This is an IGN opinion piece from writer Tim Brinkhof, who has been playing God of War for two decades. He thinks the 2018 reboot is majestic. Ragnarok, not so much.
Responses to Santa Monica Studio’s first look at God of War Laufey have been – to put it lightly – mixed. And I, too, have mixed feelings about Laufey, although none of them concern the fact we’ll be playing as Faye rather than Kratos. I actually really like the premise – the idea of Faye exploring an afterlife populated by gods from different religions is fun, full of potential, and vastly preferable to the uninspired Atreus-goes-to-Egypt-for-reasons sequel that I had been expecting. My reaction is largely the same as when God of War 2018 was first announced: I didn’t see it coming, yet cannot imagine a better, more original way for the franchise to move forward.
I am, on the other hand, not sure what to make of everything else. While Laufey’s premise channels the innovative spirit of the 2018 reboot, its gameplay footage evokes the same sense of cold indifference I experienced playing through God of War Ragnarok, where everything that had been fresh and exciting about the reboot was starting to become formulaic and uninspiring. For Laufey to succeed, it should remember what the first Norse game did right, and learn from where the second went wrong.
Of all the online criticisms I’ve seen, the easiest to dismiss are those focussing on Faye’s appearance – they’re anything but genuinely critical, and have nothing to do with the quality of the game. But it’s a little harder to wave away the complaints that take issue with not playing as Kratos, an argument that is based in part on the franchise’s own development history. When work on the 2018 reboot first began, director Cory Barlog and his team briefly considered creating a new protagonist, only to conclude that Kratos was central, and that God of War without him isn’t God of War.
Then again, Laufey isn’t the first to break with this rule. God of War Ragnarok included large segments where you took control of Atreus. Although these weren’t everyone’s cup of tea – I personally found the more agile combat mechanics to be a welcome change of pace to Kratos’ at times frustrating slowness and heaviness – they also didn’t lead to accusations that the developers had betrayed the series’ core DNA.
More importantly, you could counterargue that Kratos can still be central without being playable. This certainly seems to be the case for Laufey, which will – it seems – revolve around her looking for ways to assist her husband and son’s journey from the afterlife, without them knowing. Kratos is even shown to appear to Faye during the debut gameplay demonstration. As one Redditor put it: “It’s all about Kratos’ story even when he’s not the MC.”
Another criticism worth hearing concerns the quality of the writing, which many rightly compare to that of Marvel films. I’m not talking about the vague and meritless allegations about Santa Monica Studio’s politics, but the specific, defensible observation that the writing team’s frequent use of snarky dialogue and quirky humor is boring at best and tonally inconsistent at worst, clashing with the seriousness of the action and character development.
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