The journey through god of war is very, very different from all the other hack and slash games in the genre. You no longer deal with Blades of Chaos and the gods of Olympus. You are completely thrust into a new world and mythology. You are dealing with Kratos after the death of his wife, as someone who’s moved on from his past and started a new life. And seeing the growth of him and his son Atreus, Kratos is a whole different character now, interacting with Norse mythology. Seeing the tag team style of playing with these two, the father and son aspect is like the bear and the cub, the bear being someone with a lot of age, youth, wisdom and time, Atreus as the young cub being stubborn and greedy and wanting to just have fun. Fighting enemies and leveling throughout the game is a struggle in itself and the hardest difficulty. We meet Freya, which is the wife of Odin. We meet the brothers Brok and Sindri, which are the best forgers in the game when you are able to level up and get more items. Even with these two characters and their story, they are interlocking brothers who hate each other and still love each other. They are always separate, found in different areas and have different ways of approaching their craft, but are still brothers. Sindri can listen to the metal differently than his brother when forging, He’s insanely clean and can communicate with humor which is incredible. Brok is a dirty, grungy, hands on type of specialist in feeling weapons when trying to forge. He gets the feel of the blade and gets it to tell him what it wants to be. His brother might not understand it because he doesnt wanna get his hands dirty. In that way they are different, but still similar because they are both still forgers, dedicated to their crafts. There’s also Freya, and seeing her story and the love that she has for her son Baldur. It drives her to cast a spell, making him invulnerable to pain and it drives his character throughout the game. He looks to undo it, and even though she did it to protect him, Baldur sees it as another way to try to control him. So we see a lot of comparison stories between family relationships and dynamics and, love that means well but doesn’t end well. Even when it comes to Kratos finally telling his son in Atreus’ most scary moments of possibly dying that he is half God and realizing the evolution of Atreus one day becoming Loki. Knowing his own past, he is unsure of how his son will react, especially after instilling the belief in him that Gods are bad and evil. The best part of the game is when you sit down and talk to Mneir, just a magical talking head. As you’re rowing through the waters, Mnir has all the stories every time you go to different lands and kill certain creatures. He tells the stories that have happened in Norse mythology, and they’re incredible. Knowing his history with Odin and how he lost his eye and got bound by a tree, is incredible. Even his relationship with one of the, supposedly, most loving, powerful, and wise Valkyries (which is one of the final battles in the game and extremely hard), is incredible.There are more interlocking stories with family and crewman-ship and fathers and gods killing their children, that you have to play to find out. The core mechanics may still be hack and slash but here, you must always have a plan of attack and a strategy. You have to be being quick on your feet, always waiting for the opponent’s next move and always being hesitant on what you can and can’t do with your weapons. No matter if the enemies are big, small, dragons, or even fighting Norse gods like Thor’s sons. The game tackles a lot of family aspects but also puts you in tough situations. Now you can make choices, which can be super detrimental towards the game. When you finally get the blades of chaos, when Atreus is dying, it feels like a return to the original God of War. That rage returns as well as the move set and attacks. Even the moment when you see Athena appear in front of Kratos as the boat is moving along in the river. Watching the world be destroyed around him, as Atreus is dying and as we get the blades, you as the player feel that it’s time to unleash the original God of War, no holding back, no more using the axes, now you have combo attacks, and you feel like you can defeat every difficulty (except on super hard cause they get super hard), even fighting the Valkyries takes almost everything you’ve got (and I believe they are the best things to fight in the game). Even though we never get to see Odin as a character, you always get the stories of him and his dictatorship and his overwhelming power as the all father. You get to see how Kratos’ wife would always defeat Thor without even fighting him, simply outsmarting him every step of the way because she planned steps ahead of him. You will always get something from this game, which is more backstory than what was given in the first 3 installations for the Greek mythology side. It’s a build up, even when you have Atreus back in good health and you tell him he’s a God, you feel the shift in his character—the cockiness of a young boy, the arrogance of a young god/giant—and that changes over the game, as he realizes his way and understands his father more. In more than one way, Kratos and Atreus both grow as characters. There is painful growth at the end when you kill Baldur, Freya’s son, as Kratos seems to parallel his father Zeus as a God and a father. Kratos says the same line that his father said in God of War 3, “we must be better,” and snaps Baldur’s neck. But, in that moment of release, Baldur is free to truly die. Freya may hate you and we may have created a new enemy, but the actions of killing her son were because Atreus didn’t want to see Freya’s son kill her. Here, Kratos chooses to end the cycle of children killing their parents (who are Gods), and brings it back to God’s killing Gods, by killing Baldur himself. And we may have created a new enemy in Freya but, Kratos and Atreus thought it best to protect her. Coming closer to the end, you find that Atreus’ mother laid everything in front of him. She knew their path would be almost harder than anything and even in the beginning. She had Kratos chop down those enchanted trees because she knew she would have to push Kratos one way or another to get what she needed done. It may have exposed their location to Odin, but that’s what she needed to happen. Kratos felt safe and hidden. She needed him to be exposed to the world and not lock himself away, trying to control his anger, and at the end when you spread her ashes over the giants that are all perished, Kratos is free to remove his bandages. He is no longer afraid to show his old scars and show that he is the God of War. And when you go home and finally beat the game, that ending is something that you wanna fight in the next game. That ending is something that I kind of played to see and hoped happened and there’s so much speculation and so many possibilities. So playing this game was a journey. I took days and days to extend my play, to make sure I got every single enjoyments out of it. As a fan of the series, as someone that brought a statue with a hardcover case, seeing Thor at the end made me happy because we only got to visit a few realms out of the game. For the next one, I can’t wait to visit the realms we couldn’t go to, and I hope that we get to play as Atreus only in the game and at the end we get to play as his father. This God of War game had so many conflicting emotions, but it was able to tell the story of a father, a family, a brother, and it was able to push you to hope and see and wait for what’s next. So, I thank Sony, Santa Monica Studios, Cory Barlog, and the entire team for GOW from voice actors to digital effects, to music. This game has overpowered me and changed my perception of how people can change over time and it was able to tell a beautiful narrative. So thank you, and I can’t wait for the next one. A. Ringling