Spoilers for the other GOW games as well, but that's prob not a big deal considering that this whole game is predicated on those games.

In 2018, God of War was my favorite video game of all time. Despite my numerous issues with it, I found the core of the gameplay and the story to be an incredible start to the next chapter of Kratos, a character I had come to love from his prior outings on the PS2 and PS3. I completely understand why fans of the older games would be at odds with both of the Norse saga games as there are plenty of valid complaints towards the design of both games besides "kratos isn't manly enough anymore", to which I say, 'congrats you missed the point of a trilogy and three spin-off games'.

Playing Ragnarök in the past year felt like I was playing the game that I had idolized and remembered in 2018. While not addressing every concern I had with how a sequel to GOW should proceed, it did address the vast majority of them and in my eyes makes revisiting the 2018 outing pretty much irrelevant (unless I ever wanted to load up my save file right before GMGOW Sigrun again).

I sometimes here people say that the Norse saga ruins Kratos and God of War in a way through the simplification of combat and the addition of many of the bells and whistles associated with the modern genre of prestige 'movie games'; gone are the more freeform climbing sections that often doubled as combat encounters in favor of the new, cinematic camera climbing sections that instead emphasize visual language in the framing of the climbs, no more aerial combat means less skill expression and emphasis on crowd control, and the games are, admittedly, less brutal than their predecessors. The problem with these talking points, however, is that they stop too short in their assertions to recognize where Ragnarök makes up for what it doesn't have; the new climbing bits serve the same purpose as buffers between action that a lot of Kratos' walks through empty paths and hallways, there is a staggering opportunity for player & skill expression in your skill trees and rune choices, and despite lacking the bloodthirst the Greek trilogy came to be known for, Ragnarök's key fights don't feel any less visceral than most of the brutality in a game like GOW3. I totally understand why others may not gel with the changes in gameplay here, but to me it's a system that works perfectly and one that I love engaging with more than I ever did with the original trilogy, for as great as the combat was in those games as well.

One last point I'd like to mention is regarding Ragnarök's common inclusion under the branch of Sony's prestige era 'movie games' like The Last Of Us, Ghost of Tsushima and Uncharted. There's a lot of people online give this style of game a warranted amount of crap for how they handle the merge of narrative and gameplay in a way that feels like watching a movie with some gameplay thrown in every now and then. Generally, I don't take issue with these sorts of criticisms against this style of game because, frankly, I'm also a bit tired of it, but I will die on the hill that Ragnarök should not be lumped in with the rest of these. As Jacob Geller points out in his video on the God Of War sequels, Ragnarök is a game more akin to theater than film, with Mimir and Kratos even acknowledging the similarity in one of their travel dialogues. This attitude of 'movie games' also does a lot to discount the importance of both Ragnarök's narrative and gameplay, which I argue are both much more intricately and meaningfully married than the rest of Sony's AAA catalogue. The most surface level take someone could have about GOW2018 and Ragnarök is that they're a cut and dry father/son travel story like we've seen countless times across countless mediums, and while I won't say that the story isn't that, that take is largely dismissive of much of the nuance and aspects about the narrative in Ragnarök that very markedly make the Norse saga so much more. Every aspect of the narrative in the Norse saga becomes that much more important the more you know about the original trilogy and its spin-off titles. You'll find that many of the side-quests and character dynamics in Ragnarok provide an opportunity to reflect on a previous aspect of the series and how it has impacted Kratos and his outlook on things; The Lyngbakr side-quest has Mimir and Kratos realize their shared heritage as slaves and their past roles in maintaining the cycle of violence, Freya learns how she can make amends with Freyr after Kratos recalls his love for his brother Deimos, and depending whether you free the Hafgufas with Atreus or Freya, you get to hear about either the burden of parenthood or the acceptance of watching your children grow into their own people and the sacrifices entailed. It's all frankly beautiful and some of the most compelling and well-written optional content I've ever seen in a video game.

I find an immense amount of value in how I'm able to relate Ragnarök and its messages to my own life, which is something I think almost anyone can also do. It's hard for me not to get a little teary-eyed thinking about Kratos both capable of loving and of being loved. I would say more central to the Norse saga being games about a father-son relationship is that they (especially Ragnarök) are games about overcoming conflict through human connection, which seems evident when you consider just how brimming with conflict almost every character in this game is. Kratos fears being unable to protect Atreus, Atreus wants to help people like his mother and also struggles with understanding his role in life, Freya must learn to work with Kratos, the person who ruined her life, and help him stop Odin, another person who ruined her life, and even the Huldra brothers have to reconcile with each other for the secrets they've kept. These character relationships tackle so many different aspects of life I'd struggle to list them all but I'll try anyway; societal expectations, reconciling your trauma, forgiveness, familial ties and obligations, trust, wanting to protect what you love, and how trying to protect people can often be the cause of more pain. What Ragnarök manages to do, despite the many valid criticisms against it both as a God of War game and a 'movie game', is use its mechanics and narrative cohesively to tell one of the most important and human stories I've found in the medium in a way I haven't seen many other games pull off the same way Ragnarök has. That is why God of War Ragnarök is my favorite game of all time.