Review

Ragnarok has problems. I first experienced it vicariously through my buddy Samael's playthrough. I enjoyed 2018's God of War perfectly fine, but I'm not in the pocket for this series. 2018 would be like a B+ for me for some perspective. Good, not amazing. Has a bit of that AAA ✨cinematic experience✨ stink to it that I only have a limited appetite for. So I was fine just watching him play Ragnarok when it came out. But anyway, had been looking for a game to play and I decided to give it a proper chance and experience it for myself. My original thoughts at the time were that Ragnarok seemed way less cohesive than 2018. There was a simplicity to the 2018 Dad of Boy story that served it well. We get diverted over and over but everyone is clear on the fact that 2018's story is about Kratos and Atreus bonding and coming to respect and trust each other while they work on getting to the tallest peak in the land. Quite literally everything dealing with the Norse gods is totally a background concern. They are obstacles we have to get through, but the family drama of our main two characters, that is the game. That's the story. I can say that with certainty because if you went in and deleted all those Norsemen, the story still happens regardless.

And that constant centering around an understandable drama is what elevates 2018 God of War above the others in the series for me. It's just good writing. I wouldn't say that I dislike the earlier Greek entries. Haven't even played them. But I have watched a friend play about 1 1/2 of them in college, so I have a passing familiarity. They're action games filed with QTEs and the story is whatever. That's perfectly fine. It tends to put them outside of my wheelhouse. But it does mean that when 2018 (God I fucking wish they had not done the stupid same-name-as-original-entry formula. It makes it so weird talking about that it. Just give it a subtitle, man.) does both action and a decent story, I am far more interested in it. So how does Ragnarok compare?

Well, not especially well in my estimation. The primary complaints I had upon watching Ragnarok is that it very much feels like multiple games mashed together. Which I can echo having now played it myself. I guess I want for this game to be God of War: Fimbulwinter. Realistically, I think that you could do this Norse saga in two games. But the problem is that the 1st entry chose to go for a svelte and focused story. Which I think served it well. This 2nd entry must then, shoulder the burden and simultaneously introduce a boatload of new characters and also conclude their stories. It feels like it's crumbling under the weight of what it has to do. I think if you were really married to the idea of two games, you simply would need to accept that to work, the story would have to be pared down to the essentials. That there is going to be a lot of mythological ground you're not going to cover.

We are absolutely rushing through the plot here and what's worse, I feel like there's a lot of just...stuff happening? I'll get to that more in a bit, but there's a number of sequences in this game where I'm not really sure what higher narrative purpose it's serving. Our core thing is we want Atreus to grow up. He was little boy and now we want him to be little man. So we need to separate him from Kratos, at least a bit. My first problem with that is that these two characters work a lot better when they have each other to play off of. Does anyone disagree with me that having Kratos, Atreus, and Mimir in the room together just doing whatever is...kind of the best bits of these games? I like Atreus the character and the actor himself is totally fine and good but...I just do not see him being charismatic enough to hold his own as our next God of War if that's the direction we want to go. I don't think he can be our lead. It's perfectly fine getting into his head sometimes without Kratos around. But this isn't helped by the fact that I don't particularly care for playing as him. It's not miserable or anything but I find Kratos to feel significantly better in the hand. Every Atreus section was a bit boring and I didn't much care for playing as him and so the only thing I could think of is, "Alright, let's hurry this along..." The fact that most of the development we're getting with him is just a retread of what we got in 2018 doesn't help. Atreus, you need to trust that your father has wisdom and cares about you. Kratos, you need to trust that your son may be right sometimes and has your best interests at heart. Yeah...we...kind of already did that in 2018.

The Ironwood Atreus section in particular does hit the misery point. You're not doing anything of real interest. We're really laying it on thick how much we want to make these two children dolls kith, which feels a bit ick to me. I get that nothing untoward actually happens and I get that boy is growing up and starting to have feelings, but I struggle not to see the adults behind the curtain setting this all up. Any time the topic is broached in the game, my inclination is just to hit the fast-forward button a bit. But in Ironwood we walk back and forth feeding animals, whilst, like clockwork, being harassed by enemies when we've had too long a break in the action. it started becoming comedic how artificial the fights felt. They'll throw like 2-3 nothings at you that you dispatch in seconds and then pick up the train of conversation again, purely as a means of keeping your heart rate from dropping to precipitous levels. This actually happens throughout the game and I find it quite annoying.

I'd like to talk about overall pacing in this game, because it's a bit of a bugbear. Specifically in how the side stuff is integrated with the main story. In 2018, we are kind of explicitly "on an adventure". So fucking about was directly integrated into the narrative. We're made to feel at a number of points that we're on a road trip. And road trips occasionally go off course when you see something interesting. In Ragnarok, it's...kinda bad. There's a number of points in this game where you don't have to go to the next main story event and have time to do side shit. But it feels so artificial when it happens. And we directly call it out each and every time with this bad dialogue. Please do not make Mimir my beloved say "We are now at a point where we can stop the main quest 'The Path' and switch to one of several sidequests if you'd like, milord." It's not natural at all, and additionally there are several times where it really does not feel like the time to do side shit.

I remember one that made me genuinely laugh out loud. You're with Atreus, Mimir, and Tyr and you go to Alfheim for some inexplicable reason. You accomplish nothing there other than poke a hornet's nest. (Again, there's a lot of you go to a place and do a thing that doesn't really have any effect on anything else in this game.) The ending sequence of Alfheim is you fleeing the scene as the light elves and dark elves war all around you. The game decides that this high-action sequence is the perfect place to very suddenly stop and go do side shit. It is hilarious. You're literally in the middle of a warzone, then when you crest a hill, everyone disappears and people look to Kratos and say "This seems a lovely place for a picnic. Shall we stay a while?" Bewildering. I don't even really remember the bits of downtime in 2018 because it just flowed a lot more naturally. I think part of that comes from 2018 being better structured world-wise. The Lake served as our hub, each time we travel back there from the most recent main thing, there was a very natural inclination to say "Ehhh, let's paddle over this way for a bit." The breaks in Ragnarok are really artificial because we've decided that our base is world tree. Which we're warping back and forth from. So the characters themselves have to stop and say "You may now hit pause, should you deem it good and true," And every time I decided to take advantage of these lapses, I felt a bit bad for doing so. Oh, Atreus ran away? Well...he's probably fine. Let me just go do some knitting over here with Freya instead for a while.

Speaking of Freya, another big problem I have with Ragnarok is her. To be clear, I quite like the actual character of Freya. But it is insane the development we do with her in this game. You cannot, you CANNOT go from "I will cut off your head and shit down your throat, you will be less than nothing" to "we besties" without doing some serious legwork. But we do that in like one Vanaheim sequence of this game! It is totally unbelievable. Beyond the pale ridiculous. Just to be clear, the overall trajectory we go on from "kill/hate/die" to "besties" to nearly "you're well-fit..." is believable. It's the rate that we're doing it. My first inclination if I start putting my mind into rewrite mode (presuming you want to go the trilogy route) is that Freya should have been our main antagonist of this game and the main plot point should be our winning her back. There's a natural story you can do where Odin uses her and manipulates her into hating our protags, we eventually get her to see the truth, and by the end of the game she enters into a wary alliance having seen that we have a true enemy in common. Ragnarok instead does this within the span of a couple hours. Why did we even bother to make her an enemy at the end of 2018 if it would have no ramifications for our protags? That is bad writing!

A frequent refrain I've seen is that Ragnarok is good, it's just the last third or so of the game that's on fast-forward. The last bit is indeed on fast-forward, but I think there's deeper problems throughout. What is the plot of Ragnarok? Like, if we take a step back, what are we actually doing? 2018 is: road trip with boy to highest peak in land. Done, ship it. What is Ragnarok? Well first boy wants to find Tyr because reasons. That goes nowhere so instead he goes to Ironwood for answers to vague questions. That doesn't really go anywhere. So now he goes to Odin because?...Kratos meanwhile is...present in this game. He then pivots to protect boy because boy with Odin. But then Atreus comes back! So what fucking plot do we even have at this point? It's surreal how little focus there is. I cannot for the life of me find a through line. There are multiple times in this game where we go somewhere and do something and I could not under threat of torture tell you what connection it has to the larger plot. Why do dad and boy go deal with the sun and moon wolves in Vanaheim? What does it have to do with anything? Why do we go to Alfheim? The stated purpose is to look at the shrine there and get info because Tyr was a bust. But at the beginning of the mission Atreus want to do war while Kratos and Tyr do not. At the end...nothing has changed! Atreus wants to do war while Kratos and Tyr do not. Except now we know that Asgard will be destroyed in Ragnarok and everyone else will live happily ever after in their Disney ending. Seems like that might be something you'd reveal much later and not show like 10% of the way into your game? So weird. This shit is so directionless. And it feels toothless to me. The only fallout of the twilight of the gods is that bad guys dead and everyone else fine? Between that and the whole Kratos not dying, I can't help but have the dark thought in my head of "Are we only doing this so we don't have to put away our toys and can leave everything open-ended? So that we can always make more games if the dread machine demands them?" Do you want to have a story with teeth or not? If you don't, fine. But stop cosplaying drama if you're not willing to actually have stakes.

By the end, the game makes gestures towards having the plot of "calling on all your allies for the big war". A pretty common game plot, but one that can be satisfying if told well. Mass Effect 3 is probably the most direct telling of it. That's not really what we're doing throughout the rest of the game, though. You're meeting scores of people, but again. This isn't a Mass Effect where you are literally, textually setting up alliances. Calling on old friends. You're meeting lots of people, but you're largely just leaving them behind and moving on and minding your own business. So when we get to Gjallarhorn, there is no satisfaction. Who the fuck are our allies? Who are we even calling on?

I would also say that Odin is annoyingly incompetent. We have been told for the last two games that he is this ultra-intelligent schemer. He always gets his way and is manipulating anyone and everyone. This motherfucker infiltrates our group and he...stands around? Kills one of our two blacksmiths? He doesn't set a single trap? Doesn't kill any of our key players? Or set them against each other? Uses none of the information he gains for some greater purpose? Okay... Seems like bit of a waste of a twist to me. It feels like cheap writing. Sanitized, designed by committee. Telling me repeatedly that someone is to be feared and very capable only for my eyes to tell me that could not be further from the case. I hate to so directly invoke the trope in my arguments. It's one of many tools that have been placed in the belts of people who are functionally media illiterate but: show, don't tell. During the whole final Ragnarok battle sequence, what is Odin actually physically doing? Standing around? He does nothing with the info he got? What the fuck was he doing for all time? We're told he's been preparing for this and it's gonna be a shitshow. But...we walk in and proceed to kill him. It's so frustrating. We lose...what? One or two people? We lose...Thor? Damn, fam. Cryin my eyes out over here.

I've spoken on this before so I won't go into detail but I did not want to see Faye at all this game. Totally misplaced. She is more effective as a concept than a seen character. A wise and good higher power that is guiding us down the right path. You know...sort like how the mortals are looking at the gods. She serves as a god to our gods. I would accept a single glimpse of her as a big shock moment. Perhaps Kratos is having those dreams and he can sense her just on the horizon but she always flits away before he can get to her. At the very end we get a sudden face to face moment. Maybe she says one line and then he wakes up. I would accept that, because that would be serving a clear narrative parallel. Kratos chasing Faye representing his chase for answers and the best thing to do. He realizes just before final battle what to do and he sees her. Not what I would do, but I think that would at least follow. I don't like her scenes because they introduce no new info in them. So to me they kind of just serve to put a face on what was an interesting mystery.

The main theme of this game is fate vs choice and secondarily the arcs of each character. Kratos insists that we always can choose regardless of whether there is a prophecy saying exactly what we're going to do. I don't buy this for the same reason I don't buy the Christian there's no predestination thing. If God decides he's going to make someone...knowing that person will be bad and go to Hell...that person did not have a choice. There is no freewill. You cannot just handwave it and say freewill and magical foresight can coexist. It does not work. So that aspect of the story rings a bit hollow for me.

Moving from the macro writing to the micro individual character writing. I find that some people equate character arc = good writing. Which is not so. Not every character needs to change and develop. For a standout example where characters are totally static, take No Country For Old Men. Anton Chigurh is barely a character, he is closer to a storm passing through. He does what he does, and the tragic flaws of our protagonists force them to do what they do. There is no arc to any of them. It is merely a matter of the pieces falling where they may. Much like a fairy tale or the mythologies that these games are drawing from...And it's a great story! That's not to say the opposite, that character arcs are themselves bad. Rather, the concepts are orthogonal. But I think Ragnarok keeps reaching for this mainsteam broad-appeal approach to writing where every character has their precious little arc to the detriment of just telling a cohesive story. We do not need to spend time redeeming Thor. He is a drunk asshole that beat one of his sons nearly to death for disappointing him. You can have Thor be a victim of Odin, that is fine. Victims can also be perpetrators. But he does not need redeeming. It's wasting our time. Sometimes people can just be assholes. Why are we getting a character arc for fucking Sif? She is in like two scenes...Why is this rando Asgardian boy best buddies with Atreus? Again, he's in like two scenes...

No specific place to mention this but another random example of bad writing would be the dog dying in the first five minutes. Made me roll my eyes. A pet dying is genuine tragedy. It happening within five minutes of hitting go (and then we immediately move on from it (and then just bring him back later as big dog!)) is absurdity.

I will say that I liked Sindri's arc. He's one of the couple characters I'm fine devoting some extra time to. He's been with us for basically all of the last two games. And I respect the fact that he does not get pulled into the stupid Disney ending and that he does not magically forgive everyone for his brother dying. He feels realistic in a good way. Where perhaps someday we could get to a better place but for the time being he has no interest in talking. I enjoy his ruthlessness in the end. Speaking of that Disney end though...

So we do the whole playing after the ending thing and not forcing the player to reload a save. (I can't stand that shit. I understand others do. This is a we have to do agree to disagree thing, because I'm not budging on it. I think it totally hamstrings you narratively, massively narrowing down the total paths you could take in an ending. Necessarily, your main cannot be dead or maimed or just like...elsewhere. That and the fact that I have zero desire to continue playing a game after we've wrapped up the main story, it is a total negative to me and always is when it comes up in games.) Postgame content that follows narratively after the credits necessitates Kratos being alive because there are things in the game world that Atreus simply does not have the verbs to interact with. So Kratos lives. This is very strange to me. I don't know why we spend two games pointing to Kratos dying and then just...don't do that. "Oh, actually it was Odin that Atreus was holding lovingly in his arms in that mural!" Yeah, whatever man. Sure. I just wish people could like engage with a story on a higher level than the most basic. Because yes, sure. It fits the image. You are capable of visual pattern-matching, good on ya. Tricksy little devils, those game devs. They pulled the wool over our eyes. All that means now is that all that work you did alluding to Kratos' death, the emotions both he and Atreus went through were for nothing. What purpose do all those scenes serve now? Basically a waste of time to watch. If you tell me from the beginning, devs, that a tragedy is not the sort of story you were interested in telling. That this was not because of rewrites or demands from higher-ups or something. That Kratos definitely was always gonna live...then why did you not tell a different story? If something in a story is not doing work towards a higher goal, then why is it there? You could have spent that time elsewhere, telling some other story.

A big descriptor of Ragnarok I would use is: perfunctory. Much of the game feels like we're going through motions. Ticking boxes. Little of the side shit really stood out to me like it did in 2018. I liked the jellyfish I guess? It was in this game also that the actual AAA puzzling and movement started wearing out its welcome to me. The slow ambling up cliffs while characters talk about whatever just happened. The hiding of loading screens via cracks you gotta slowly shimmy through. The elaborate puzzle boxes that these areas somehow manage to twist themselves into. Every single thing you go through has to either have some little enemy encounter or some overly-wrought puzzle where you have to spot the little switch somewhere before moving on. Thank fuck they added options to turn down the rate that your characters would bark advice to you. I remember my eyes nearly rolling out of my skull while watching the footage of the base game with Sam before it got some updates. Unconscionable. I still found myself frequently wanting to hit the "I get it" button. I understand what is happening, I get how this mechanic works. I've done it twenty other times. Can we please just move on? It is incessant. Every area is so thick with detritus. It does not matter how strongly a story moment is expressing itself. You can bet your ass that there will be some little puzzle bit shoved in there to slow you down. At one point we go to Helheim and have a fight with big dog. Kratos and Atreus reconcile (again). Afterward can we just walk back to the realm door while conversing? No...no, we're gonna shove like 2 or 3 stupid freeze the door switch with axe to hold it open puzzles in the interim. Over the two games, I have done this exact puzzle dozens of times. Please for the love of fuck, STOP! It's so needless.

My overall thought is that if God of War 2018 was a B+, I'd grade Ragnarok like a C-. It gets by and passes the class on pure dint of being a playable game that generally is fun combat-wise. But when near all else is worse than the previous game, in what other direction could I grade it? As we keep breathlessly insisting, be better.