GOD OF WAR II
God of War II had many strengths- its incredible sense of spectacle, the amazingly designed boss fights, the adrenaline-fuelled combat, the sheer brutality of the entire experience. It was a game that was defined by immense production values and ridiculous amounts of polish. But its story, unfortunately enough, is little more than summer blockbuster popcorn-flick fare. Don’t get me wrong- for what it was, it worked perfectly. It got the blood pumping, it got you invested, and it got you hyped for what was to come. But it made no damn sense. Go away now if you don’t want spoilers- the game’s plot sees Kratos getting murdered by Zeus at the beginning, and him breaking free of the Underworld to ultimately travel back in time to the moment when Zeus betrayed him to seek out revenge- and he succeeds! Only if Kratos does manage to stop Zeus from killing him, he never really died, and if he never really died, he had no reason to go back in time, and if he didn’t go back in time, he couldn’t stop Zeus from killing him- it’s a classic, stupid time travel story. Add to that the fact that Kratos even travels back to the time of the Great War to bring the Titans from the past back to the present timeline- if the Titans left the war back in the past to go with Kratos, they couldn’t have been there to lose the Titan war, and if they didn’t lose the Titan war, then why the hell does this game, or its predecessors, or the past several centuries of mythological Greece, even exist? There are several examples of a closed causality loop done right in media over the years- God of War II, for all its strengths, is not one of them.
