Game Review--God of War III Remastered (PS4)

"My vengeance ends now."
--Kratos, God of War III

"Zeus!  Your son has returned.  I bring the destruction of Olympus!"
--Kratos, God of War III

"Hope is what makes us strong.  It is why we are here.  It's what we fight with when all else is lost."
--Pandora, God of War III


Few games can rival the sheer spectacle of the God of War games, and few games within the series can rival the spectacle of God of War III.  Marking the end of a fantastic trilogy, God of War III offers more developed gameplay than its predecessors, though the gameplay refinements are unfortunately accompanied by one of the most simplistic stories in the entire franchise.  However, the vicious combat and magnificent aesthetics overshadow the lack of narrative complexity.  It is my pleasure review of one of the most epic and brutal games I have completed in a long time.  As is the case with my other game reviews that feature photos, all screenshots featured are my own.


Production Values

Incredible graphics make this game an amazing visual feast.  This was a game initially released in 2010, yet it still has better looks than some modern games!  Some scenes are breathtaking, with the graphics accentuating the epic nature of the major fights.  Still, the game is a remaster of a PS3 game that appears on the PS4, and thus it occasionally shows its age through outdated smoke effects.  The smooth frame rate holds consistently even in the presence of many enemy units, the detail clarity is very thorough, and the colors can be quite vibrant.

The soundtracks for almost every God of War game are fantastic, this one included.  Almost every soundtrack in the series has a particularly epic and appropriate track, with Ascension's being Warrior's Truth and God of War's being the title theme.  A standout track here is Brothers of Blood, the music accompanying the climactic boss battle with Zeus himself.  The track title makes it seem this would play during the fight with Hercules who actually is the brother (or half-brother) of Kratos, but it does not.

The voice actors did a fine job with their roles, but I want to comment on one of the actor's in particular.  Kevin Sorbo, the man who actually played the cliched atheist professor in God's Not Dead, voices the character of Hercules.  I found this odd and satisfying because he is such a vocal Christian.  Well, at least I'm not the only Christian who has involved himself with the series in some way!


Gameplay

The classic series gameplay is preserved and refined slightly.  Killing mythological creatures is addictive and the controls are simple, as in past entries.  The boss fights and quick-time events will almost certainly entertain series lovers, who have come to expect the signature brutality and spectacle of the franchise from each new release.  Some of the most brutal finishers in the entire series are found in this title.  God of War III even offers players a rare treat: the opportunity to fight bosses that are far more massive than entire regions in other games, something that can be quite a sight to behold!  Unlike prior games, though, magic attacks are tied to particular weapons, meaning you cannot unleash your favorite magic attack without equipping a specific weapon.  Still, the combat is fierce and brutal, whether or not players rely on magic.

The remastered PS4 edition of the game contains an additional unlockable costume for Kratos and an extra set of challenges within the Challenge of Exile.  Previously, these were DLC add-ons, but the remastered version has them from the beginning.  This provides some additional playtime--but no new trophies.

Story

God of War chronology:
1. God of War: Ascension (PS3)
2. God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP, PS3)
3. God of War (PS2, PS3, PS Vita)
4. God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP, PS3)
5. God of War II (PS2, PS3, PS Vita)
6. God of War III (PS3, PS4)
7. God of War (currently unreleased; PS4)


Out of all three of the main God of War games, God of War III has the weakest and simplest story.  Chains of Olympus has an even weaker story due to a large absence of dialogue of any kind (perhaps because many of the Olympian deities and humans were sleeping because of Morpheus?), but God of War and God of War II certainly had more complex and creative tales than the final installment in the central trilogy [1].  This game is practically just a portrayal of the final hours of Mount Olympus as Kratos slaughters almost everything that happens to stand between him and Zeus.  Now, the simplicity of the story does not mean it does not contain highly EPIC set pieces.

(SPOILERS BELOW!!)

Starting immediately where the second game ended, chaos engulfs Mount Olympus.  The three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades stand alongside Helios and Hermes at the top of Olympus as they watch the massive Titans scale the mountain, carrying Kratos with them.  The introductory cinematic is just a next-gen (when the game was initially released anyway) reimagining of the final cinematic in God of War II, and the same dialogue is included.  Kratos, from the shoulder of Gaia, yells to Zeus that he will destroy Olympus, then engages in a widespread rampage as he commits gratuitous deicide and homicide, targeting Poseidon, Helios, Hades, Hermes, Hercules, Cronos, Hephaestus, Hera, and many smaller individuals in between, slaughtering centaurs, minotaurs, Titans, and gorgons as he travels to different locations.

Within half an hour Poseidon is defeated, with Poseidon's death triggers flooding and waves as Kratos continues undeterred by the loss of life this causes.  Each death of a deity brings about some comparable type of devastation on the world.  The death of Helios plunges the world into darkness; the killing of Hades releases souls from the underworld.  As expected by now, Kratos remains undeterred by the catastrophes his actions directly cause.

Athena has returned from a higher plane of existence and enlightenment following her death to guide Kratos, telling him that humanity cannot prosper as long as Zeus lives.  This represents an explicit change in her ideology since at the end of God of War II she told Kratos that he must not destroy Zeus because such a deed would destroy Olympus.

As Kratos approaches a contraption known as Daedalus' Labyrinth, the story begins to emphasize the them of hope.  A character called Pandora--named after the box that Kratos retrieved in the first game--embodies this virtue and reminds Kratos that hope empowers when nothing else can.  This marked a strange message for a God of War title, yet it becomes more prominent as the game reaches its finale.  The player can locate notes of Daedalus which chronicle his construction of the impressive Labyrinth, similar to how in the first game one could find notes from Pathos Verdes III, the creator of Pandora's Temple atop the back of Cronos.

Of course, eventually Kratos confronts Zeus himself.  After the first phase of the climactic fight with Zeus Kratos goes outside and witnesses the immense destruction he has caused--flooding, storms, darkness, cyclones, souls flying freely in the air.  At this point the game almost echoes aspects of the original's ending.  In one of the stages in the fight with Zeus, Kratos fights multiples of Zeus just as he fought many incarnations of himself at the end of the first game in the trilogy.  After killing Zeus Kratos completes what he attempted at the conclusion of the first game: he stabs himself with a mammoth blade, seemingly killing himself.

Morpheus, Artemis, and Aphrodite are all gods mentioned or shown in the series that escape death, but it is unclear what fate awaits them in a world without Olympus.

Intellectual Content

As usual, puzzles are present and some of them surpass almost any puzzles previously introduced in the series.  Hera's Garden houses one of the most inventive puzzles I've seen in a God of War game.  Stair steps are sprawled flat on the ground at weird angles and the environment seems very bizarre until the player activates an amulet that lifts the camera to a specific aerial position and allows Kratos to walk up the grounded steps, as they now appear to lead upward into geometric pathways that are inaccessible without the amulet's presence.

Hope is indeed the major theme here.  Pandora personifies this idea, challenging Kratos when he says that hope is for the weak by stating that it is all that we have to fight with sometimes.  The inclusion of this theme is remarkable, as it contrasts with the unparalleled destruction caused during the game.  After the death of Zeus, when Athena seeks to release hope to the remnants of humankind, even Kratos thinks that her message is no good with so many dead.  I wish the creators of the game had more thoughtfully developed this concept into something far more dramatic and philosophical than they did.

As I mentioned before, Athena becomes an entity with "higher existence."  Does that mean the other dead gods like Hades and Helios can attain this status as well?  The game never answers this or even asks the question, but it does leave open the possibility of an appearance by the gods in the unreleased future God of War game.  The fact that Athena defended Zeus at the end of God of War II before her death and then helped Kratos kill him because he threatened the wellbeing of humanity--the change arising because she had reached the higher existence after death and now had access to previously unknown truths--highlights that the Greek deities in the game and the mythology it is based on have human limitations and thus are not gods at all in the traditional theistic sense.

At the end of his character arc for the series--at least until the future soft reboot set amidst Norse mythology is released--Kratos has become a being so fixated on selfishness and vengeance that very little seems to exist within him but egoism and malevolence.  In the first God of War, an oracle of Athens looks in his mind and sees "a beast as well as a man"; in this game, the inner beast seems to have come very close to extinguishing all of his humanity, although occasional moments reveal that at least a small ember of humanity remains.  Despite his egoism and psychopathy, sometimes he does expose a buried part of him that slightly resembles his former humanity.  Kratos pauses when Hephaestus mentions that he must know what it is like to care for a child; though Hephaestus was trying to get him to empathize with his own loss of Pandora, Kratos almost certainly thought of his own daughter Calliope whom he accidentally killed years ago.  He protects Pandora, converses with her gently, and seems to fiercely protest when Zeus grabs her, screaming "PUT HER DOWN!"


However, Kratos' savagery is unparalleled here.  In God of War III he gratuitously kills wounded and defenseless beings like Helios--as they even wonder aloud how killing them would assist him in his quest to kill Zeus.  He repeatedly strikes his father Zeus with great force, not out of self-defense but out of deep malicious rage borne from desire for revenge, and in fact the player can decide at one point how many blows to direct at Zeus' face, with the pummeling continuing until the player stops pressing the circle button.  This means that Kratos could relentlessly assault Zeus for hours if the player does not end the sequence by releasing the circle button and not pressing it anymore.

As Kratos kills various deities, causing destructive cataclysms within nature that correspond to the respective domain of each deity, the planet itself is punished for his actions.  When Athena's spirit informs Kratos that all of humanity suffers under this massive destruction, he expresses his near total apathy towards the plight of the other people.  In Chains of Olympus he says "I care little for the world and its suffering!" just before he chooses to save the world.  This time, he does not bother to be so noble.  Helios, the sun god, offers to honor Kratos for previously saving his life (in Chains of Olympus) and states that his death will not further Kratos' revenge towards Zeus, yet Kratos still proceeds to rip his head off of his body.  After he cuts off one of Hermes' legs, Kratos ignores the pleas of Hermes and cuts off his remaining leg to take his boots.  Cronos too asks Kratos to spare him after he severely wounded the Titan, but Kratos kills him anyway.  He uses Gaia and the other Titans as mere tools to facilitate his own vengeance, disregarding them at his whim, and even openly admits to Pandora and Athena on separate occasions that he shouldn't be trusted.  It is also discovered throughout the game that Hephaestus lives submerged beneath the earth with his daughter Pandora separated from him because of Kratos, though this is something he is not directly responsible for.  A note from the sea captain in the hydra's mouth that Kratos killed in the first game indicates the captain's disgust with Kratos for cruelly killing him in God of War and then hurling him back into the underworld in God of War II.  Another note possibly written by Kratos' mother says she failed to teach him right from wrong.

In short, I have never seen a video game so dramatically and honestly depict the results that arise when someone devotes their whole being to vengeance and the self and nothing more.  The God of War series was never just a sadistic excuse to show extreme violence.  It does at times have a much deeper and more complex and tragic story, protagonist, and setting than many people acknowledge.  The series is renowned for being an awe-inspiring visualization of Greek mythology and for pushing the boundaries of almost every system it has appeared on, from the PS2 to the PSP to the PS3, as well as for its mastery of hack-and-slash gameplay.


Conclusion

In a post-credits scene, a foreshadowing shot reveals that Kratos crawled away from the area where he stabbed himself, an area subtly--or not so subtly--marked with an image of a Phoenix on the ground.  A trail of blood indicates that Kratos has left the vicinity and at least was alive long enough to move away.  Now, in the summer of this year, an upcoming God of War title was brought to the attention of the gaming world.  A gameplay video surfaced.  Kratos has survived, and now he has a son.  He is far calmer and more patient.  Will he kill the Norse gods and goddesses?  Has he been transformed by the hope he unleashed?  Will he turn away fully from his past lifestyle of chaos?  No one but the developers will know until some time has elapsed.

For those who played and loved the other games in the series, this one contains awesome references to their events, with lines by Poseidon and Zeus referencing the destruction of Atlantis and Kratos' brother respectively (Ghost of Sparta), a verbal mention by Helios of how Kratos saved Helios from Atlas (Chains of Olympus), a note from the captain of the ship attacked by the hydras recalling something in the first game, and more.  Locations themselves sometimes recall memories of the past games.  In one part of the quest, Kratos visits the Gates of Tisiphone, named after one of the three Furies he kills in Ascension.  It's great to find these references so expertly placed (though, of course, Ascension actually came out after this game did).

God of War III certainly surpasses most games of its generation graphically and technically.  Its sense of scale is perhaps unparalleled.  It is not as short of a game as Chains of Olympus or Ghost of Sparta.  It has plenty of bonus features and unlockables.  It may have a weak story compared to its predecessors in the trilogy but it does show a satisfying end to the main series while hinting at future sequels.  As the remastered version for PS4 includes DLC and slightly enhanced graphics and frame rate, it is the ideal way to play the game for those who missed it on the PS3.

After beating the game, I am thankful that Christianity presents a worldview entirely antithetical the ones portrayed in God of War III and that it is where the evidence leads.  But the different worldview did not hinder my ability to enjoy the game for the graphical and gameplay masterpiece it is.  I would recommend this game without hesitation for all who love epic action games and Greek mythology.

Now I'm awaiting the next installment with its Norse mythology and new story!


Content
1. Violence:  Kratos can use generic enemies as battering rams, rip them in half, and hurl them.  Set pieces involving larger boss fights include quick-time events where Kratos might pull of someone's head, cut off legs, impale them, or pummel them repeatedly.  Unless one is gutting a centaur general or cutting through the stomach of Cronos, though, there is little depiction of gore, but always plenty of blood.  Sometimes the blood will cover Kratos while he is fighting enemies.
2. Profanity:  Cronos uses a few words our culture would consider profanity during the boss fight where Kratos kills him.
3. Sexuality:  There are two opportunities to engage in a sex minigame with Aphrodite.  The actual sex occurs offscreen, softening the scene somewhat.  Both times the player does not have to choose to play the minigame and can continue walking elsewhere.
4. Nudity:  Gorgons have exposed breasts and Aphrodite, her two female companions, and Poseidon's "princess" do too.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/game-review-god-of-war.html