Amid all the apocalyptic noise, there’s a beautiful story here about a father learning to trust his son and cherish the time he has left with him before he’s whisked away by adulthood. Unsurprisingly, the story is at its best when it quiets down to focus on Kratos and Atreus’ relationship. It feels like less of a game and more of a TV show blueprint, as if Sony anticipated that the property would need more characters if it wanted to turn it into a multimedia juggernaut like The Last of Us.
The general pacing suffers from the scope increase, too, with the expanded cast creating more narrative side-diversions that can interrupt the core story for hours at a time. There’s little room for subtlety as chatty characters tend to brain-dump their entire emotional state on one another to fill every moment of silence during exploration. Potentially thoughtful takeaways about parenting compete for time with vague musings about the nature of war and teenage tropes. Ragnarok follows up on those ideas, albeit in a much less focused or introspective manner. It’s an intimate game that keeps the focus (literally, thanks to its one-shot camera trick) on a handful of well-developed characters. It reexamined the hyper-violent series and deftly spun them into a moving story about a grieving father who’s desperate to make sure his child doesn’t inherit his mistakes. 2018’s God of War was a groundbreaking moment for video game narratives when it launched largely because it was a game in conversation with its own past. While the story is entertaining enough as a mythological romp, it’s a bit of a step down both in the context of Kratos’ previous adventure and on its own merits. For instance, its cast of characters significantly expands with more imposing Gods, like Thor and Odin, and wise-talking sidekicks that quip like they’re auditioning for a superhero movie (the returning Mimir goes from funny to grating in no time flat here). While the last installment was a refreshingly contained drama about Kratos’ strained relationship with his son, Ragnarok is more of a sprawling epic that’s more broadly focused on its retelling of Norse mythology. The story is at its best when it quiets down to focus on Kratos and Atreus’ relationship.Īs you can probably imagine from that description, the sequel takes some much grander narrative swings than its predecessor.
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