Much as the classic God of War games were absolute barrels of gloriously ultraviolent fun in the gameplay and spectacle department, but God of War 2 and 3 have TERRIBLE stories. There's one main reason; Kratos is a character who doesn't have any point after the first game. God of War 1 ends with him getting revenge on the guy who basically sold him the gun he proceeded to shoot himself in the foot with and when he realized that didn't bring him any peace he came to accept that it really was entirely his own fault for being such a horrible murdering bastard so he jumped off a cliff. That was pretty much it. A complete character arc. The asshole protagonist realizes that he's the asshole and decides to kill himself about it. Straightforward Greek tragedy stuff.
But then that game made the mistake of ending on a stupid ass sequel hook and got really popular so now we gotta make two whole more games following the same asshole protagonist who now has nowhere to go as a character. What's more the finality of that character arc is quite inconvenient to continuing the story so he just unlearns all of it and he's back to being a vengeance crazed murderer who blames everybody but himself for all his problems and thinks killing some god is the solution. Except this time the god in question had nothing to do with Kratos killing his own family and the big crime we're out for revenge on him for is... trying to stop Kratos' senseless rampage.
So God of War 2 and 3 are games entirely about watching a completely detestable man do completely detestable things culminating in him literally destroying the world and all of it is for no reason. No lessons were learned, no closure was had, none of it meant anything, Kratos' motives are flimsy to the point of nonsensical. Just death and destruction for its own sake.
Counterpoint: They exist to make the production company enough money that they gave us GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. Those two games are a great storyline built on the foundation of assholeness that made up the first trilogy.
Counter Counterpoint: Playing GoW 2 made me hate Kratos so much and pissed me off so bad I never went back to the series and now I kinda hate the idea of anything good happening to that miserable, violent, asshole ever.
Specially hate the idea that anything could make him a hero or correct, ever, in any way, for any reason...
Dang, did you play GOW3? Because he gets like a million times worse before he gets any better.
