The joke and tragedy of 2018’s God of War was that Kratos, a taciturn and brooding Spartan warlord, could only solve problems using brute force. THWACK went his axe as it lodged into machinery to solve a puzzle. SCHUNK and SPLAT went the heads of enemies that stood in the way of the demigod and his objective. While the game’s writers wrung plenty of comedy from this fist-first approach, they also took seriously the question of what this might do to a person. Father to a child named Atreus, Kratos’s emotionally repressed parenting reflected his somatic approach to the world. You could say the protagonist possessed an affliction akin to that of King Midas, turning everything around him not to gold but sinew and splinter while pushing away those who did not cleave before him.
God of War presented a newly self-reflective style for a franchise which debuted in 2005. Previously, the games had little interest in exploring the psychology of their bearded star, instead reveling in the sex and violence of the Olympian setting. Kratos would zip between gratuitous orgy and bone-crunching battle like a porn-addicted, creatine-addled adolescent. In a sense, he embodied the teenage phase of the industry writ large.
God of War Ragnarök, available November 9 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, continues the 2018 reboot’s break with this past, exploring the emotional landscapes of its characters alongside various realms of Norse mythology. Kratos is still a stoic father (voiced with exceptional skill by Christopher Judge) while Atreus is now a teenager. Odin, the Norse head honcho, is their foe (Richard Schiff adeptly oscillates between paternal and sinister). Having retreated into the Midgardian wilderness for the chilly, climatic event known as fimbulwinter (considered a prelude to the god-destroying Ragnarök event), the pair’s tender psychodrama is again the game’s beating narrative heart. This time round, however, Atreus is looking to spread his wings having discovered he is a god during the previous game. That the youngster isn’t insufferable as a result of such a divine awakening is both a testament to Ragnarök’s writing and Sonny Suljic’s nuanced performance. Kratos, to his credit, accepts he must give the child some space, and so follows where Atreus leads.
Following a thrilling opening chase through some of the most realistic-looking virtual snow ever created, the action settles into the groove set by the 2018 reboot. It feels familiar, indeed overfamiliar, as Kratos trudges and grunts from one battle arena to the next while Atreus rattles off Norse lore like a modern-day Marvel fan. The combat is still excellent: weighty, tactical, and measured. Blocking is just as important as attacking while the finishing moves (triggered by pressing R3) feel more varied and gruesome than last time. Done severing heads, limbs, or simply carving abdomens in half, Kratos is tasked with solving environmental puzzles, a structure frequently drawn attention to by his ever-talkative, bodiless companion Mimir. Pacing was an issue in the previous game, and, at various points during Ragnarök, including the opening trek through the gaseous, sun-baked realm of Svartalfheim, this remains the case. Like Kratos himself, these hours feel weary — heavy on their god-size feet.
Ragnarök crackles into life once you assume control of the young Atreus in the verdant forest realm called Ironwood. He meets another teenager, Angrboda, who spends her days painting murals that appear to depict prophecies. In these moments, Atreus catches a glimpse of life that is not dominated by the looming presence of his father, helping her forage for food and tend to animals — beautiful, simple scenes of domesticity. When the pair eventually encounter enemies, the screen explodes with powdery, bright color thanks to Angrboda’s attacks that draw on her skill as a painter. Atreus knows magic, and so the arenas also become filled with the shimmering particle effects (arguably the defining graphical motif of this console generation) that emanate from his fingertips. Amidst this visual cacophony, the teen somersaults and pirouettes through the air with youthful, fleet-footed abandon, a stirring example of combat as characterization and a striking note of harmony between Ragnarök’s narrative and its gameplay.
Angrboda represents one of the important ways Ragnarök improves on its 2018 predecessor. For a game essentially about reckoning with the toxic masculinity of one’s past, God of War continued to treat its women poorly. The game’s narrative was built on the death of Kratos’s wife and Atreus’s mom, Faye. The only other significant woman in the game was Freya who, by its end, had transformed into an overprotective mother. Ragnarök enlarges the cast of women, welcoming Freya back into the fold while giving significant screen time to Thor’s daughter Thrúd who harbors ambitions of becoming a fearful valkyrie warrior. We spend time with Faye during dream sequences, illuminating not the softer side of Kratos but the extent to which his emotional growth has always been glacially slow. Still, Angrboda is frustratingly underused, reappearing at seemingly random moments and never to the same extent as that in Ironwood. This is a shame because, together, she and Atreus light up the screen.
Venturing across the nine realms of Norse mythology, it’s clear that Ragnarök, like its predecessor and the swords and sandals epics it draws upon, is a triumph of visual design. Even when the pace crawls, the hook of one more vista or richly detailed environment is enough to keep going, from the lush jungle of Vanaheim and the Dwarven town of Niðavellir to the monumental wall that encloses the Norse capital of Asgard (climbing this as Atreus is a joy). These are once again located within discrete levels rather than one unbroken open world, accessed via a teleportation device situated within the game’s hub. A lovely, understated aspect of the Ragnarök’s design is the way its structure mimics the shape of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, within which the hub is situated. You venture out to a realm (a branch of the tree), returning home (to its trunk) at the end of each adventure. As a result, the game feels rooted, striking a balance between epic and intimate, all while upping the stakes as you get to know the characters better in the familial setting (a little like the camp in Red Dead Redemption 2).
Of course, this being a game named after the apocalyptic Ragnarök, the story leads to an Avengers-esque showdown involving every one of the game’s heroic figures. At this moment, the game’s themes of growth and change are undercut by the war that Kratos, Atreus, and their Norse pals have decided to enact. There is a fleeting, throwaway reference to refugees caught in the crossfire but nothing more substantial, no more thorough questioning of the effect of such cataclysmic violence on those who are not part of the divine one percent. In a climactic fight between Thor and Kratos, Thor bellows, “We don’t change, we are destroyers.†Kratos’s response: “No more, no more. For the sake of our children, we must be better.†He forgets about the past 20 hours spent tearing the jaws of beautiful creatures apart and decapitating elves.
With victory secured (not so much a spoiler as an inevitability), the lesson Kratos appears to have imparted to Atreus is that war brings about the change you want to see, a frustratingly uncomplicated message. By the end of the game, the teen, who finally gets to enjoy the embrace of his emotionally thawed father, has all but forgotten about the Midgardian refugees. With his bow in hand, Atreus’s primary method of interacting with the world, he sets off on his own adventure, primed, it seems, to star in a new franchise and perhaps doomed to repeat the violent mistakes of his father. Like the Norse myths, these video games are cyclical. They needn’t be.