God of War – Digging up the past
While we all have pieces of our lives that we would like to leave there, Kratos had better reason than most to leave his past behind him and make a new life in the Norse wilds. When an encounter caused his son Atreus to begin to die, and Kratos needed a way to traverse the endless cold of Helheim in order to revive him, Kratos also had to revive and acknowledge a part of himself to save his boy. Retrieving the Blades of Chaos from under the destroyed house isn’t treated like some triumphant new power that Kratos wants to leverage, rather the appearance of Athena to belittle him as nothing more than a monster makes slipping back on those chains a melancholy event, filled with desperation. When players first slip on the Blades of Chaos and they feel like an old friend, it’s a different kind of fan service, and one that connects the player to how disturbed Kratos must feel.
