#theres more to it. but the tldr is that id wanna use these yellows in personal art. represent more than just my friends vaguely and instead

[gemharvest]

FUCK it's a "I love my friends so much it hurts" kinda night. This is bad bc I should really be winding down rn.

[dulltwig]

So I’ve been playing God of War (the new one) for a while now and I wanted to share my thoughts on its gameplay, its themes, and how holy cow guys how did it go so wrong? Also be warned this 100% contains spoilers from all parts of the game so here we go!

So before i dive into the message of the game or anything i wanna jsut put it out there ive played the first GoW, some of the third, I’m halfway through this one and ive watched a playthrough of the full main story line of the the newest installment, anyway! So the game is fucking pretty, let me tell you that much. You can tell a boatload of time was put into so many meticulous details there’s literally no way youll see half of them. not kidding. like, i find it to be RIDICULOUSLY contradictory that this game is going for some cinematic experience, and then wants the gameplay to be fast paced and destructive! Like, wow these norse ruins filled with symbols and statues are neat -HEY KILL MORE DRAUGR THAT YOUVE ALREADY KILLED 3000 OF- ok but i want to look at that -YOU NEED TO BLOW UP THIS THING SO YOU CAN MOVE ON- ok but like this room is really neat -HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE HERES EVERY MINIBOSS IN THE GAME RESKINNED FOR THE FIFTH TIME THAT YOU NEED TO BEAT ALL OF IN A REALLY SLOW SET OF BATTLES ONE AFTER EACH OTHER- alright god fine i wont look at your fucking game ill just mash r1 and then r3 to tear open the same guy in the same way for god knows what number time!! it’s just, its fucking stupid. there’s so much attention to detail that you’d expect it to be a more narrative driven game, which it tries to do, but the fucking core gameplay is so opposite everything that it builds that you dont notice jack shit going on in the environment unless theyre like forcing it to be a part of how you need to progress. Also, with the game’s little hide and seek for what are in my opinion relatively necessary health and rage upgrades, it makes the player 1000x less concerned with the actual environment and instead like theyre parsing a 3d where’s waldo book to destroy the 6TH FUCK C URN WHERE IS THAT MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD! like hm cool these statues definitely have a story but god fuckin damn do i not give a shit unless theres an urn i need to break to get the next ibunn apple!! its just, i feel bad for all those people who put all this work into making it look gorgeous and needed to resort to a game of i spy to make the players actually look at it. its a fucking shame. Also, i mentioned reskinned enemies? let me tell you! theres a lot of those! i mean, like, with the exceptions of the valkyries (and even then ive only fought one so i might be mistaken) youre essentially fighting the same enemy with one or two moves added since you last faced it for the entire game. even the final boss of the game is the first boss fight but with added moves!! its repetitive as shit! and most of the difficulty that the game does have, coming from someone who plays video games probably too much, is super fucking artificially added through bullshit enemy levels and OHKO’s if you dont spend hours grinding side content. WHICH LEADS TO MY NEXT POINT!

It also makes this weird rift in gameplay where its super punishing to go after side content and explore the world because the difficulty of side content is DRASTICALLY different from the main quest. At the time of writing this, im taking on level 2-4 enemies in the main game, just about everything has a green health bar (indicating it should be an easy enemy) or a yellow health bar (indicating it should only be a little difficult), but the side content im running into enemies that are consistently level 5-7, and even at max health and equipment that puts me at level 4, i can still get killed in two or three hits on normal mode. Maybe im pushing too much into side content early but for a game that wants the player to get immersed in the world and yadda yadda i feel its really offputting that the player essentially gets punished (gasp!) for exploring (bigger gasp!) its so dumb and just a totally unnecessary thing to do, especially when you go for a realm tear and it can either drop like 2 level 3 guys or 3 level 8 guys and there’s literally no indication as to what itll be until youve already activated it! its dumb! NOW ITS TIME FOR THE NARRATIVE THAT I DONT HAVE A SMOOTH TRANSITION FOR! OH BOY DO THEY TRY TO REDEEM KRATOS!! like, wow, this dude fucking singlehandedly killed the entire greek pantheon and then some! oh, and his own family! and, like, im not sure about this but im pretty sure he kills like a whole fuckin civilization of innocent people? but like yeah, sure, let him learn how to be a father, thatll redeem him sure! NOPE! they didnt even do that right! kratos was singlehandedly responsible for fucking ruining atreus. i mean, the guy just doesnt fucking know what a child is, in like a really just fucking dumb, toxic masculinity kinda way. like, kratos fucks up. even when atreus learns hes a god because kratos is a god and yadda yadda, kratos isnt even like “HEY BOY STOP ACTING HIGH AND MIGHTY, JUST BECAUSE YOURE A GOD DOESNT MAKE YOU ANY BETTER THAN THESE MORTALS”, he jsut fucking lets the kid parade around on an altar of superiority and tomfuckery. it even goes so much to his head he just fucking kills Modi because he can and modi shit talked once, like if i killed everyone that shit talked me id be in jail for the death of hundreds, you cant just do that shit and have it be ok. kratos is just fucking dumb and the violence of the game really, uh, goes against the whole, like everything theyre trying to do to be like “aw kratos isnt so bad and atreus isnt gonna kill him for being a dick”! i can seriously only see two routes for the next game that they set up REALLY. HARD. AND IN YOUR FACE. 1) atreus (now known as loki because itll be the next game and thats the end of game reveal) kills kratos at some point because he learns of everything that Kratos has done in greece, because, idk hes loki he’ll figure some shit out, or 2) Kratos dies trying to protect Loki from Thor because Thor is the Next Big Baddie and we need a reason to continue using God of War in the title and what better way than to make Loki a rage filled hateful character that needs to exact revenge on an entire branch of mythology because they killed his dad, who wasnt even that good a guy, but he was still his dad so fuck them all, you know? It’s gonna be fuckin dumb whatever it is, but there’s no way Kratos survives the next God of War, assuming that’s what it’s gonna be called, like jsut from a sheer narrative standpoint, and the fact its teased in one of the final cutscenes of the game that he’s gonna die in loki’s arms, but i dont know what the fuck that snake looking shit it so im not gonna try to guess u feel me i dont know norse mythology. but uh, yeah. also the whole ragnarok thing, that’s, uh, next game i guess? but i dont mean to be here talkign about whatll come sooooo... i swear i had more to say but quite frankly ive been typing this for more that 30 minutes and im not spending more time figuring out what it was gnight yall but yeah this game fucking doesnt know what it wants to be thats the tldr for ya