There might be spoilers.
I'm not sure if it's too late to be writing about this game, I don't really think it should be, and getting to things late is part of being a poor gamer. I've beaten the game twice, and I'm working on a third time to get that last trophy, needless to say I enjoy the game. I've heard complaints about jumping, and for me I had absolutely no problem with it, platforming controlled well, and any time I needed that second jump in a double jump I could take it. I found problems with invisible walls, especially in Hera's Garden, there's a certain place I would always get stuck, but I attest that to my stupidity rather than a design flaw. How else would they have kept me from pushing a pillar against a fence and trying to jump over said fence? I only got stuck because I kept trying.
The only problem I find with these kinds of games is the amount of time it takes to beat them, I finished on normal in about nine hours, for me that was one sitting. It reminded me of my childhood Christmas' when I would be bought a new game, I would open it that morning, and by night it would be finished. My mom would be so pissed at me and swear to never by me another video game, but I loved those games to death and got everything I could out of them. If my mom had bought me this game I would expect that reaction again, and I loved God of War III much like those nostalgic Nintendo games. The second playthrough on easy took me about six hours. The game is short, but it can be played more than once, something I feel is lacking in a lot of games, and something I've found in every God of War. Each time I play I feel like the game progresses a lot faster and I can just zoom through it, it never feels stale, and it never feels not fun.
What I disliked about the game, and what inspired me to write this, is the story. The first two games had great stories. Being a mythology buff they completely roped me in, as did this one, the one problem I found was in the characters of Kratos and Zeus. In the first two games I felt as if I was playing a bad guy, and I never felt that more so than in this one. I was even forced to kill innocent people in this game, no other way around it but to bash some guys face into the wall when I'm jumping and climbing on walls in Olympia. It felt like instead of being an antihero, I was a merciless slaughterer, and it felt right for the character. To me, Zeus, although despicable, was the good guy in the series, or rather the victim, he was the object of Kratos' vengeance. Then in the end, suddenly, they spin it around for me and make Kratos the good guy full of hope, and Zeus the bad guy, full of fear. They set it up through the story with little things you read in Poseidon's Palace, but it still felt sudden. In the end Zeus became the enraged God and Kratos became the misunderstood good guy covered in 500 buckets of blood who caused a plague, flooded the earth, blocked out the sun, and killed all plant life before killing himself, without even trying to fix or forgive what he had done and I just can't really get behind that.
Have you read any Greek Mythology? Zeus was only considered a "good guy" because he was in charge. He raped innocent girls, allowed Prometheus to be tortured for eternity until Heracles and a Centaur rescued him, Zeus cheated regularly on his wife, that wife was actually his sister, he ate his own unborn child, he burned the mother of another of his children to ashes, he caused a flood that almost destroyed mankind, AND he cause a lot of trouble by meddling in human affairs.
Kratos spends most of his time being told what to do by the gods - just as Odysseus, Hecktor, or any of the other mythological Greeks. And believe me, those heroes were not very pleased with the gods either, but the difference between them and Kratos is the latter can do something about it.
Kratos may do bad things, but to the ancient Greeks the gods were the bastards and they were revered due to fear more than love. Sorry for that long, geeky comment...
No need to be sorry. Yes, I have read Greek Mythology, I've read a lot in fact, and I know who Zeus was. Did you read the part where I said "To me, Zeus, although despicable, was the good guy in the series." I acknowledge him being a horrible figure, and I also state that I was not talking about who Zeus was throughout Mythology, rather who he was in this particular series, because, I doubt Kratos cared about Zeus' character. What exactly did he do in this story that was so horrible? He took away Kratos' powers as a god because he was abusing them, sure he did it in a messed up way, but he was just trying to save himself and his fellow gods, self preservation. If there was something more that I missed from the games then let me know.
Kratos spent his time doing what Ares wanted of him and that's what caused him to kill Ares and become the new god of war, Kratos began abusing his powers and using his Spartan army to take over all of Greece. This caused the other gods, and Zeus, to become worried, so Zeus devised a plan to strip Kratos of his powers, once doing so Kratos became inraged and sought vengeance, not caring what gods got in the way, which is why they were all bastards to him. Those other heroes may have not been please by the gods, but Kratos became a god! He had no reason to not be pleased.
Zeus may have done bad things, but in this story Kratos was the bastard, and the Gods may have been more revered out of fear than love, but I doubt Kratos cared about what other people thought, he was a selfish, inraged Spartan wanting nothing more than to kill his father for stripping him of his power.
Again, I know Zeus was a bad, bad guy, but in God of War, not all of Greek Mythology, he seemed, to me, to be the good guy looking to preserve his power, and who could blame him for that? Also, my post was about the sudden change in Kratos being filled with hope and becoming a good guy within the last couple of minutes of the game, and Zeus being filled with fear and becoming a bad guy who wants to murder his son, because before I remember him not wanting to murder Kratos, just make him calm down, he even offered to let Kratos become a god again as long as Kratos obeyed him, so he was being actually kind of okay to him.
Finally, I wasn't talking about whether or not Zeus was a horrible person in general, just how he was to Kratos, because that's all that really matters to this story.
Thanks for explaining, Dustin.
But let's continue this. Kratos was abusing his powers that he got from Aries because the gods and promised to erase the horrible memories from his mind, but they didn't. So he was still a tortured soul at the beginning of 2 and that is why he acted the way he did. Zeus and the gods then punished him for taking his anger out on various cities and armies.
We are obviously getting into geek territory here by discussing this, but I always saw Kratos as a tortured soul and felt for the guy. In Chains of Olympus (spoiler) he has to leave his daughter in the afterlife becuase if he stays with her they will both cease to exist. That is a freaking hard choice he had to make and he chose to let his daughter live in the afterlife, rather than have a few moments with her before the whole universe is destroyed.
I totally see your point in the context of the game's story, and I have not played the third game yet, but I just feel that Jaffe did a great job of making a tragic character. The player may hate Kratos - just read Evan's post on the matter - http://bitmob.com/articles/the-kratos-dilemma - but I think he is also a sympathetic character in a brutal world.
By the way, this is the first conversation about anything to do with Mythology that I have had in a long time, so thanks for your great response!
Always glad to Lance.
I must have forgot that they promised to erase his memories, and I would be pissed off too if I had to keep all of what had happened throughout that first game in my own head. I get that he was still a tortured soul and I don't think he did anything more than what a bored mythological god would have done. I read stories about bored gods doing this and that all the time. Heck even in games like Black & White and Pocket God I find myself getting bored and destroying my people.
I am always in geek territory, plus, you're on a website about video games, I think it would be harder to get out of rather than get into geek territory. I have always seen him as that too, and I understood his dilemma and could feel for him in the other three games, but it sounds like when you're describing that scene from Chains your humanizing it. Reading it how you put it makes me feel for it way more than I did when I played through it. I felt like how he threw her off his leg was not so much of how a caring father would do it, but as someone who didn't realize what he was doing and just wanted to kill the object of his anger, would do it. I felt like it was not a hard choice, and he didn't think about it until after he had done it. He was blinded by rage, like how he killed her in the first game. Kratos is the kind of guy that doesn't stop and reflect on what he is doing until the job is done.
I think Jaffe did an amazing job, and Kratos is a completely tragic character, but it felt like once Jaffe left the project the tragedy of the character became under-shadowed by his lust for vengeance. I felt like he was a sympathetic character, and if the first game would have ended the way this one did it wouldn't have felt so sudden of a change, but since I felt Kratos falling into this spiral of rage, vengeance, and just general dissatisfaction at the world and everything throughout the series, to have it end as him jumping back to being that tragic, sympathetic character from the first game, just felt odd. If you play the third game, or watch the ending, you might understand how I feel. There is a significant change within the last segment of the game that I didn't really see coming aside from a few notes on the floor, and that's the part that made me feel the way I do. If it ended the same, but the change wasn't so sudden, I could have completely understood it, maybe if they started the change in the middle of the game.
I love all mythology, not only when it comes up in video games, and I love talking about it as much as I can, so I thank you for your initial response.