keep doing this?" So I stopped, and after a couple seconds the scene ends. While I only rented the game and therefore couldn't experiment with it to see if it would stop me at some point, I think it's safe to say that the amount of mindless thrashing was up to the player to decide upon. I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean anything, but I figured I'd point it out.

 

[aldowyn]

One of my favorite so far, seriously. The topic was a ton more specific than normal, but it has a valid point embedded near the end: There is no such thing as "Good enough."

Every game should strive to be the best it can be, in every way, not just the ones it's best at. Every game deserves a story, and every game deserves to be its own unique experience.

Right now, many of them just aren't. (Especially FPSes, and ESPECIALLY modern warfare [MW stole the best description for its type... CoD, MoH, etc.) There are games that don't even have campaigns, though most of those really don't need them, and there are games that don't really care about the single player, which is often a crying shame.

Of course, there are movies that have incomprehensible plots in favor of over-the-top action, but this isn't art so much as mindless entertainment. (Note: I enjoy these types of movies.) What truly elevates a medium to that ever-sought-after pedestal is the experience. By that I mean the emotional and intellectual experience. For example, look at Bioshock. This is a game with a well-thought out story about a fallen culture based on a philosophy that is relatively familiar to us, as well as a creepy shooter that has a defining atmosphere like no other.

One last thing: Competitive multiplayer is not art (At least, if it is it's in a technical way-like a well-made cabinet compared to a beautifully carved wardrobe.) Competitive multiplayer, the backbone of many, many franchises and many, many gamers (Sorry Yahtzee!), is a sport more than anything. (Except entertainment, obviously.)

 

[Cade the Imperfect]

i never looked at the god of war series like that and though i love all the games i have to agree completely with what was said the story really loses what made the character...human

 

[Redd the Sock]

Love the videos, but I must say I have a different inturputationof the GOW games.

Spoilers of course

I never got a redemtion vibe from the first game. I got the impression more of hubris in that Kratos felt that he could escape the guilt of his actions. He hid it through violence so that the gods would find him worthy enough to remove it. When they didn't suicide was his option of escape, but that too was denied him, so he lashed out at those that kept screwing him over. When they tried to reign him in, he lashed out harder.

This doesn't exactly make him a likable character, in fact we may resent how much we might see ourselves in this behaviour. That's what myths and ledgends served to provide beyond origin of the universe stories: literary examples of how behaving badly leads to a bad end. Immature, yes., but how many of us thought out parents were just being mean for grounding us, that our teachers gave us poor grades because they hated us, or that sometware companies put in anti piracy codes out of pure greed. It can never be we did something wrong. We want freedom from the dreaded authority figures that want us to behave.

This doesn't save GOW2's story as there really wasn't much there on its own. It doesn't even really resolve and instead of trying for any kind of message they go for the "uber cliffhanger" ending meant to wet the appitite for the sequal. GOW3 I'll admit had more than was needed (but hey, the game needs levels, and it's not as though greek myths weren't without side stories not necessarly imporant to the overall moral of things) and much of pandora was put in to put greek myth back on track (whereas the first game ingored it for everything but names). Pandora herself was something of a cheap shot as well, offering us the idea that Kratos might be coming to his senses before finishing the blind rage again. As for the first person, I think they were trying too hard for that "personal experience". To make the character Kratos less an avatar and more us. This isn't pulled off well often, but it sometimes works, like having to ppush the button to kill The Boss youself in MGS3 despite it being presented as a cutscene.

Then the end, well, any discussion of GOW's story is incomplete without at least trying to interput Athena and her actions. She at least implied that she'd been guiding this from the start to her own ends (get rid of the gods and their earthbound legacies to take over herself) leading me to wonder if the whole trilogy was the greek tragedy, the first game searving more as porlogue. We will probalbly never know the reasons behind Kratos' (attempted) suicide but this is who I see it. He lashed out at the gods to be free of them and their manipulation, only to find that that had all been him being manipulated by another god. It fits the tragedy pattern of the guy on top taking actions that lead to his downfall, at least in the sense that he didn't get what he really wanted for all the damage he did. Athena could and would use him again as she built her new world. In the end he takes the way of more than a few greek tragedy figures (death to escape the damage he did) though much of me thinks he did it just to say "fuck you" to Athena.

I won't claim things as art, but I don't write off the third game either.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

This is the first EC that I can get entirely behind, because I'VE BEEN SAYING THE SAME EXACT THING FOR MONTHS. GoW1 = gem, GoW2 + 3 pissed all over that gem, story-wise of course. The gameplay was still excellent, but if I could forget the terrible terrible story arcs from the second two games, I'd gladly burn those brain cells dead.

If only I had a interweb video series...

 

[NeoShinGundam]

That very odd & inexplicable shift in perspective in the final scene is what worries me so much with "Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions." You play a 3rd-person action game 90%, swinging around beating bad guys, but then it becomes Spider-Punch Out during the boss fights. And it's not even the whole fight, just PART of it.

When I saw that in the trailer it immediately reminded me of GoW3. I know it's too late for them to change it, so I can only hope that they make it meaningful somehow. On a side-note, the shift in perspective for the Poseidon kill was freakin GENIUS!!

 

[Weaver]

I really don't think God of War 1 had a fantastic story by any means, nor was it really told that well (IMO of course).

By the end I just thought "Man, Kratos is a dick."
I think you're giving it WAY too much credit saying it's supposed to be a greek tragedy.

 

[whitelye]

So, GoW Series = J. Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," but something actually happens, sans the philosophical and literary depth.

 

[AvsJoe]

God Damnit! Thank you Escapist for giving this guy money to do these videos. No longer do I have to wait months for a new lecture; I get one every week. And it is AWESOME!

Oh, I, uh, liked the video. *thumbs up*

 

[oktalist]

Insightful quote: "We cannot afford to praise competence as if it were brilliance."

 

[SimuLord]

God of War 1 was a perfect example of the accidental masterpiece. It was done with little expectation from the publisher because it wasn't an established title.

God of War 2 and 3 was a FRANCHISE, and as such had as its primary concern the whims of the marketing department, and marketing people are the biggest retarded assholes in the universe outside of politics. Storytelling would get in the way, slow down development, and delay the flow of the money spigot.

It's the same "accidental masterpiece" problem that plagued stuff like Back to the Future. The first film was a triumph, truly an accidental masterpiece. The second and third films were cash-ins with money as their primary goal...and couldn't hold a candle to the first.

If games are ever to elevate themselves and I'm to shut up and stop saying "Roger Ebert is still right" every time the subject of games-as-art comes up in conversation, the marketing people need to have done to them what anything that moves within Kratos' range has done to it in God of War 3. For the good of gaming marketing needs to be told to shut its damn fool mouth and let the people with talent create what sold like gangbusters in the first place.

And since you've got a better chance of seeing me on camera in a threesome with Sasha Grey and Bree Olson than you do of seeing the scenario in that last paragraph...well, let's just say maybe gaming ought to just stick to what seems to work, which is producing mindless drivel that's fun to play and does its job then goes away, out of sight and out of mind, when the off button is pressed.

 

[Nobodyman]

Great video and you make some excellent points, but I am going to have to disagree about god of war 1's ending/god of war 2's begining.

To me (all opinion based btw), kratos, while fully aware of the horrible deeds he has done, never really gets his redemption/punishment. If the gods of olympus really wanted him to learn the consequences of his actions, they would have let him kill himself. Instead, by making him a god, I think they are essentially reinforcing the notion that he has the power to do what ever he wants, damn the consequences. By the time olympus pieces together diefying (sp?) a deranged psychopath might not have been a good idea., they already have another monsterous kratos to deal with. So, they try to take his powers, which just makes it worse, and kratos lashes out at everyone, (as you say in the video, like a child). The rest of god of war 2 and god of war 3 is essentially olympus paying the consequences of their own actions.

So, it a weird sense, the game maintains it's greek tragedy status, but instead of Kratos as the main character, it shifts to Zeus and the rest of the greek pantheon. You just get to play as the instrument of their own destruction.

But, whatever, That's just how I see it. I do tend to rant a little bit.

 

[Kelethor]

Wow...people actually play God of War for the storytelling...Seriously?

Every game I play I play for the story. Every single one.

That is just sooo wrong. Every game should be just start it up and let the slaughter begin until you hit the 10 hour mark and then it is over. How could that not be fun?

Because some of us don't care for simple slaughter. some of us enjoy a good narrative, a well written script, dialog. these are the things that make a game memorable, not the fact that you can string up a fifty hit combo in under 10 seconds.

I however, am surprised that so much thought was put into this.

 

[d_woo77]

OMG I love these guys! I swear this series will spark an evolutionary jump in video games, I know it!

 

[Lord Thodin]

I agree with everything on said video. To be honest, I feel you could have been more harsh on GoW3 for what they did to David Jaffe's vision.

 

[Porecomesis]

Great work, guys. Yeah, I loved Kratos in the first game. He was the closest he ever was to relatable. He actually suffered tragedy rather than be the source of it, but then the sequels killed it off.

Holy crap, I think I'm seeing a pattern here... God of War is going through the exact same motions as Prince of Persia, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon! Monkey Island, maybe, but I've never played it.

 

[rddj623]

I really liked this episode! A very refreshing look at storytelling. I've heard all these points you made in every screenwriting/film class I've ever taken. GOW:1 was a great game for that very reason, and I had high hopes for the second installment. High hopes as always are primer for high let downs. Though the gameplay was still top notch the story fell by the wayside. This series was a perfect example to illustrate your point. One can only hope that something as superb as Portal will not meet a similar fate with it's sequel.