"Fate only binds you if you let it. Do what is necessary; not because it is written."
Hello everyone!
You may remember that I love to do this every once in a while, if I find a game that I truly like and fall in love with.
And HOO boy!
I fell in love with this one.
So much so that I'm watching the gameplay on Youtube for the third or fourth time in a row right now.
Yeah, I know. It's an obsession at this point, but it's a good kind of obsession and you can't tell me you wouldn't be feeling the same way, or that you aren't.
This game maybe didn't win Game of the Year, but it won the highest number of awards anyway, and between the story, the score, the vocal performances, and general roundup, I'm reasonably sure that it's a fitting ending to the Norse Saga.
What am I talking about, you ask? Why, God of War Ragnarök, of course!
If you don't know what this game is about, then you've been sleeping, my friends. God of War is a franchise launched by Santa Monica Studio WAY back when, but the Norse saga ended up being a bit of a reset (and how I came to learn and love it). I like to think it's Redemption Kratos rather than Revenge Kratos from the Greek trilogy.
And Redemption Kratos kinda sorta accidentally started Fimbulwinter by killing Baldur at the end of 2018, though since then he and Atreus have been relentlessly training inside the protective stave, and getting attacked by Freya every time they venture beyond it (why she couldn't break it is above my pay grade, to be honest). After one such attack that opens up the game, Fenrir, one of the wolves the duo rescued from raiders, dies of old age, and the men argue before Atreus is off to bury him.
Kratos, meanwhile, tries to sleep but instead dreams of his deceased wife Faye, feeling that she's trying to tell him something. Unfortunately for him, only Mimir's there to tell him Atreus hasn't come back yet, so off they go into the snowy landscape, ending up trailing a bear and some raiders, and finding said bear who decides Kratos might be a good target for practice.
Turns out it's another one of Atreus' manifesting powers - he can shapeshift, but considering the fact Kratos already accidentally killed one kid way back when, you can imagine his horror at the realization he nearly did it again, and CLEARLY Atreus doesn't have any control over his emotions if he just pops out in animal form when they overwhelm him. Of course, Atreus being a teenager, just believes his dad is out to get him, but what can we do, right?
Well, try and sleep, only to be disturbed by Thor and Odin - finally bringing to fruition a vision Atreus had at the end of the 2018 game.
Now, Odin wants peace, but if you've been paying attention, you won't believe a word coming out of his mouth. And even if you haven't watched or played 2018, just the way he treats Thor in this encounter should be ringing all your alarm bells already. So is it any surprise that Kratos turns him down, ending in a boss fight with Thor?
Nope.
However, our God of War is made of stern stuff, and after returning to Atreus, he grudgingly agrees to see just what it is his son found regarding Tyr - apparently, the kid's been searching for him, something the Aesir are aware of (probably through those stupid ravens you can and SHOULD kill throughout the game). It turns out the shrines with Giant stories actually open if a Giant touches them, and there are real prophecies hidden within those secret chambers.
Aka, the Giants LIED for everyone to see, hoping that the true recipients of the prophecies would find a way regardless.
Given they can't return to their home in the woods (that keeps getting wrecked by one Aesir or another), our duo accept the help of their favourite Dwarves who put them up in the Realm between Realms, from where they then kickstart their journey, heading to Svartalfheim first and foremost. It's there they eventually find Tyr, who's about as traumatized as one gets and totally useless, hiding in a corner with his arms over his head during any and all enemy attacks.
It's also in Svartalfheim you get to explore some of Mimir's past, as you work to right some of his past wrongs, learning how he enslaved the Dwarves and a huge whale-like creature to please Odin, something he regrets. I urge players not to skip out on these favours, because the brotherly bonding between Kratos and Mimir is ON POINT.
Returning to the house, Atreus eavesdrops on Kratos and Mimir's conversation as the two worry freeing Tyr was a mistake - so the kid decides to take off on his own and find Freya, because that's a smart thing to do. The player gets to experience playing with him as the main character though, so it's kind of fun if you don't miss Kratos too much.
Failing - obviously - Atreus returns to Kratos just in time for the duo and Tyr to return to Alfheim to visit the shrine about this whole, end-of-the-world prophecy, where they discover that actually, Odin's working off a lie. See, Ragnarök is supposedly the end of everything, but REALLY it's the end of Asgard, while the other realms recover and thrive afterwards.
There's also this teeny tiny little matter of a Champion, which comes to a head after some nice father-son bonding in the deserts of Alfheim, but Atreus is definitely letting his ego talk for him, and Kratos doesn't really know how to pump the brakes (a good whack to the back of the head wouldn't hurt him any, buddy ...).
So, naturally, Atreus storms off to his bedroom, convinced everyone's against him and doesn't want him to be the Champion (dude, Anakin already channeled his emo phase, quit it), where he manages to dream himself to Ironwood, a hidden grove in Jotunheim that everyone believes is just a myth. There, he meets Angrboda, who's been waiting for him, and she shows him a prophetic mural which depicts his father's death and his service to Odin.
Well, Atreus can't have THAT, so after accidentally creating Jormungandr by placing a soul into a giant snake to reanimate it, helping Angrboda with her grandmother and deciding to leave the giant's spirits in her keeping (remember the bodies at the end of 2018? Those were just for show, the giants' souls were spelled away so they could be at peace and safe), he returns to Midgard, determined to find a way to save his father.
Only, he's kind of been gone for two days, and in one of the best scenes in the game, he bumps straight into Kratos while trying to use the portal, and the two would have argued then and there if they weren't interrupted by a Valkyrie kindly deciding to have her way with them.
Turns out it's Freya, after finally recovering her warrior spirit, and she only relents from killing them after Kratos prevents Atreus from going for her throat. The kid is then sent off and Kratos accompanies the goddess to Vanaheim to recover what was stolen from her. Along the way, he meets her brother Freyr, and shares some of his past from Greece to try and get her to see the two of them aren't that dissimilar and the path of vengeance won't get her anywhere.
Together, they succeed in freeing her from the spell that Odin wove around her, preventing her from leaving Midgard as well as using magic in any other realm, essentially making her whole again, and now forge an alliance that will stand strong against Odin. I urge players not to just quit Vanaheim after this, because there's a whole GIANT ASS other section to play in, learning more about Faye, as well as helping Freya with a couple of favours that really show what she's had to suffer, rounding her character out nicely.
Of course, after you're done with this gentle, cutesy stuff, you get into ANOTHER argument with Atreus because the kid's too full of himself, which ends with him taking off to Asgard. Because THAT'S the best way to do it, but hey, he's only there to figure out how to save his dad, you know.
He runs an errand for Odin though, slowly piecing together a wooden mask that will apparently help whoever wears it to look into the weird rift which the All-father discovered, though the logic is lost on me seeing as the mask doesn't really cover your eyes to protect them, but we roll with it. Thor accompanies you to Muspelheim, where Atreus meets Angrboda again in Surtr's shrine, but it's the trip to Helheim that kinda sorta goes all the way sideways.
See, Atreus frees Garm, the realm-chewing beast who's definitely not your best buddy, and that mistake finally shakes his overconfidence enough to go home. You know, to the warm comfort of the known, and his father whom he loves?
Yeah, said father has been kinda losing it, and convinced Freya to take him to the Norns to get some answers. What the trio (Mimir's always included, obviously) find is that there's no real fate or prophecy or whatever - just the decisions people make, and usually they're so predictable and can't change that it's really a piece of cake to "foretell".
Still, the visit yields news of Heimdall attempting to kill Atreus, which sends Kratos right back to Svartalfheim with Brok to forge the Draupnir spear that may be the only weapon that can overwhelm the senses of a god who can read your intentions and see it all coming. In the process, they find out (what Sindri confessed to Atreus earlier) that Brok doesn't have all the pieces of his soul and is essentially the walking dead, which is why everyone avoids him.
Still, Kratos asks him to bless the spear, seeing he's a master smith, and also boosting Brok a little by confirming he's a valued member of this hodge-podge group even if he's not ... er, alive.
It's a good thing the spear's in play, too, because Garm's been tearing through the realms and all those creepy crawlies you usually fight in one realm are now converging, which is the battle that Atreus stumbles into when he returns and reunites with his father. If you're not at least sniffling at the hug they exchange, then I don't know what to tell you. Your heart is stone.
Kratos promises to help Atreus with Garm, so they head on off to Helheim - sans Mimir this time because the head's had enough of that realm, thank you - where they mend the broken bridges and Atreus places Fenrir's soul (or a part of it) into the oversized chewer, which actually grants them a pretty neat weapon that obeys all the basic commands like sit, home and DON'T YOU DARE LICK MY BODY, FENRIR!
Afterwards, Atreus shares what he learned about the mask, but no one's the wiser as to what to do about it, not that they can focus on it anyway considering they're told Freya's gone to Vanaheim to rescue her brother, caught by the Aesir. Kratos and Atreus naturally tag after her, and Heimdall gets in the way.
You know how this goes. Baldur tried the same thing. Except this time, Kratos actually gives Heimdall a chance to walk away, though the arrogant idiot doesn't take it (he also makes an interesting remark about Kratos' head being 'empty', which just goes to show our boy's fighting is instinct rather than thought). So, Kratos kills him and takes Gjallahorn for the team, then regroups with the others to carry Freyr to the river in what's actually a really funny action sequence.
There's a follow-up favour you can do in Vanaheim later to rescue a guy supposedly sacrificing himself for the group, but this is later. First, everyone returns to Sindri's so Freyr can recover, and Kratos reluctantly lets Atreus head on back to Asgard to complete the mask. Which he does! With Thor's help, in Niflheim, except while Odin's all ecstatic about it, Sif appears to take Atreus into custody since Heimdall's dead and all.
And when she can't get that, she finally reaches through to Thor, who decides to kill the kid on the spot.
Luckily, Sindri thought ahead, so Atreus can make a quick getaway AND take the mask with him, which decides it for the group: they're going to try and infiltrate Asgard. Tyr offers up a secret way in, which arouses Brok's suspicions because this never popped up before, and also, why the hell is he calling Atreus Loki all of a sudden?!
DUN DUN DUN! Tyr turns around to stab Brok, revealing himself to have been Odin all this time, and with some masterful teamwork from Freyr and Kratos, he leaves empty-handed, but unfortunately not even Freya can staunch the wound Brok received, and we suffer a huge loss when he passes.
Not only that, but with his soul incomplete, he can't make it into the afterlife, and is just ... gone.
A distraught Sindri disappears, and later blames Atreus for Brok's death because he opened up his home to him but Atreus, in his persistent quest for Tyr, brought Odin into said home. So we leave him to mourn while Kratos offers Atreus some war-weary wisdom, then makes the decision to join Freya's efforts for war - the only way to avenge Brok at this point - and travels to Muspelheim with his son to convince Surts to join their cause.
They kinda-sorta succeed, partly, because Surtr has the ice heart of his wife Sinmara, and though originally the two were supposed to join to form the primordial Ragnarök creature, he thinks his fire and that heart would be enough to make the creature just out of him instead. So that's what they do - fighting off some Valkyries while they're at it - and return to Midgard to join the gathering forces.
Now, Kratos dreams of Faye three times during the game - the first we know, the second is after Atreus is in Asgard and he's reminded of her extracting a promise out of him to protect their boy, and the third is now, when she tells him that even losing her doesn't mean he has to close his heart to the world. If he opens himself to it, he'll find a way to keep going.
So he chooses to lead the armies into battle, as Freya asked him to do, and turns out KRATOS, not Atreus, is the Champion from the prophecy, given he's got Gjallahorn and the spear from the visions. So, you know, time to kick Odin's ass!
Which doesn't really go according to plan at first when the Dwarven war machines start taking down the realm towers, but Angrboda arrives on Fenrir and brings the young Jormungandr with her to distract Thor for a second (this isn't the snake you visit at the start of the game and which is snoozing the winter away, mind; this is the snake Atreus created in Jotunheim), until the giant-killer whacks him back through time.
Then, just as Sif convinces Thrúd to defect over to Kratos' side, Thor comes roaring in to try and protect his daughter from Kratos, but the two gods eventually reach an impasse and Kratos convinces Thor they have to be better for their children - something Sif has been trying to achieve throughout the story.
This doesn't sit well with Odin, who pops up in that moment, and when Thor refuses to follow his orders, his own father stabs him in front of Thrúd, which then leads into a massive boss fight with Odin himself, where Kratos, Atreus and Freya trade blows (and Mimir trades insults from his place on the belt) until they've got him beaten. Atreus begs him to change, but when Odin refuses, too power-hungry and thirsty for knowledge, the kid spells his soul into one of the Giant's empty marbles.
Which Sindri then dusts with one hit of the hammer because, well, as you do.
You'd think it's over by then but NOPE! Remember how Surtr thought he would be enough for the beast that attacks Asgard? Welp, sadly, there's no reasoning with him because he's incomplete, and all this time Frey's been trying to slow him down so they could get the refugees out, but it's literally impossible and the doom of Asgard is imminent when Angrboda pops up with Fenrir again to get them out through a realm tear.
Unfortunately, though, Freyr has to stay behind to allow the others to escape, and even though he's an ass, his sacrifice isn't in vain.
The war is over; Asgard's fallen, and the other realms can breathe a deep sigh of relief.
After Kratos and Atreus reunite (because the kid pushed his father through the realm tear first and then got knocked out), Angrboda takes them to a mural that shows it was Faye who destroyed the wall they found in Jotunheim at the end of 2018, turning away from her people so that her husband and son could forge their own path rather than follow prophecy.
With that revelation, Atreus tells his father he needs to go and try to find the other Giants, who left Midgard and traveled elsewhere, and the pair tearfully part ways. But the sob-fest isn't over yet - Kratos finds the back half of the mural and sees a future for himself he never thought would be possible.
See, he's always been a violent, vicious god. But on the mural? On the mural, he's shown as a revered, powerful figure people pray to and love, and this breaks our stoic hero into a few tears, especially since his son just walked away from him, too.
But with this new purpose ahead of him, Kratos asks Mimir and Freya to help him rebuild after the war, and as a player you can then pop around the realms clearing out Einherjar and defeating the new Valkyrie Queen Gná, as well as actually finding the REAL Tyr in the Asgardian prison which dropped into Niflheim (the realm where Sinmara's sobs after losing her soul mate echo through, mind, so steel your heart).
Then, to close it off, you attend Brok's funeral in Svartalfheim where it turns out Sindri's definitely not of the forgiving sort, but at the very least you can say a proper farewell to one of the best friends made throughout this journey.
FIN.
Whew! What a game. What a story!
Building off from 2018, there's a ton of little nods to fan comments and speculations as you play the game, but it's also a fairly realistic portrayal of a father dealing with the looming fear of his only child leaving him to make his own life, as well as the annoying teenager trying to cut loose from all the rules and restraints.
And while I'm of the mindset that a few whacks wouldn't hurt, that doesn't mean I didn't bawl my eyes out over all the bonding going on in this game, from Mimir to Freya and finally Atreus.
The portion that's dedicated to the actual war does feel slightly rushed - and there's still unanswered questions like, who the hell blew the horn to call Jormungandr back in 2018 while Atreus is sick, and why Faye died - which leads people to believe this was initially planned as a trilogy and there would have been time travel involved, but the production was cut short and condensed.
It'd be sad if that's the truth, but all the same, this is a FANTASTIC game with strong character and emotional moments, and SO MUCH TO EXPLORE.
Seriously. The map is huge! And as a bonus, you can either do the favours with Atreus or with Freya, and get different dialogue depending on your companion, which I thought was a neat addition. Plus get needled by Ratatoskr, as if you have nothing better to do with your time.
So if you haven't picked this game up yet, what're you waiting for? Maybe a sale? I feel that, but totally recommend you grab it when you can. Or if not, watch some of the bigger gamers on Youtube play their way through it, because even that is very satisfying and amazing.
And remember, just as Kratos tells Atreus: open your heart to it.
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment