3.5/5 ★ – Shy_Guy's review of God of War III.

This game is a really interesting inflection point in the timeline of big AAA narrative games. I feel like after the PS3 era we traded scale for intimacy (see last of us, uncharted, God of War, RDR), all franchises pulled their cameras way in, and the gameplay became much more stripped down. That's not a bad thing mind you, I love red dead 2, I especially love the new God of War games, they tell stories with smaller scales but deeper character work. The opposite is seen really well here. God of War 3 is massive. Every 10 minutes or so the camera pulls way back and you see the absolute colossal scale of Greece, when Kratos fights something giant it feels overwhelmingly big. and by extension the writing feels a little shallower. Moments have less time to breathe and the story as a whole really just trucks along with little connective tissue, but enough power and scale to topple a mountain. Really good comparison is how this game handles the final battle vs how God of war Ragnarok does (spoilers for both). Here its a monumental battle that leaves all of greece in ruin, and you feel the globality of this fight. the earth shakes and giants topple, the music swells and shouts, but the character moments kind of fall flat. Kratos deciding not to sacrifice Pandora feels kind of random, especially since he seemed very down for it all of 2 minutes prior. Meanwhile the final showdown in ragnarok is ostensibly a battle for all 9 realms, but it feels like it takes place in one lil canyon and somebody's hut. the music lingers and melodies flow. the fight with Odin doesn't feel much bigger than any of the other fights, but man the character moments are top tier. Kratos telling atreus to open his heart to suffering is one of my favorite moments in any game ever. Similarly Odin's death feels incredibly impactful as it seals a character change that we've seen progress over hte last 80 hours of games. Once again whether intimacy is more valuable than scale is an open question. I know which I prefer but that shouldn't mean that something like this, that's so bombastic and loud and massive can't exist. This game still kicks a metric shit ton of Ass either way.