Saturday Morning Gaming: God of War Ragnarök and Appointments in Samarra

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I was replaying God of War (2018) to prep for God of War: Ragnarök.

Well, last Wednesday night, I stayed up way too late (even though it was a school night) because I was smack dab in the middle of The Epic Conclusion Of The Game. Like, the last fight against the last bad guy? That’s what I was doing. And, somewhere around 11:45 I beat the bad guy and somewhere around 12:15 I finished all of the cutscenes and conversations that rewarded me for beating the bad guy.

And that’s a good “in a nutshell” way to describe the game right there. You’ll want to get in the fights so that you can enjoy the cutscenes and conversations that the various fights unlock for you.

The game itself is a continuation of a story that was an attempt to “grow up” after the pure id indulgence of the first three games. The first three Gods of War? HULK SMASH!!!! God of War (2018)? Please don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Well, this is a game that takes place a year or two after the last one. Kratos is mostly unchanged but Atreus has grown up from a boy on the verge of adolescence into an adolescent on the verge of being a man. It’s Kratos and Atreus in the middle of Fimbulvetr hammering out that the current status quo can’t be allowed to stand.

Freya wants to kill Kratos after the events prior. Mimir is still offering advice, stories, and sarcasm. You’ve adopted some wolves of various ages. And, well, you’ve found out that the old Jotnar Shrines have a secret *SECOND* interpretation. Which opens the door for stuff like going out and searching for Tyr. Hey, maybe if you could find him… you could head Ragnarök off at the pass and avoid the prophecy that Kratos saw (but Atreus didn’t) at the end of the last game.

And so the game begins in earnest. You have an action scene. You get a cutscene that explains things. You have some combat. You have a conversation that explains things. You have some more combat. You get a cutscene that explains things. You open gateways to another realm. You get a cutscene. You have a conversation. You get some action. You get a cutscene.

And that’s the cadence of the whole game. Maybe you’ll get a story in between fights, maybe you’ll get a cutscene. Maybe you’ll get little more than a sentence about how you need to go to the next place right as you finish walking up to the smith to get new weapons or armor or resurrection stones.

You’ll get what you need and then, woosh, right on to the next place in the game.

It’s like the game is saying “we worked hard on this, we want you to get the story and then we want you to beat the game.” There are sidequests galore, mind… if you want tough combat that will ask you to do some serious twitching and demonstrate serious button mastery, that’s in there. But if you ignore the side quests, you’ll find that the game is prepared to go hand-in-hand with you to the end that they worked really hard on.

I suppose that my main complaint is that they didn’t ever let me know that they trusted me.

At one early point in the game, there are a bunch of geysers. Some of these geysers block your path. Remember your trusty Leviathan Axe? The axe that can freeze stuff, even hot water that is part of a geyser? Well, don’t worry if you didn’t. Your trusty companions will explain to you that you should use your axe to freeze the geyser before you get your bearings of where you are on the new island.

And that’s probably my biggest complaint about the game. It’s constantly giving you hints. There’s nothing wrong, I suppose, with getting hints after… oh… a minute? Maybe 45 seconds? But I was getting hints as I stepped off of the canoe onto the beach! “Don’t feel like you have to look around!”, the game seemed to say. “Get on with it!”

And after I said “hush”, I looked around. And, seriously, the game is beautiful. They give you a surprising number of environments to run around in… a harsh winter, a shoreline, a jungle, a desert… and you’ll constantly want to stop and look around. And one of your companions will quickly say “don’t we want to go over there?” and break the moment.

Okay, fine. We’ll go over there.

But that’s the stuff that is in-between. How are the two main things? That is: How is the combat? How is the story?

The combat is mostly okay. It’s not bad. You’ll find yourself getting in fights and losing them occasionally but, mostly, winning them. (Note: THIS IS NOT TRUE FOR SIDEQUESTS! Sidequests are for people who wish the game were more like Dark Souls.)

The cutscenes and the story? HOLY COW THESE ARE FREAKING GREAT!!! You’ll find yourself saying “one more area… one more cutscene… one more fight so I can have one more cutscene…”

The story is pretty phrenetic. You’ll rarely find yourself saying “okay, I can take a breather and do some side quests”. You’ll constantly be thinking “I can’t goof off and run around collecting flowers… I need to go (resolve) (issue)!” I mean, Mimir even comes out and says a couple of times “you sure you don’t want to run around a bit first?”

No, I don’t want to run around a bit first, Mimir. I need to (resolve) (issue).

From the very beginning, where you establish that Freya wants to kill you, that Odin wants you to stop looking for Tyr, that Thor enjoys combat more than you do, and that the Huldra Brothers are *STILL* keeping secrets from each other… well, it only gets more complicated from there. Every time you think you resolve a major storyline, it opens up a new storyline and informs you that, great, you solved *ONE* problem… but by solving the one problem, you’ve actually set off a new set of side-quests. Go and close six rifts. Go and find six Lindwyrms. Hey, there are four Seasonal Stags. They’re out there. Somewhere. Go get’em. Oh, you might need to have some combat first, of course.

Along the way, you’ll hang out with old friends, meet new ones, meet some names that were only whispered in the 2018 game, and learn a *LOT* about both Kratos and Atreus.

In 2018, I joked about how Kratos gave a speech about how “we can’t help every ghost who wants something” before going out and helping every ghost who wants something. In 2022, you’ll find yourself yelling at Kratos “why can’t we have a conversation about what’s really going on? We are doing a sidequest! We have time to talk!”

Which brings me to my biggest issue with the game: The Idiot Ball.

There were *SEVERAL* points in the game where I yelled at the screen “JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER!”

Now, I’m a big fan of the short story “The Appointment in Samarra”. Here’s a short version:

There was a rich man in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market and when the servant came back he was freaking out and saying I was at the market and I turned around and it was Death Herself! She looked at me and made a threatening face and I need to leave to avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra because Death is here in Baghdad. The rich man said “Sure! Go nuts!” and the servant high-tailed it off to Samarra. Then the rich man went down to the market and saw Death there. “What the hell?”, the rich man asked. “Why did you threaten my servant?” Death quickly apologized and said “I wasn’t threatening him! I was merely surprised to see him here. I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

And so much of the game is doing stuff like that. “Hey, the prophecy says X. How can we avoid X?”

And they pick the route that leads them directly into the next step of the prophecy.

Late in the game, you guys get your hands on Gjallarhorn. Yes, *THE* Gjallarhorn. The horn that signals the beginning of Ragnarök. Back at home base, you discuss the best ways to avoid Ragnarök. One of your party members suggests that the best way to short circuit the prophecy is to blow it but for a bunch of good reasons instead of the whole “we want to actually start Ragnarök” thing.

Meanwhile, I’m standing in front of the television pointing and yelling “NO THAT IS NOT HOW YOU AVOID THE PROPHECY THAT EXPLAINS THAT GJALLARHORN KICKS OFF RAGNARÖK”.

Now, I don’t mean to sell the game short. Most of the problems that I have with this or that storytelling decision actually bear fruit in later scenes. There’s a scene early in the game where an event happens and I found myself saying “that’s cheap… they should have avoided that… they didn’t *EARN* that sympathy from me” and later in the game the event that got me to complain actually paid off. The scene with Gjallarhorn? Well, you understand why it was reasonable for that one character to suggest that it be blown to kick off the end of the world.

So, maybe, it wasn’t an *IDIOT* ball, as such… merely a prophecy ball.

But, seriously, so very many problems could have been solved by people just sitting down and eating some mashed potatoes and talking about their day.

I suppose that that’s all besides the point, though. I found myself entranced by the game and wanting to see what happened next and what happened after that. I found myself fighting and grateful that the button setup was (after a minor tweak) identical (mostly) to Elden Ring. The combat was intuitive, the boss fights over quickly, and that allowed me to be rewarded with the *NEXT* cutscene.

Which was, more often than not, a doozy. One that made you look forward to whatever happened next. OH MY GOSH I CAN’T BELIEVE HE WENT TO SAMARRA.

So… what are you playing?