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God of War Ragnarok
Jan. 19th, 2023 07:50 pmSo I played through God of War Ragnarok, or as Sylvester McCoy would say it, "God of War RrrRrragnaRrrRok". It is pretty good yall. I can't remember how to do a spoiler cut so I'm just going to yell
SPPPPOILERSSSSS!!!!
and crack on.
So firstly, they should have called it GODS OF WAR. That is such an obvious title and much better than the bland Ragnarok, especially since the thing named Ragnarok in the game is quite a minor part of the story. If you translate Ragnarok as "Twilight of the Gods", it sorta fits elements of the themes, except that most gods make it to the end credits and the biggest loss in the story isn't even a god. If instead you translate it as "Fate / Destiny of the Gods" it fits better, but only with a layer of irony, and I would argue that fate plays altogether too large a role in the storyline anyway. Again and again it's prophecy this and seers that, yaaawn.
The next thing to say is that the more ensemble nature of the game works, perhaps more than I thought it would. It means there's more than one female character in the whole thing for a start off. But I do wonder if it should have been split into two games and the whole thing made into a trilogy. The third game could focus mainly on the Odin / Loki relationship which works very well but doesn't get as much development as I hoped. You never really feel that Loki is genuinely conflicted about his true loyalties, and there is endless scope for just that. The politics of Asgard is one of the most interesting parts of the game but a lot is off screen, such as the dynamic between Thor and his wife. The second game could have focussed on Angrboda, who plays a much smaller role in the story than I was expecting. What she does do is great, especially teaming her up with Fenrir!Garm later on, but it's just bits and pieces. The whole thread of searching for giant souls is pushed very much into the long grass after a big build up. Doing it this way would space out Atreus' development a lot more, making the games essentially boy -> teen -> man. As it is, the ending feels too abrupt and hurried for someone who is still supposed to be around what, fourteen years old? It just feels like the previous game developed slowly and deliberately and in this one there are oblique shifts of character and plot very frequently. The continued use of no cuts compounds this, meaning that Freya's entirely journey from trying to kill Kratos, becoming a Valkyrie, forming an uneasy alliance with Kratos, being reunited with her brother, losing her brother and forming a lasting bond with Kratos all takes place within - (looks at elapsed game time) - a day and a quarter. I mean, maybe you could squint and say that time passes at different rates in different realms, but it just doesn't really work.
Speaking of bits that don't really work, why did the mask suggest the final piece was in Helheim when apparently it wasn't???? When the trail went cold after Garm ran off, I was certain it was going to turn out he'd eaten the last bit and was going to cough it up just when all hope was lost. But no, they just went on yet another fetch quest and found it somewhere else. I think there are other glaring plot holes but the whole thing is so complicated I'd have to play through again to be sure. For example, they make a big deal out of how easy it was to persuade Surtr to join them, setting up that he might be working with Odin or even be Odin in disguise, but that doesn't really play out. Certainly when Brok suddenly started ranting about how everything made no sense and wasn't coming together right, I was kinda nodding along. But look, it's a good, character driven ensemble piece and too few video game stories are, so I'll give it a pass.
Onto the gameplay! A curse on whoever added unblockable attacks. And decided it should look similar to the finishing move signal, something that fucked me over many times in the first couple of hours. Kratos is too slow for the kind of block n' dodge Souls-like gameplay they're going for. He's much better at just charging in and hitting everything. The controls are hugely convoluted, switching between weapons is hard enough but you also have overloaded abilities, for example tapping R1 and holding R1 are different moves and the latter is levelled up via XP in the menus. By the time I started using anything but the most basic moves it was too late in the game to level up more than a couple, leading to me feeling underpowered even when I was overlevelled. I just don't see the point, really. Two melee moves, one ranged move, one or two magic abilities and a "limit break" move are enough for one character, especially when you also have two different AI companion commands to manage as well. The weapons and armour upgrade system is complex, as are the XP skill trees, and yet I completed the main storyline with little more than upgrading the first gear I got, and I never used the majority of XP-unlocked moves. (Atreus also finished the game with thousands of unspent XP points.) Maybe they come into their own on the hardest difficulty level, but even so it feels very over-engineered. Remember when games picked one thing to do and did that thing very well? I never needed customisable weapons or unlockable skills in the original Tomb Raider games. JUST SAYIN.
Speaking of t'Raider, there are several sections of exploring vast cavernous spaces which have a laracroftian feel to them. But the platforming is very simplistic. At any point there's only ever one or two possible routes and they are marked with runes, taking all the thinking out of it. The worst offender is when Atreus is scaling the huge wall of Asgard, a sequence that should require all my decades of platforming experience to beat, but instead is basically impossible to fuck up.
The puzzles are rather more involved and tricky, but some of the puzzle mechanics added this time around feel spongey and unfinished. Like, fire arrows would be SO USEFUL at so many points, and I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE THEM because you fire one in the cut scene right at the end FREYA, I'M LOOKING AT YOU, but instead Kratos has to figure out a very convoluted sequence of arbitrary acts to get anything done. The number of times that something SHOULD work but just happens not to because you're not doing it exactly how the developers wanted is too damn high. The seemingly arbitrary angles of those magic mirror thingies being a case in point. Puzzling was done better in the previous game.
All this sound like I'm a bit down on it. I don't think it's overall as good as the previous one, but I think there are enough strong elements to make it well worth playing. It looks gorgeous, it runs smoothly, and there are lots of unexpected meta jokes about video games dotted around ("it's always in the third place you look!"). But the story feels rushed, the combat frustrating and the non-combat gameplay varies between too easy and too obscure, missing the sweet spot of the previous game. I do like the talking squirrels though.
I GIVE IT SEVEN OUT OF TEN.
SPPPPOILERSSSSS!!!!
and crack on.
So firstly, they should have called it GODS OF WAR. That is such an obvious title and much better than the bland Ragnarok, especially since the thing named Ragnarok in the game is quite a minor part of the story. If you translate Ragnarok as "Twilight of the Gods", it sorta fits elements of the themes, except that most gods make it to the end credits and the biggest loss in the story isn't even a god. If instead you translate it as "Fate / Destiny of the Gods" it fits better, but only with a layer of irony, and I would argue that fate plays altogether too large a role in the storyline anyway. Again and again it's prophecy this and seers that, yaaawn.
The next thing to say is that the more ensemble nature of the game works, perhaps more than I thought it would. It means there's more than one female character in the whole thing for a start off. But I do wonder if it should have been split into two games and the whole thing made into a trilogy. The third game could focus mainly on the Odin / Loki relationship which works very well but doesn't get as much development as I hoped. You never really feel that Loki is genuinely conflicted about his true loyalties, and there is endless scope for just that. The politics of Asgard is one of the most interesting parts of the game but a lot is off screen, such as the dynamic between Thor and his wife. The second game could have focussed on Angrboda, who plays a much smaller role in the story than I was expecting. What she does do is great, especially teaming her up with Fenrir!Garm later on, but it's just bits and pieces. The whole thread of searching for giant souls is pushed very much into the long grass after a big build up. Doing it this way would space out Atreus' development a lot more, making the games essentially boy -> teen -> man. As it is, the ending feels too abrupt and hurried for someone who is still supposed to be around what, fourteen years old? It just feels like the previous game developed slowly and deliberately and in this one there are oblique shifts of character and plot very frequently. The continued use of no cuts compounds this, meaning that Freya's entirely journey from trying to kill Kratos, becoming a Valkyrie, forming an uneasy alliance with Kratos, being reunited with her brother, losing her brother and forming a lasting bond with Kratos all takes place within - (looks at elapsed game time) - a day and a quarter. I mean, maybe you could squint and say that time passes at different rates in different realms, but it just doesn't really work.
Speaking of bits that don't really work, why did the mask suggest the final piece was in Helheim when apparently it wasn't???? When the trail went cold after Garm ran off, I was certain it was going to turn out he'd eaten the last bit and was going to cough it up just when all hope was lost. But no, they just went on yet another fetch quest and found it somewhere else. I think there are other glaring plot holes but the whole thing is so complicated I'd have to play through again to be sure. For example, they make a big deal out of how easy it was to persuade Surtr to join them, setting up that he might be working with Odin or even be Odin in disguise, but that doesn't really play out. Certainly when Brok suddenly started ranting about how everything made no sense and wasn't coming together right, I was kinda nodding along. But look, it's a good, character driven ensemble piece and too few video game stories are, so I'll give it a pass.
Onto the gameplay! A curse on whoever added unblockable attacks. And decided it should look similar to the finishing move signal, something that fucked me over many times in the first couple of hours. Kratos is too slow for the kind of block n' dodge Souls-like gameplay they're going for. He's much better at just charging in and hitting everything. The controls are hugely convoluted, switching between weapons is hard enough but you also have overloaded abilities, for example tapping R1 and holding R1 are different moves and the latter is levelled up via XP in the menus. By the time I started using anything but the most basic moves it was too late in the game to level up more than a couple, leading to me feeling underpowered even when I was overlevelled. I just don't see the point, really. Two melee moves, one ranged move, one or two magic abilities and a "limit break" move are enough for one character, especially when you also have two different AI companion commands to manage as well. The weapons and armour upgrade system is complex, as are the XP skill trees, and yet I completed the main storyline with little more than upgrading the first gear I got, and I never used the majority of XP-unlocked moves. (Atreus also finished the game with thousands of unspent XP points.) Maybe they come into their own on the hardest difficulty level, but even so it feels very over-engineered. Remember when games picked one thing to do and did that thing very well? I never needed customisable weapons or unlockable skills in the original Tomb Raider games. JUST SAYIN.
Speaking of t'Raider, there are several sections of exploring vast cavernous spaces which have a laracroftian feel to them. But the platforming is very simplistic. At any point there's only ever one or two possible routes and they are marked with runes, taking all the thinking out of it. The worst offender is when Atreus is scaling the huge wall of Asgard, a sequence that should require all my decades of platforming experience to beat, but instead is basically impossible to fuck up.
The puzzles are rather more involved and tricky, but some of the puzzle mechanics added this time around feel spongey and unfinished. Like, fire arrows would be SO USEFUL at so many points, and I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE THEM because you fire one in the cut scene right at the end FREYA, I'M LOOKING AT YOU, but instead Kratos has to figure out a very convoluted sequence of arbitrary acts to get anything done. The number of times that something SHOULD work but just happens not to because you're not doing it exactly how the developers wanted is too damn high. The seemingly arbitrary angles of those magic mirror thingies being a case in point. Puzzling was done better in the previous game.
All this sound like I'm a bit down on it. I don't think it's overall as good as the previous one, but I think there are enough strong elements to make it well worth playing. It looks gorgeous, it runs smoothly, and there are lots of unexpected meta jokes about video games dotted around ("it's always in the third place you look!"). But the story feels rushed, the combat frustrating and the non-combat gameplay varies between too easy and too obscure, missing the sweet spot of the previous game. I do like the talking squirrels though.
I GIVE IT SEVEN OUT OF TEN.
