This first half of this post contains no spoilersforGod of War, the second half does and is marked by another spoiler warning.
I jokingly refer to the new God of Waras an Angry Dad simulator, or rather for too many of us, more like My Own Personal Broken Childhood simulator.
That's because joking is easier than admitting how close to home it all feels, watching a child be relentlessly belittled and ridiculed by his father for the crime of being human. We might giggle at Kratos' inability to even reach out a hand to comfort his grieving son after the death of his mother -- but I have seen exactly that happen with my own eyes, in real life.
And really, too many people have echoed the uncanny familiarity of Kratos' as a prototypical father to not take that reaction seriously.
SEE ALSO:'God of War' is the game I've been waiting for my whole life"My dad grew up in the era of the strong silent figure," Cory Barlog, the returning director of God of War, told Mashable. "They didn't share emotions. And I'm raising my son to be OK with expressing emotions. But it's still hard."
As seen through Kratos, "It's hard to try to change. To aspire to be something better, whether in grand or small ways. It's always going to be a long road filled with failure to get to even small victories. And that's OK too."
On the same day we spoke, Barlog posted a video of himself reacting to the first reviews for the game (spoiler alert: it's garnered nearly unanimous praise.) In it, he cries. The video received over a million views in under a week.
"I thought a lot about whether or not to upload but then I thought of what my son, Helo, is going through right now," Barlog wrote in the description. "He doesn't want us to be around when he is sad, opting to run in another room and yell at us if we try to come in. It has been important to us to let him know that it is OK to be sad, it is OK to cry. There is nothing to hide."
The new God of Warfeels like, in many ways, the story that so many in the gaming community didn't know they needed.
The God of War of 2018 asks us to see what happens to a child raised by that same masculine ideal.
While the original God of Wartrilogy invited us to identify with the embodiment of a male power fantasy, the God of War of 2018 asks us to see what happens to a child raised by that same masculine ideal.
It isn't pretty.
You might play as Kratos in the new God of War, but it's not hard to identify with the more relatable co-protagonist. Atreus demands your empathy, a constant reminder of what it is to be small, powerless, and so desperately in need of approval from the man who can seem to muster only scorn.
Yet God of Warspares sympathy for that father, too -- a man who was once a child himself. A man who knows nothing butthe perpetual cycle of patricidal betrayal and trauma.
"Kratos never had any good family role models. There's nothing in his past to turn to as example, outside of his Spartan brothers," Barlog said. "He's on his own journey to discovering it. And everybody else in the pantheon of Norse mythology is educating him on both good and bad legends of how family relates."
[THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE GAME BEYOND THIS POINT]
On their pilgrimage to scatter the ashes of the matriarch who bridged this wide chasm between father and son, Kratos and Atreus meet another matriarch. She is a distorted mirror of their relationship.
In the Norse myth, the goddess Frigg (or, as she is named in the game, Freya) traveled across all the realms to ask everything, from man to trees, to never harm her son Baldur. She succeeded in making him invincible, but in the God of Wariteration, she also robs him of all feeling in the process. Freya creates a monster due to this sympathetic error: A man who can express pain only through vengeance. Her desire to protect him from the world instills in Balder a murderess hatred toward the very woman who loved him more than anything.
But, "She did it out of fear -- out of love and fear," Barlog said. "She knew that her son was the one thing she created that was permanent. Magic is fleeting. Nothing stays, but her child would be the one thing to carry on. Baldur's her legacy, but not the arrogance of legacy -- just the pure sense of knowing you will die, and he will live on."
Dad of War, only a lot more nuancedCredit: sony santa monicaBarlog describes the story of Baldur as a cautionary tale, showing both Atreus and Kratos that they must decide if they are strong enough to make different choices. "We will be the gods we choose to be, not those who have been," Kratos reassures his son, after the boy realizes the mountainous pile of familial death that their story was born from.
Because this is what becomes of us when we teach our sons invulnerability. That is how the unspoken words between parent and child fester. They eat you both alive, from the inside out.
At its core, God of Waris a story about the painful indoctrination of young boys who are told they must close their hearts to feeling -- for their own good. It is a story of fathers who infect their sons by passing down the same disease of blind rage that robbed them of everything when they were sons themselves once.
But the cycle ends here. Or at least, that's the hope.
SEE ALSO:How a ridiculous game uses jousting dicks to interrogate toxic masculinityBecause most importantly, God of Waris an acknowledgement of the much larger system of beliefs that perpetuate this cycle of men raised to believe they must be impenetrable in order to survive. The result is a lineage of masculinity that erodes all life, failing to see how the search for impenetrability only guarantees destruction.
In both intentional and probably unintentional ways, the new God of War brings the abstract concept of patriarchy into the personal. It shows how it is passed down with only the best of intentions, just like that paved road to Hel.
But you start to understand why humans came up with the concept of gods in the first place. We needed an explanation for the failings of our fathers. We needed an old man in the sky to pray to -- the all father, Odin -- because the man sitting across from us at the dinner table felt more distant and unapproachable than even a god.
We needed gods because patriarchs seem always to pass down so much, while giving so little.
The lone road to destroying idealized masculinityCredit: sony santa monicaMaybe that's why we needed the original God of War trilogy in the first place. We needed to believe in the myth of idealized masculinity, before we could admit that what we really needed was its destruction.
I wish another mother figure didn't have to be sacrificed at the altar of a story about fatherhood
There are a variety of valid grievances against the game's execution of said destruction. As with so many other great game narratives, God of War still questions the tenants of violent masculinity -- while strictly adhering to the fun of violent masculinity. It opens the door to invite complex women characters to join that conversation -- before promptly shutting that door to them for the majority of the game.
I wish another mother figure didn't have to be sacrificed at the altar of a story about fatherhood in games. The Last of Usfell into this same trap, and it was also a weaker game for it. In this case especially, it is a true shame. Because when God of Waris allowed to tell the story it wants to tell, it does so with the power to move mountains. The sheer success its found among a demographic that also overlaps with the people who produced GamerGate is frankly heartening.
The greatest consolation for my grievances with the game, however, is the hope that this is not the end (and surely, given its aforementioned success, it won't be). By the end, it becomes clear that this is a story that won't feel complete until it moves beyond Kratos, succeeding the narrative to his more promising and sensitive son.
SEE ALSO:The new 'God of War' redefines what epic meansBut the slow journey to getting there is understandable. We must take what victories we can along the way, whether grand or small.
SinceGod of Warreleased, the vast majority have praised its shift in the series' direction -- but some fringe purists of the originals still found reason to protest.
"People started to question, 'Did Kratos lose his edge? He's not strong anymore.' And it always mystified me, because I thought it was inherently sort of logical," Barlog said. "Strength coexists with emotional availability and vulnerability. Life is not a Hemingway novel. We are better as people -- as a society, as a humanity -- when we are open to the concept of everyone experiencing the range of human emotions."
We have been, throughout history, a society born on the unspoken grievances of neglectful fatherhood.
Maybe -- if we're strong enough -- we'll let this be the end of that cycle.
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