# Chapter Select, [[S2E2 - God of War - Ascension]] Transcript
This transcription was completed on March 4, 2026 with the application MacWhisper on macOS. This was done automatically, without human input during the transcription process. The transcription used the Parakeet v3 model.
My hope is that by offering this transcription – however accurate it may be done by a machine learning/AI – will help you, the listener. I’d love to offer full, proper transcription some day, but that is not feasible at this time. Thank you for listening and reading. I hope you enjoy the show and that this document was helpful. Enjoy.
---
Welcome everybody to episode number two of season two of Chapter Select, a seasonal podcast where we bounce back and forth between a series of games exploring their evolution, design, and legacy.
*00:00*
Uh for this season we are of course as you can probably tell by the name of the episode we are covering the God of War series.
*00:12*
Uh today's episode is all about God of War Ascension
*00:18*
So we are going to do a deep dive on the last game in the series that appeared on the PlayStation 3 before the reboot.
*00:21*
I am your host, Logan Moore.
*00:28*
Joining me as always is Max Roberts.
*00:30*
Hi Max.
*00:34*
Hi Logan.
*00:35*
It's not only the last God of War game on PS3.
*00:36*
It was the last God of War game
*00:40*
In sat in Greece.
*00:43*
Yeah, before the full reboot.
*00:45*
Yeah.
*00:46*
And it was the last God of War game and the first God of War game to have multiplayer.
*00:47*
Yeah, probably for good reasons.
*00:52*
Um So yeah, we're going to dive into Ascension today, which is um I don't know.
*00:57*
Let's let's so let's get all the uh
*01:03*
Explaining stuff I guess out of the way up front like we normally do.
*01:06*
So once again the game was developed by Santa Monica Studio, which is the studio that has largely always developed the God of War franchise.
*01:09*
Uh it appeared on PS3 released in on March twelfth, twenty thirteen.
*01:16*
Uh the game director was Todd Pappy
*01:21*
Uh the producer was Whitney Wade, and then the combat, uh the lead combat designer was Jason McDonald, who had been doing uh combat design stuff since uh God of War II, is that correct?
*01:24*
Yes, that is what my notes say, yeah.
*01:37*
And he was the lead gameplay designer on the two thousand eighteen game.
*01:40*
Yeah, so he's been with this series for quite some time now.
*01:45*
Uh the music, the composer this time around was Tyler Bates, and uh on Metacritic the game averaged an eighty out of a hundred overall score, which is
*01:48*
Baffling.
*02:00*
Yeah, like I them we we talk about this with all the episodes that we do of this show, I feel like, where we're like, man, that's a weird Metacritic score in hindsight.
*02:01*
This one's especially
*02:09*
baffling because when this came out I don't remember anybody saying anything very good about this game.
*02:11*
It was just like, yep, it's God of War.
*02:17*
It's another one of those and
*02:19*
To see that it scored so highly is very, very surprising to me.
*02:22*
I was all in.
*02:27*
I was I mean, I was on the God of War hype train.
*02:28*
Um
*02:32*
And I'm I probably would have agreed with like the an 80 Metacritic score in 2013, but Max today would not agree at all.
*02:34*
This game is um
*02:43*
It's fascinating to say the least in both good and bad ways.
*02:45*
For it's uh it's so interesting.
*02:50*
I could see giving it an eight out of ten or something like that if you're a reviewer back then.
*02:53*
It's more the
*02:58*
'Cause I cause obviously it's an average, so that means there had to be a fair amount that were higher than that and a fair amount that were lower than that for it to kind of sit in the middle there.
*03:00*
Uh and yeah, I'm looking at st the amount number of publications that gave this anywhere from uh
*03:08*
Looks like the highest score on the internet for it was a 9.
*03:13*
6 all the way down to an 8.
*03:16*
5 or an 8.
*03:19*
Yeah, that's very surprising to me because spoiler alert, uh, I don't think this game's very good and we can uh
*03:20*
We can get into talking about that.
*03:27*
So before we get into the larger discussion about the game though and what we thought and historian combat and things like that, our histories with this game, so I'll go
*03:29*
N normally I'd pass it off to you, but I have a very brief history with this game.
*03:37*
I never played it.
*03:41*
So this was uh
*03:43*
This was one of the two that I believe I had never played in the series.
*03:46*
It was this and Ghost of Sparta that I've never played.
*03:50*
Um
*03:55*
So this was a fully fresh experience for me playing it this time around for the show.
*03:56*
You, on the other hand, I know you never finished it, but you did play
*04:00*
What like three fourths of it back in twenty thirteen?
*04:04*
Yeah.
*04:07*
I played so there are thirty chapters in the game and I played up through chapter twenty two.
*04:08*
Okay.
*04:14*
So yeah, I mean I was close to the end.
*04:14*
And honestly
*04:17*
Uh you helped me figure this out why I stopped playing it.
*04:19*
It's because maybe a month later or a few weeks.
*04:22*
Bioshark Infinite came out and
*04:27*
I remember buying that game too, and so when I got home from a vacation, I was playing God of War Ascension before vacation
*04:30*
Came home from vacation with Infinite and started playing that right away.
*04:37*
It would have legitimately been two weeks later.
*04:40*
So this came out the twelfth.
*04:42*
Bioshock Infinite was the twenty-sixth of March.
*04:44*
And I never went back to Ascension, which, you know.
*04:47*
Wasn't good or bad at the time.
*04:52*
It was just I got distracted.
*04:53*
You know.
*04:55*
It wasn't it wasn't like I was crazy to come back.
*04:55*
Well a game that a game that would have its hooks in you, I feel like you would want to go back and I also
*04:58*
Well, also I've been notorious, especially in the high school years.
*05:04*
I would just bounce around games.
*05:09*
Like I wasn't I didn't try to finish what I started as much.
*05:11*
Um
*05:15*
Like I do now.
*05:16*
But I was definitely.
*05:18*
I mean, Logan, I was into Ascension.
*05:19*
I wrote a whole preview and wrote it on the blog.
*05:22*
I got the collector's edition.
*05:25*
I went to the GameStop.
*05:26*
For the midnight launch, and that was back in the days when they did midnight launches, like at midnight before they started bumping those up.
*05:28*
And they actually, for whatever reason, mall security was like
*05:36*
We are locking this part of the building down at nine o'clock and then we'll reopen it at midnight.
*05:41*
And they're like, You can either stay in the store
*05:45*
with the employees or you can leave and the employees let me see so I sat trapped in a GameStop for three hours.
*05:50*
I was one of two people there that night for God of War Ascension.
*05:56*
Everyone else was there for StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm
*06:00*
Which is also just kind of interesting to think of people at a GameStop for a StarCraft II expansion.
*06:03*
Yeah.
*06:09*
That's kind of funny to think of it.
*06:09*
How far we've come in less than a decade.
*06:11*
Yeah.
*06:14*
So I was in the beta.
*06:15*
Um, yeah, I was in two ascension.
*06:17*
And also it came with the Last of Us demo.
*06:20*
That wouldn't come out in the world.
*06:23*
Which it still says on the it's one of the main props when you get into the menu of this game and says last of us last of us beta or whatever.
*06:24*
It's like that's kind of bizarre.
*06:32*
Um
*06:34*
So yeah, this came out the same day as yeah, StarCraft and Sniper Ghost Warrior 2.
*06:35*
That's an interesting one.
*06:42*
Anyway, so yeah, you've played a little bit of this, I have not.
*06:44*
So we're coming at this from slightly different perspectives, but I think we both knew.
*06:48*
Well I mean we mentioned this going off the Metacritic score, but we knew coming into this one that this would maybe be one of the not as great ones in the series if we were gonna play uh one that would be considered a stinker and
*06:53*
I was I mean to to explain how I was coming at this though, I was very excited to play this one because it is not one of the ones that I have played.
*07:07*
Um I mentioned in our last episode that I was a little
*07:15*
Less thrilled to play the original God of Oregon because I had played it probably twice, I think, before we did it last time.
*07:18*
Um
*07:26*
So I was not like super keen on re on uh returning to that one just because I would knew about it.
*07:27*
This one I didn't know about, so I was like I was legitimately
*07:33*
anticipating playing it.
*07:36*
Um but yeah wow it's a very it's very aimless like I I don't this game does not feel like God of war
*07:38*
At all?
*07:49*
It's so it's so strange to me.
*07:50*
Off that aimless point, I kinda wrote
*07:53*
that it feels like the cutting room floor of like God of War Two and and Three, with maybe a little bit of Ghost of Sparta in there.
*07:56*
Like it's just it's the stuff that never made it in the other games and they kinda just glued it together.
*08:04*
It's very
*08:09*
Mismatched, just has no purpose.
*08:11*
It's glued together in a lot of different ways.
*08:14*
Like not only is the story itself kind of like
*08:17*
just confusing, but the way it's told is also bizarre because they splice it up into different like sections and things like that, which could make sense and I think that would make for a fine game.
*08:21*
And I think it works to the game's benefit in the way that
*08:32*
the opening chapter or couple of chapters are a little bit more exciting because it starts at like kind of the kind of starts at the narrative height of the game and then it slows down from there.
*08:34*
Um
*08:48*
But they don't really ever flesh out why these things are happening.
*08:49*
Like I understand why the why the these things are happening in the game.
*08:53*
Kratos is trying to turn against Ares, and he's got a
*08:57*
I I I guess kill the Furies because i it's it's very confusing, honestly.
*09:01*
They don't really explain it.
*09:09*
It's it is confusing.
*09:11*
You I
*09:13*
I wrote down like I don't know why I'm trying to find the Oracle.
*09:15*
Like who is Orcos?
*09:18*
Like why am I doing this?
*09:20*
And I really so it's a prequel.
*09:21*
It's one of three prequels in the God of War series.
*09:23*
And I kind of looked it up.
*09:25*
I was like
*09:26*
Cause the game ends almost where it starts.
*09:28*
Like Orcos dies and Kratos is like, I'm off, and he just starts walking away.
*09:32*
I do like that they do the uh narrative at the very end of the game, uh like the voiceover narrative, like, and so Kratos left and he went to go fight Ares, because that's how the storytelling is all throughout God of War 1.
*09:40*
but they don't do that until the very end of the game.
*09:52*
And so I thought that was kind of a cool touch because I think everything up until that point, they don't do the voiceover narrative, right?
*09:55*
Where they're like or the narrator is speaking and talking about Kratos is and what he's doing and there's well, there's the
*10:02*
Prologue video of the game.
*10:10*
Yeah, yeah.
*10:12*
And then Orcos is narrating a bit through some stuff.
*10:12*
So there is narration, it's just not um Darn it, I think it's Linda something, but it's not typically Gaia's voice.
*10:16*
I had I looked it up because I was curious.
*10:24*
This game, chronologically speaking, is six months after he kills
*10:27*
His wife and daughter.
*10:33*
I'm like, all right, well, that's kind of interesting.
*10:34*
He's he's taking six months.
*10:35*
Do you know how far away from God of War One it is?
*10:37*
Uh ten years.
*10:40*
Really?
*10:43*
Yes.
*10:45*
Between this and God of War One is Chains of Olympus, which is five years after
*10:46*
Ascension.
*10:51*
For those ten years he is serving Ares and the gods.
*10:52*
That's weird because he gets to the very end and he's like, Oh, I will now kill Ares.
*10:55*
Yeah, I don't it
*11:00*
Narratively, this game's a wash.
*11:03*
Like it doesn't it doesn't further any future plot.
*11:05*
It doesn't bring any insight to Kratos or
*11:08*
the world of Norse mythology except maybe that like Aries banged a fury.
*11:13*
Like nothing is enriched here for the world.
*11:17*
It's it's very pointless.
*11:21*
The thing that's weird too is like the way they set up the storytelling from the outset
*11:22*
Is uh with that opening video, they're like, oh, before the gods and the titans, there were the uh what whatever the people are that like created the world.
*11:26*
Um
*11:37*
It doesn't matter like I'm looking at the plot synopsis here and it doesn't even mention it.
*11:38*
So like from the outset the game's like, oh okay, so you've already fought the gods in three and you've also fought the titans.
*11:42*
The primordials.
*11:49*
So they set up that like this is gonna be an important thing.
*11:50*
Like, okay, you've killed the gods and you've uh fought the fought the titans.
*11:52*
Why are we taking you back to a prequel?
*11:57*
Oh, the the primordials.
*11:59*
But like
*12:00*
They're not in the game and nothing from them ever shows up really.
*12:01*
I it's it yeah, it's very the story is very obvious that I th this is one of the things I texted you about.
*12:05*
It's so clear that they finished God of War 3 and they're like, we're done.
*12:14*
Cool.
*12:20*
Now we can close this chapter.
*12:21*
And Sony's like, hey.
*12:22*
You know what sold pretty well?
*12:24*
God of War 3.
*12:25*
You know what we would love for you to cook up?
*12:26*
Another God of War right now.
*12:28*
It feels like this was absolutely ordered.
*12:30*
by higher ups at Sony because they wanted to get another God of War game on this system.
*12:33*
I'm curious about that because it came out three years after God of War 3.
*12:40*
So at the time, Sony Santa Monica was also working on another game which ended up getting canceled, the sci-fi game.
*12:45*
That was one that that Stig was heading up before he left.
*12:54*
And I almost feel like they did plan on making another God of War game.
*12:58*
just to kind of float until they could get this sci-fi game up because they were building something new and clearly that didn't work out.
*13:07*
Yeah.
*13:14*
It just it feels I mean it could have been rushed.
*13:14*
But but even in that bit even in that sense, let's say it's not a game that PlayStation ordered, it didn't it doesn't at any point feel like a game that the studio really
*13:18*
Wanted to make or was like super passionate.
*13:28*
That doesn't come through with the game at least to me.
*13:31*
Because I don't think it comes through in the single player.
*13:34*
I really maybe, yeah.
*13:37*
I really feel like
*13:39*
And we'll I'll hit on this a few more times because uh in my notes and whatnot, but I really feel like this was a multiplayer game first for Sony Santa Monica.
*13:41*
Because we were in the and single player was an afterthought.
*13:52*
Or
*13:55*
single player was adapted in light of multiplayer.
*13:56*
Like multiplayer shaped this whole game.
*13:59*
And that would have made sense at the time because
*14:01*
Sony was very keen on getting multiplayer projects like that out.
*14:05*
Like if you look at the things they were releasing back in that time period, it was a lot of multiplayer stuff.
*14:08*
Both uh
*14:13*
Both from their first party studios and from even a lot of their indie studios.
*14:14*
Or not their indie studios, but they would like publish indie games like yeah, like Fat Princess or something like that was like a wonky little multiplayer game.
*14:18*
Like there was a lot of things like that
*14:26*
But yeah, they were doing a lot of different multiplayer things and ideas back at that point in time.
*14:28*
So it would make sense if they were like, let's do this for God of War, and that was kind of the basis for the project.
*14:34*
Um
*14:39*
But that's probably not I mean there's a reason there's not been a God of War multiplayer game since.
*14:41*
Like it w this was a thing across the whole industry though, because at the time we also had
*14:47*
Uh, what was the Assassin's Creed game that implemented multiplayer?
*14:52*
Was it Brotherhood that did it first?
*14:56*
Brotherhood, I believe, started with the multiplayer channel.
*14:57*
That was cool.
*14:59*
That was a nice, that was a neat multiplayer mode.
*15:00*
But everybody was trying to do it at this point.
*15:02*
Everyone was doing multiplayer in the first time.
*15:04*
Bioshock 2 had multiplayer in it and uh And you know Sony was also selling um online passes.
*15:05*
That's how they were implementing the multiplayer.
*15:12*
Yeah.
*15:15*
Was through
*15:15*
But you know, your game came with a code, you redeemed the code, and that's how you got access to the multiplayer suite.
*15:17*
And if you didn't have that code, you could buy it for ten dollars.
*15:22*
So they were
*15:25*
They were trying to create an engaged community.
*15:27*
I mean, Uncharted 2 through The Last of Us All Add Multiplayer.
*15:29*
Until recently, those servers shut down.
*15:32*
And Logan, the Ascension servers are still up.
*15:35*
You can I mean we both played a little bit.
*15:38*
Like this game is still running.
*15:41*
Yeah.
*15:44*
Which is uh which is strange.
*15:45*
Say the least a little bit.
*15:47*
It is it's baffling.
*15:49*
I wanted to so it's really hard to get a grasp on the multiplayer today because we're
*15:51*
Eight years removed from it.
*15:59*
And honestly, joining a game now, you're playing against people who clearly want to and know how to play this game and just beat the snot out of you.
*16:01*
Um, it's just not fun in that sense.
*16:09*
So
*16:12*
I dug up my preview from 2013.
*16:13*
Oh my god.
*16:17*
Um and I thought this kind of I'm not gonna read the whole thing.
*16:18*
There will be a link in the show notes to it, but
*16:22*
Kind of the spirit of this multiplayer was you choose a god to align yourself with Zeus, Ares, Hades, or Poseidon.
*16:25*
And then you get different weapons.
*16:35*
There were hammers and spears and thing and swords.
*16:36*
So things that you were getting in the single player and the multiplayer.
*16:39*
Did you actually did you pick up on the multiplayer tie-in trailer?
*16:43*
In the single player campaign?
*16:48*
I did, yeah.
*16:49*
Yeah, there's a leak.
*16:50*
He runs it, he crashes in on that dude in the prison in like chapter three or four.
*16:51*
Yep, and that's who you play as a multiplayer, which is cute.
*16:56*
So, you know, you're playing this and it's typical multiplayer mode, like get the most kills or capture the flag and things like that.
*17:00*
But then the stages would have interactive moments and you could like attack a cyclops and who got the kill.
*17:07*
So they tried to make it a very God of war inspired multiplayer, um, which I I think uh ends up shaping our single player
*17:13*
Experience in combat.
*17:24*
It is the blocking, the parrying, the stunning, the grappling, all of it, I think was multiplayer first and then applied to single player.
*17:25*
But it's
*17:36*
It w there was a multiplayer man and it's interesting and I think it's incredible that the servers are still up as of this recording.
*17:38*
Yeah, they yeah.
*17:46*
I don't think they've nuked them within the past week or past couple days.
*17:48*
I I can't wait for that blog post.
*17:53*
Cause you know, I mean
*17:55*
I feel like they'll just do it though.
*17:58*
I don't know if how vocal they'll be about it.
*18:00*
I think the I think if anything, Santa Monica Studio will just tweet it out.
*18:02*
Because that's kind of what Nadia's been doing with uh
*18:06*
Well yeah, when Audi Doc killed the PS3 servers.
*18:09*
They killed the PS3 servers.
*18:11*
But they gave everyone notice.
*18:15*
They did.
*18:16*
Clearly I mean
*18:17*
The fact I could even get in a game clearly indicates that there's some form of a community.
*18:18*
Like someone's using up the servers.
*18:23*
Maybe I it's gotta be what?
*18:25*
Super small.
*18:28*
A couple hundred people, if that
*18:29*
Maybe I don't I don't disagree.
*18:31*
I just I do find it fascinating.
*18:34*
I mean the the game is so I mean once again you played this via your own PlayStation 3 and I played it via
*18:36*
PlayStation Now.
*18:42*
So there it are easier ways to access this game via modern methods.
*18:43*
Um
*18:48*
And to that with that in mind, it makes a little bit more sense that I guess they would keep them up in perpetuity.
*18:49*
Plus, the other thing with like naughty dogs shutting down their servers, there's other ways to play those games online.
*18:55*
Or at least there's similar offerings.
*19:01*
Like the Last of Us you can play on PS4 or Uncharted, you just go play Uncharted 4.
*19:04*
Yeah.
*19:10*
So like there's similar
*19:10*
experiences.
*19:12*
There's nothing else that Santa Monica Studio has done that is like this.
*19:13*
So that's probably why they were still on, I would guess.
*19:17*
But uh
*19:22*
I did I did check the the trophies.
*19:25*
There's only one multiplayer trophy, but it's to complete the multiplayer training.
*19:28*
The tutorial, yeah.
*19:33*
And um only 20.
*19:34*
2% of people did it.
*19:36*
Which doesn't like that's pretty low.
*19:40*
I mean only a fifth only a fifth of your player base is out there playing.
*19:42*
Yeah, and that's reflective of
*19:47*
That's reflective of why all these uh games nowadays don't just get multiplayer game modes tacked on.
*19:50*
Because the proof is in the pudding right there that people don't want this stuff.
*19:57*
No one was pl no one was a God of War fan back then that was really like
*20:00*
You know what this game needs?
*20:04*
Multiplayer.
*20:05*
Somebody bake this in.
*20:06*
It was something that Santa Monica came up with and they tried to sell everybody on it, and some people enjoyed it, and some people were into the idea.
*20:07*
But there was not really a large vocal community of people saying, hey, you know what would make God of War 3 better is if they had multiplayer in it.
*20:16*
Um and that's why that stuff doesn't happen very often anymore is because people just don't play it.
*20:26*
Um even with bigger games, like how many people
*20:32*
I'm curious what the stats would be like on a really, really mainstream game.
*20:36*
Like like an Uncharted 4.
*20:41*
Like what are the stat what do the stats look like for the people?
*20:42*
That how many how many people that bought that game and played the the story then jumped into the multiplayer because I'm one of those I I don't know if I ever did
*20:46*
Honestly.
*20:55*
I think I played the multiplayer a little bit, but not a ton.
*20:56*
You tell me you didn't hop in there and get that plat for Uncharted 4?
*20:59*
I mean I did at some point, yeah.
*21:02*
But Uncharted 4, continue the adventure, complete the Uncharted Multiplayer Introduction.
*21:04*
According to PSM Profiles, 16.
*21:10*
8% of players
*21:13*
Have done so.
*21:15*
And that game has sold like twenty million copies, I think, or fifteen to twenty million.
*21:16*
So of that fifteen to twenty million
*21:20*
Maybe like one or two or not one or two.
*21:23*
Maybe like what two to four million somewhere in there have played the multiplayer at least to the point of completing that.
*21:26*
So even today, and and the multiplayer in that is good too.
*21:33*
Um like Naughty Dog does a good job with that.
*21:37*
So it just shows that people are not looking for these multiplayer
*21:41*
experiences.
*21:47*
Like the games that are going to find a multiplayer audience is gonna be your Call of Duties and your Halos.
*21:47*
I would I will assume Infinite will have a big audience when it releases later this year.
*21:54*
Especially for free.
*21:59*
But yeah, I don't I I don't know.
*22:00*
I I don't I don't know why I I I I part of me understands why they did, just because everybody else was doing it at the time and I'm sure it was a unique challenge for the studio to come up with something.
*22:02*
I'm sure it got their
*22:12*
creative juices flowing to a degree, but yeah in hindsight, like especially seeing how the industry is now, it's like wow, this is totally baffling that they did this.
*22:13*
Mm.
*22:24*
And it it frankly, I could see it kind of in that line of being a creative challenge for the team.
*22:25*
I mean, God of War's core
*22:32*
at that time was its combat and gameplay and having a multiplayer sweep be the focus of the new game
*22:35*
probably gave them a chance to really try and come up with something balanced and creative and challenging and technical.
*22:45*
And it's hard to say if they really succeeded on that front, because honestly I don't
*22:52*
I I have a hammer.
*22:57*
I got rocked by a hammer, so maybe hammer's the meta.
*22:59*
Like, you know, it's hard to really capture the spirit of the game at the time, but clearly
*23:02*
multiplayer wasn't the thing for God of War, um, because they it's not in the new one.
*23:07*
Um and likely will never be in a God of War I mean unless they make
*23:13*
I can't see it.
*23:18*
God of War Battle Royale.
*23:20*
Yeah, it's not gonna happen right now.
*23:22*
A hundred Kratos fall from the sky.
*23:24*
So the end of God of War One?
*23:26*
Yes.
*23:28*
Exactly.
*23:30*
Yeah, a hundred yeah, a hundred people drop into Hades.
*23:31*
Let's do that.
*23:34*
Let's talk about the general gameplay of this one as well.
*23:38*
Because
*23:43*
I know so I know we haven't played like two and three yet in this series.
*23:45*
Um even though I we've played them before.
*23:49*
Sure.
*23:53*
So we know like what those games do in a general sense.
*23:54*
The gameplay from this one, they try some different things.
*23:57*
They add some new systems and mechanics.
*24:02*
I mean, obviously the blades of chaos are still there, and it's the main way in which you're
*24:04*
Fighting enemies and stuff like that, but it feels very rudimentary.
*24:09*
Like it feels so
*24:14*
straightforward they put a larger emphasis on different types of blades of chaos attacks that you have different uh different styles that are aligned with different gods
*24:17*
Um and there's a couple other things you can do in there, a couple different abilities.
*24:28*
Um like slow down time or create a clone of yourself, that sort of stuff.
*24:33*
Um
*24:38*
But especially like knowing again, I don't want to compare too much to God of War 3 right now because we still haven't played that game.
*24:39*
But I know the things God of War Get 3 gives you that uh are way more interesting and mix up combat a whole lot more, and to see them go from that to this is very
*24:47*
Not like puzzling, I guess, but it just feels like a step backward in some regards.
*24:58*
Um did you feel the same way?
*25:04*
Y yes.
*25:07*
I not to Again, I don't want to not to harp on the multiplayer element, but they had uh th
*25:08*
They poured, it seems, a lot of the effort into multiplayer.
*25:18*
And what better way to get people ready for multiplayer?
*25:22*
than to have them use the same combat system in the single player.
*25:28*
And so you see an emphasis on
*25:32*
alternate weapons, which does happen throughout the God of War games.
*25:36*
Yeah.
*25:41*
Particularly like in Ghost of Sparta and um you know God of War 3 and 2 have some alternate weapons to a certain degree.
*25:41*
But not like this, where you've got five types and they have different strengths and weaknesses, kind of like a, you know, a rock, paper, scissors kind of chart there.
*25:48*
Magic is
*25:55*
Nowhere near what it looks like in God of War One, where you have a single bar and different abilities that kind of revolve around using that bar up.
*25:59*
This is, if you max it out, a four-use magic bar, so just four chunks, and each spell, cast, whatever you want to call it, is one chunk of it.
*26:09*
And with that comes those different elemental types in the blades.
*26:19*
So the blades stay the same, but the elements you use and types of attacks you throw change from Ares to Zeus to Hades.
*26:23*
And um Poseidon.
*26:31*
Yeah.
*26:32*
Yeah.
*26:33*
So it's this core four, which are the four that you pledge allegiance to in the multiplayer.
*26:33*
So it's all it's all tied together and you don't even unlock magic.
*26:38*
This was gonna be before.
*26:44*
Yeah, this was gonna be the big thing I was gonna bring up.
*26:46*
It's like till you max those out.
*26:48*
Yep.
*26:50*
So you don't the only magic you've
*26:50*
could have for most of the game is the Ares type which throws like a fireball in the enemy and then blows up a little bit later.
*26:53*
That was the thing that was very baffling to me about this, is that they're giving you these abilities, but they're not really
*26:59*
They don't do anything until you upgrade them.
*27:05*
And they take a bit to upgrade because you obviously need the red orbs to do that.
*27:07*
It was very strange how they were all doled out because I didn't feel like I was gaining anything that was.
*27:11*
better or uh more to my style, I would have to, yeah.
*27:18*
Uh by the time I had all of the different styles unlocked, I was in the very late stages of the game and I was like, oh well I guess I'll just stick with what I
*27:22*
gotten used to like what I have been using.
*27:30*
And when you compare it to God of War One, God of War One, Poseidon's Fury was like this AoE type attack.
*27:32*
Hades was the spirits, lightning was essentially like a bow, like you could have range, like it allowed you to mix up and alternate your playstyle to
*27:38*
handle certain combat situations.
*27:47*
And here it just felt like All the magic attacks are pretty AoE.
*27:49*
Um yeah, and not like I didn't
*27:54*
I guess the most powerful one I felt was either Aries or Hades.
*27:57*
Yeah.
*28:01*
Those are the two I use the most.
*28:02*
It just it didn't s incentivize me to use the magic.
*28:04*
Um the alternate weapons, I really like the um it's not a hammer, but the the giant sledge baseball bat looking slugger thing.
*28:09*
I liked that the most.
*28:22*
The sling I would not want to pick up.
*28:23*
The shield was eh.
*28:26*
The shield was okay.
*28:27*
Sword I didn't care for.
*28:29*
Sword was the one I didn't really like at all, honestly.
*28:30*
Yeah.
*28:33*
I didn't feel like it chained well together with other attacks.
*28:34*
Yeah, and then the javelin was only a limited use item.
*28:37*
Yeah.
*28:41*
So it just
*28:41*
They definitely tried, but I d ended up just sticking with the blades as much as possible.
*28:43*
And the blades are great.
*28:48*
I still even
*28:52*
what it was 2005 to 2013, I mean the blades were still good eight years later.
*28:54*
Still good now, even though they're different.
*28:59*
They're still good today.
*29:00*
So yeah, I mean overall I found it to be a very
*29:02*
underwhelming combat system in a general sense.
*29:06*
Um I did find it to be the most from what I remember, maybe we'll we'll rediscover your most combo heavy.
*29:09*
Like they really wanted you to come up with combos and chains of like
*29:17*
Grapple, throw, slam.
*29:20*
Well, and it was also very um this was one of my other problems with it though, is that um it was very
*29:23*
The combat system was somewhat reliant on you building up your uh was it your rage meter?
*29:31*
Um
*29:37*
Because that unlocks other abilities that you could use, yeah.
*29:39*
But you couldn't ever really take a hit or else it would I mean it wouldn't get knocked down all the way, but somewhat.
*29:42*
And some of the enemies you fight later on like deflect a lot of things you can try you try to do to them.
*29:48*
So you're right.
*29:54*
I I did feel like the early stages of the game really
*29:55*
encourage you to hey mix in your grapples mix in this mix in that blah blah blah blah blah but you get to a point later in the game where you're facing enemies that don't even allow you to do that
*29:58*
And then you are just flailing your chains around as much as humanly possible, um, depending on the situation, or you're just spamming your magic attacks.
*30:08*
Um I feel like the enemies as the game progressed really
*30:19*
Yeah, they didn't encourage you to fight in the same way that you may have done so in the early hours, um, which was a bizarre choice.
*30:23*
Mm.
*30:32*
I I think an a an enemy that really kind of encapsulates that, at least a bit of that, is those elemental
*30:33*
Giant warriors like big suits of armor that would come down and they'd either be one of the elements that you have.
*30:41*
They are straight up invincible.
*30:46*
Yeah for certain sections.
*30:48*
Yeah, when they switch to like their heavy attack.
*30:50*
And no matter what you do, like so you You just have to run around.
*30:52*
And it dodges.
*30:55*
Yeah, and in an action game, what you want to do is hit and counter and be powerful.
*30:56*
And this was like, you've got to run away.
*31:00*
And it just waited out, which is so frustrating because you you were in the flow of just hitting him, and then he's entered they enter this phase and suddenly
*31:03*
you have to run.
*31:14*
You're on the d defensive suddenly.
*31:15*
And that's not a fun feeling, especially when you're Kratos.
*31:18*
You know, this
*31:21*
powerful, literally powerful character that makes you feel cool.
*31:23*
The other thing that really bothered me, and this was something else I texted you about, specifically when I was doing the
*31:27*
Trial of Archimedes section, which is abysmal.
*31:32*
It's probably one of the worst things I've ever seen in any God of War game that I can remember.
*31:35*
Really quick.
*31:39*
We we played on hard, we both got the plat.
*31:40*
So we were definitely
*31:43*
Maybe we can talk about the difficulty balancing later, but please continue.
*31:44*
The thing that really uh started to reveal itself to me during that section though is that
*31:49*
Too many of the enemies in this game also don't get staggered when you hit them, which kind of annoyed me.
*31:53*
Like a lot of the common enemies, a lot of the ones that are humanoid in nature.
*31:59*
They will get staggered if you hit them so that you can kind of pull off a full combo or whatever.
*32:03*
Which it I think it should allow for because the game is putting so many enemies on the screen at once that
*32:09*
You're not gonna be able to hit them all at the same time and stagger them all more often than not.
*32:16*
So there's always gonna be s like your back's always gonna be exposed or whatever in in the first place.
*32:20*
But some of the later enemies that you start to run across, you will attack them, and it will just straight up not do anything to them.
*32:25*
Like they don't act like it's even nothing's happening to them.
*32:32*
So you're trying to pull off these combos and get get into a flow and deal some damage and they are just still attacking you through it?
*32:36*
or still doing various moves.
*32:44*
The one thing that really annoyed me with the trial section with the Gorgons is that they could just grab you anytime they felt like it and there was
*32:46*
To my knowledge, there was no way to avoid that.
*32:54*
Like I would try to parry it.
*32:56*
I would try to uh My understanding is the parry is the only way, but I found the timing for the parrying to be impossible to like really
*32:58*
Learn, understand, I couldn't find it.
*33:06*
The parry's bizarre, like could because you have to get in your block stance and then you have to press X, but then there's there's like a second, a full second between when you do it and when he actually
*33:09*
Like well that would explain why I never was able to do it.
*33:19*
I thought you just had to hit L one.
*33:21*
No, you have to hit X when like at the time, you know, kind of like a
*33:23*
So that explains why I never did it.
*33:27*
If you hit L1 and you have to hit X and it brings up like a shield around him.
*33:29*
But there was always a delay for in this wasn't a PS Now thing, because nothing else in the game felt like this to me.
*33:34*
But there was always like a half second to a full second delay between when you would press X and he would actually pull up the shield.
*33:40*
So you would have to really, really read.
*33:46*
It was like you had to do this
*33:49*
Way uh not exactly when they were attacking.
*33:51*
You had to like anticipate it a full second ahead and make sure that you were right on time.
*33:54*
But anyway, and I would do that to some of the Gorgons with some of their attacks, but it wasn't like that
*33:58*
With the grabs.
*34:03*
So so they could just grab you at any point and you couldn't do anything and uh anyway, yeah.
*34:04*
There are just some enemies in the game when you are attacking them, they are not
*34:09*
Getting shook from the fact that you're you're attacking them and then when they attack you in turn it can like stun you and then you're just getting wailed upon by whatever the heck is attacking you.
*34:14*
Yeah.
*34:23*
Um
*34:23*
It just didn't feel properly balanced.
*34:24*
I don't know.
*34:28*
Like, I mean again, we beat the game and it was fine
*34:29*
Uh eventually, but it just there are too many sections in this game where I just got backed into a corner and enemies would just start attacking me and I
*34:32*
Couldn't do anything because the game won't let you attack because you you'd like take sta you stagger or get stunned or whatever and you can't attack through that.
*34:40*
Which is fine.
*34:48*
You're more vulnerable to being stunned than the enemies are.
*34:50*
Like it's not a balance of power there.
*34:53*
You know, like for some of the trophy like some of the trophy stuff I went back to my original save to just finish clean up a couple of things, like the slide through Apollo's arm and and things like that.
*34:57*
That was annoying.
*35:08*
Yeah, that wasn't very fun.
*35:09*
But the um you know, those combat encounters that I would play on normal were an absolute mindless breeze.
*35:11*
Yeah.
*35:20*
And so it just
*35:20*
There was no balance there in hard mode for sure.
*35:22*
And I can only imagine what Titan mode, which is unlocked after you beat the game, would even feel like.
*35:25*
I just I can't imagine that.
*35:30*
It must all rely on
*35:31*
that parry timing that you were talking about.
*35:33*
Uh probably because if you pull that off it does a ton of damage.
*35:36*
So it's really helpful when if you if you do that.
*35:39*
And speaking of timing, I found the dodge to like not to not feel good.
*35:43*
Yeah.
*35:51*
I mean God of War One felt great, but uh those elemental soldiers again.
*35:51*
they one of them, I think the fire one, would send down like three fireballs in a row.
*35:57*
And I'd roll and dodge the first two, but every time on the third one, I'd get hit.
*36:02*
And it's because his roll animation was so long.
*36:08*
Like this
*36:10*
to like get out of this role and uh Logan can see me, but I'm like waving myself around.
*36:11*
Yes.
*36:17*
He just the role did not feel good, which made it
*36:17*
a poor d defensive option.
*36:22*
And then when the game forces you to go on defense in every encounter at some point, especially against big enemies.
*36:24*
You're you're just you can't win those situations.
*36:31*
Yeah.
*36:36*
The the the roll and the dodge roll and the parry maneuver, both the animations on them are either too long
*36:36*
Or they take too long to implement.
*36:43*
Like this is a fast action game.
*36:45*
Like you want when you input a command, you want it to happen
*36:48*
relatively quickly and i that was the big thing that kept annoying me with this game is that i it felt like all that stuff took
*36:52*
You'd use the right stick to dodge somewhere and it it took a half second to a full second until he actually did it.
*36:59*
Um it just yeah, for yeah, for how fast in some action games that's fine, like your Dark Souls or something, because that's kinda how Dark Souls is
*37:05*
You'll do your dodge and it'll take a little bit a little bit of time depending on how much like armor you're carrying and things like that.
*37:13*
Um But in this the whole game is fast and you you need to be able to
*37:21*
do those things quickly and I I yeah it I I felt like I felt like I struggled with the game a little bit less so because I was
*37:27*
playing it poorly and more so because I had to adapt to weird things like that.
*37:36*
Because I was using the moves that they gave you, but it was more so that I had to learn to
*37:41*
Adapt to how those moves in practice actually function and work if that makes any sense.
*37:47*
It just didn't feel as responsive
*37:52*
And satisfying, especially coming off of God of War One.
*37:55*
Yeah.
*37:58*
And, you know, from what I recall, the other games too, I'm uh I'm actually super fascinated when we get to God of War Three.
*37:59*
Because that's the closest to this in design.
*38:05*
Yeah, because I remember God of War Three feeling ten times better too.
*38:08*
So to go from that to
*38:12*
Or for I guess my memory of that into this.
*38:14*
And it's just but again, I the last time I played God of War Three.
*38:17*
I don't know if that'll be the same.
*38:26*
I don't know if it'll still ring true, but I guess we'll see.
*38:28*
Yeah.
*38:31*
What did you think of
*38:32*
We've talked a lot about the actual like mechanics of combat, but what did you think of the enemies and bosses?
*38:34*
So one thing I guess I would say about this game that I liked was the kill animations of a lot of the enemies.
*38:42*
They looked cool cooler than some of the other ones.
*38:50*
Like
*38:53*
Cutting open an elephant's head and his brain spills out.
*38:53*
That's kind of fun.
*38:56*
That's awesome.
*38:58*
Um, but I also felt like the game was too, and this says a lot because it's a God war game, I felt like it was
*38:59*
too q te heavy like to almost a like crazy degree like even some of the things that it was like prompting me to do qtes for
*39:04*
Uh like the slides is a good example.
*39:13*
You'd get to the end of the slide when you would need to jump and it would like prompt you to press X.
*39:15*
It's like, yeah, okay, I know, I see it's ending.
*39:19*
But maybe that was just to make that more clear that you were about to run off the ledge or something.
*39:21*
I don't know.
*39:25*
Um I felt like there was too many QTEs though in the game for sure.
*39:26*
There was s instances where it would all of a sudden prompt me to press a button and I totally wasn't ready for it.
*39:30*
I'm like, whoa, oh, okay, and I would die and I would have to restart because it just didn't seem like that type of
*39:35*
area um or that type of section where they would do that.
*39:41*
Are you talking about like like the gorgons for example?
*39:45*
Like when you press circle to grab the gorgon.
*39:49*
You almost engage in a mini-game of slash slash slash dodge the blast.
*39:52*
Are you talking about that?
*39:58*
Um one instance of that I remember was like with uh the snakes when you're trying to get those to
*40:05*
to move around or whatever.
*40:13*
Like you jump onto the side of one and you're like gliding alongs you're you're like riding it and then it makes you jump to another one.
*40:14*
Uh, but it didn't really convey that that was something anyway, bottom line, I died on that.
*40:21*
That's one instance of that that I can remember at least.
*40:26*
Um
*40:28*
The enemy designs and stuff I thought were pretty cool though.
*40:30*
Um a lot of it was more um you know you still got your cyclopses in this and you got your
*40:34*
dogs, I guess.
*40:42*
Um but they mix in some different types of enemies.
*40:44*
Uh the bugs and the elephants and um
*40:47*
Um the Gorgons are a little bit different in this one as well.
*40:51*
They look more like cobras, which is kind of cool, but I I got an Egyptian an Egyptian vibe from this game.
*40:55*
A little bit, yeah.
*41:03*
Like they're some of the enemy types I be I mean we're not saying that cats were walking around here like to fight us, but just like the elephant and the beetles.
*41:04*
Um
*41:13*
Um even the um the Seder generals, like they just looked a bit leaner, more streamlined.
*41:13*
It was interesting.
*41:21*
And we know in hindsight
*41:23*
I mean actually from like God of War One and Two that they other mythologies were thought about.
*41:26*
And Egyptian was like the other option between Norse like where 2018 was gonna go and they ended up going the Norse route.
*41:31*
Yeah.
*41:40*
So it was interesting to kind of pick up on some of those design choices here in this game.
*41:40*
So many, you know, almost a decade ago.
*41:48*
Oh my gosh.
*41:50*
It's it'll be nine in a few months.
*41:50*
I know.
*41:53*
I know.
*41:54*
We're old, it turns out.
*41:55*
What about what about the bosses?
*41:58*
Um, I didn't really like most of the bosses in the game, honestly.
*42:00*
Uh
*42:04*
Final boss is terrible.
*42:05*
It's actu it's just total garbage, honestly.
*42:07*
Like just didn't make sense.
*42:11*
It didn't make a bit of sense.
*42:13*
All of a sudden a Fury Lady who's like, oh, I can
*42:15*
Uh change rea I can or I guess it was the other one who could like change reality and can change the way things looked, but uh or maybe they could all do that.
*42:18*
I don't know.
*42:25*
Because the one who started doing that was not the
*42:25*
one in the cutscene that was pretending to be his wife.
*42:29*
Anyway, um she explodes into a giant kraken basically, which doesn't make a lick of sense.
*42:31*
Uh that fight was bad.
*42:37*
Uh uh even outside of that though, um I don't know, some of them were okay.
*42:39*
The dude with the two heads on him with the time amulet, that was okay, I guess, but it was also kind of annoying.
*42:45*
um how they mixed in some like platforming and you gotta avoid falling to your death in certain instances.
*42:52*
Mm-hmm.
*42:59*
Um
*42:59*
The one thing that I mentioned before though that I did appreciate about appreciate about the game is that it was pretty forgiving with checkpoints
*43:00*
Because some of these fights are pretty darn long.
*43:08*
Uh and if I was tasked with beating them from start to finish, that would have been a
*43:11*
I pr I probably would have restarted it on easy or something like that.
*43:18*
So so yeah, it was it was uh
*43:23*
I I think most of the bosses are not too shabby, but none of them really stand out as being ones that I necessarily loved, if that makes sense.
*43:26*
I didn't think most of them were bad outside of the fa final one, but everything else really didn't
*43:34*
make a mark on me.
*43:39*
Especially compared to some of the other boss fights from some of the other games that like I definitely think about when I think about this series.
*43:41*
I
*43:47*
I'm actually quite disappointed in thinking about it.
*43:49*
It actually reminds me a lot of God of War One, which didn't re really only had two to speak of, you know, Ares and the giant metal bowl, and then the Kraken at the beginning of the game.
*43:52*
Or Hydra, I should say, kind of interesting that those two sorta related.
*44:01*
But really, Ascension reuses a lot of boss fights
*44:05*
between the Furies.
*44:09*
Yeah.
*44:10*
Because the game opens up and you kill the f the first Fury.
*44:11*
Um it wasn't Megara or Tiphony.
*44:14*
And I only know these names because of
*44:17*
Hades by Supergiant now.
*44:19*
So I know more about the Furies because of that game than Ascension.
*44:21*
Anyway, you kill it, but then because the game's in a flashback, you fight
*44:24*
her again twice.
*44:28*
And then the middle one you fight numerous times.
*44:30*
And then the last one you only fight at the final boss fight.
*44:33*
So I really wasn't a fan of reusing the Furies over and over again, especially knowing that I had already killed one of them.
*44:35*
Yeah in the opening
*44:41*
hour of the game.
*44:43*
Yeah, they kept showing back up and I was like, wait, what is going on?
*44:44*
Like I knew they were jumping around in time, but it was still like, what point in time are we in now?
*44:47*
I forget.
*44:51*
Are are we uh yeah.
*44:52*
And then, like you said, the the profit guy, Pollux, and um Castor.
*44:55*
So that was an interesting fight, at least two phases kind of.
*45:00*
One was more physical, one was more magical.
*45:03*
Yeah.
*45:05*
And then
*45:06*
The arm, like the head head of conkrite or whatever it was called.
*45:08*
The arm.
*45:14*
Honestly, I think that's the coolest fight in the game.
*45:15*
Yeah.
*45:17*
Because of the scale and spectacle of it.
*45:18*
But really you only fight, I guess, the three Furies and the the Prophet guy.
*45:21*
Mm-hmm.
*45:26*
And when you think of again, we have some context, but just when you think of God of War
*45:27*
two and three.
*45:33*
There are a lot of boss fights in those games.
*45:35*
I mean they're essentially boss fight games.
*45:37*
Um and I feel like
*45:40*
I guess we have to even 2018 may not have as many boss fights, but it's definitely more memorable.
*45:43*
I think the opening boss fight of that game is one of the best boss fights probably ever.
*45:50*
Yeah.
*45:54*
Like that's
*45:54*
immediately iconic and just stands at the end of the year.
*45:56*
There are fewer boss fights in that game, but the ones they include are great.
*45:59*
But there's also the dragon and then um the brothers, Mignium
*46:02*
Yeah.
*46:07*
Yeah.
*46:08*
Like there's them and it's just and then the final fight.
*46:08*
It their way b this was actually really disappointing.
*46:11*
I was looking forward to this game because of
*46:14*
It's a PS3 game, so it's a bigger spectacle, more all this stuff.
*46:17*
And I remember the opening of the game.
*46:22*
Yeah.
*46:23*
It turns out really the high
*46:24*
highlight of boss fights was the beginning of the game, and the rest kind of just petered out.
*46:26*
The final fight, super big spectacle, narratively makes no sense.
*46:30*
was a cakewalk.
*46:35*
Like it just felt weird.
*46:36*
Attack this giant tentacle repeat it.
*46:38*
Okay.
*46:40*
Like Yeah, it just they didn't they did not nail the boss fights, which I think is so
*46:41*
essential to m God of War's identity.
*46:47*
I guess the one other aspect of God of War that's pretty uh
*46:50*
Pretty pretty much in all the games.
*46:55*
Um did the puzzles do anything for you really in this one?
*46:57*
Most of them really didn't for me.
*47:00*
Um there were some cool sections, like once you got the time amulet thing, I mean there was some
*47:03*
I think that was a cool idea, but I don't know how much they really did with it.
*47:08*
I I I don't know.
*47:13*
Like the puzzles that are here, I wouldn't have wanted them to be any
*47:15*
harder and more difficult, I guess, is what I'm saying.
*47:18*
I wouldn't have wanted anything more intricate than what they gave us, but also what was there I didn't really like
*47:21*
Like I figured out what to do in most of them and it was just kind of plotting to actually do that.
*47:27*
But then again, maybe that's most puzzles in a lot of games, if I'm being honest.
*47:33*
It was so
*47:37*
They're very one-dimensional in the sense, like the time amulet that you get in the Delphi temple.
*47:38*
You or the smoke, I guess, uh the fog or whatever that you have to breathe.
*47:44*
Oh yeah yeah.
*47:48*
Every solution is find a crack in the door and break it so you can go through this hole.
*47:49*
Or like
*47:56*
do something in the the future that impacts the past or or vice versa, do something in the past that will impact the future here.
*47:57*
Yeah.
*48:03*
They they didn't
*48:03*
Go deeper or flesh it out.
*48:05*
Um and by the time I will say by the time they exhausted pretty much the fundamentals of it, you moved on and you never went back to it.
*48:07*
Except for maybe a couple of times.
*48:16*
I I did not care for the the time whime ones where you had to like stop halfway through time.
*48:17*
I hated those.
*48:23*
Because you never solved it on your own in the game.
*48:25*
The game would always just say immediately prompts you and do it.
*48:27*
Yep.
*48:30*
Like you So what was the point of it?
*48:30*
Then the the clone or like the the stand-in again very flat.
*48:33*
Hold a lever, stand on a button, like
*48:41*
There was no it was actually way cooler in combat, like being able to send it out to fight other things.
*48:45*
So I wish there was more
*48:50*
But it just was flat.
*48:54*
The coolest part of that implementation I thought was like that you could use that to like shake off buffs, but I they only introduced that in the final boss fight of the whole game because she would shoot you with the
*48:55*
Black tar stuff or whatever, and then you could like create a clone and the clone would like be the one to take that hit or whatever and you you could continue on.
*49:05*
I don't know how it really worked in practice, but I just know that that was like a way to clean a cinematic moment.
*49:13*
It was like a way to cleanse yourself of the goop that was on you.
*49:20*
But yeah, it doesn't make much sense because
*49:24*
He's using the thing to create a clone of himself.
*49:26*
He's not using it to stand in for him, I guess.
*49:30*
I don't know.
*49:34*
Uh it's a video game.
*49:34*
I guess they can change the rules on the fly.
*49:36*
Let's talk about some aesthetic stuff before we kind of start wrapping up here.
*49:39*
The music do much for you in this one?
*49:43*
Because this uh does was uh
*49:45*
I was trying to pay more attention to it this time around and see if uh there's anything that would really uh stick with me, but nope, that just kind of felt like
*49:48*
Let's hit those same sort of beats we've been hitting in the series up to this point.
*49:58*
Let's throw that main theme in there a whole bunch and uh
*50:02*
Yeah, and some window dressing around it.
*50:06*
Like I can't think of a single song in this game outside of the main theme that I can think of at all, to be honest.
*50:08*
When I was playing the game we so you and I went in the game with the same mentality of
*50:14*
pit like really try and like pick up on the music here.
*50:19*
And I think we did that because of our discussion around the music in God of War One.
*50:22*
So I came in pretty intentional like you.
*50:26*
You can hum the theme.
*50:29*
The only song that I noticed during the gameplay was this song that played in the furnace.
*50:30*
And you could hear with the beat, and maybe it's not even in the song, maybe it was just an environmental sound effect, but with the beat you could hear like a hammer on an anvil, like Yeah.
*50:39*
Tom and I was like, that's kind of cool, incorporating those sounds into the music.
*50:48*
I did go back after the game.
*50:52*
Um this soundtrack is available on
*50:56*
Apple Music and Spotify.
*50:59*
It was actually part of the game if you don't pre-ordered it or whatever.
*51:01*
So I listened to the soundtrack.
*51:05*
And I had three songs that I wrote down.
*51:07*
Um
*51:09*
Ghost of Kira, which is the first village that you go through, has that Egyptian desert vibe to it that I brought up earlier, which I thought was interesting.
*51:10*
So that was kind of
*51:19*
Cool to hear later.
*51:22*
And then Warrior's Truth is the God of War One theme.
*51:24*
You know, kind of amplified up a little bit.
*51:28*
And then
*51:30*
The rest of them, some sounded cool, like Temple Carnage, but I couldn't tell you when it played.
*51:32*
I guess it played in a temple, so maybe the the prophet.
*51:38*
I don't know.
*51:41*
It was just an iconic
*51:42*
There are some like there are some tracks that I remember from other games in this series and w we'll we'll get to those when we get to those, but uh
*51:44*
The score in some of the moments from the other games is way more bombastic, and uh I I feel like it really matches the moment quite well in some of the big scenes that are memorable from these games.
*51:54*
Um
*52:05*
Yeah, I yeah, I just I can't think of anything from this game that uh said with me.
*52:06*
I would like I said I was trying to pay closer attention this time so we would have s I would have something to say about it this this time around, but
*52:12*
One more thing about the music.
*52:19*
So again, you know, I'm really trying to think about it.
*52:21*
And it reminded me of this video, uh, which will be in the show notes.
*52:23*
It's from Every Frame of Painting.
*52:27*
Are you familiar with that YouTube channel?
*52:29*
No.
*52:31*
It's the cinematic breakdown kind of guy.
*52:32*
Um he used to make a lot of really cool videos.
*52:34*
Uh he doesn't do them anymore, but they're they're great.
*52:37*
And one of the last videos that they made was um it was called the Marvel Symphonic Universe.
*52:40*
And he he asked different people around, he's like, can you sing me Song from Indiana Jones, James Bond, Star Wars?
*52:46*
Obviously everyone can do that.
*52:54*
And then he ends with the Stinger, can you give me a song from the MCU?
*52:56*
And no one can do it.
*53:02*
And then he goes into this this whole thing of like why that happens and how these types of decisions are made and
*53:04*
Part of it was it's the music is just meant to be in the background and not noticed.
*53:11*
Essentially, it was to a certain degree.
*53:19*
It is meant to literally
*53:21*
match what you were seeing on screen and the emotions you're supposed to feel, but not stand out.
*53:24*
It is it is unintentional in that regard.
*53:29*
And I feel like especially this game.
*53:33*
That was the goal was for it to complement and not be unique and standout.
*53:39*
Like they already had the God of War formula at this point.
*53:44*
Like it was just like do this again.
*53:48*
I really feel like they were trying to emulate the first game a lot.
*53:49*
Which is why they kept folding in that main theme so much.
*53:52*
Um at least I feel like that was very prominent.
*53:57*
Maybe that was more prominent towards
*54:00*
the end but I I can't I can't recall anything.
*54:01*
Sorry Tyler Bates.
*54:05*
I I apologize.
*54:06*
Final thing uh final thing before we close up here.
*54:09*
Um visual-wise
*54:12*
I feel like this game looks like crap.
*54:15*
I really do.
*54:18*
I think this game looks terrible.
*54:19*
I know it's a PS3 game, and I know it's a little bit old, and I I'm sure I'm being more harsh on it in retrospect because I've gotten used to
*54:21*
4K and all this other fancy stuff for the past few years.
*54:29*
I feel like this game looks washed the heck out.
*54:32*
Like it looks so
*54:34*
Devoid of color?
*54:37*
Um, I don't know if you felt the same way, but I I uh two
*54:40*
It just yeah, just very very very washed out.
*54:45*
It looks like there was like a white filter placed over a lot of stuff in this game.
*54:47*
Um It was it's like the inverse of a Snyder movie
*54:51*
Um so yeah, I don't know.
*54:56*
Again, especially by comparison to what I'm remembering from three, too, which I feel like has a fair amount of
*55:00*
good like color mixing in it in the different sections of that game.
*55:07*
This game just did not feel like that at at all to me.
*55:11*
It very reflect it very much reflects the box art, I feel like
*55:15*
Um God.
*55:20*
Don't get me started on this old box art it thing.
*55:21*
I mean does it does it not though?
*55:23*
Like I feel like the box art was like very
*55:25*
bright and white and yellowy and I I feel like the most the most of the color palette in this game is of that same style.
*55:29*
Yeah, it's just it's very washy.
*55:36*
Um
*55:39*
Again, it's yellows and whites, very bright colors.
*55:40*
It's not dark in any sense.
*55:44*
Um Yeah, but I feel like that was reflected in even a lot of like
*55:46*
Some of the boss designs and some of the character designs and things like that.
*55:50*
Like I like the opening uh hand monster thing you were talking about, whatever that's called, I forget.
*55:53*
Um
*55:59*
But I feel like I feel like that looks awful too.
*56:00*
Like I think its design is cool, but I think the way it actually looks in-game with its character model was not great.
*56:03*
Um
*56:10*
It yeah, it wa it's definitely not the most iconic.
*56:12*
Um
*56:18*
It just doesn't stand out.
*56:19*
Like just visually, like even by comparison to the first game that we just played, I feel like that game had a way
*56:21*
D it had way more going on at way different areas of the game, whether it be going to the underworld or going to And the environments were were memorable.
*56:27*
They were different colors and bright and d or dark and had different designs and this
*56:35*
Everything just feels very well it actually it felt almost too realistic to a certain degree.
*56:40*
Like it like they tried to make God of War
*56:45*
grounded in a way instead of being more mythological and fantasyful.
*56:48*
I guess the closest really you get to is maybe at the top of the Apollo
*56:53*
Um statue where you go through time and it's like it looks different and it's cool and gold and stuff.
*56:57*
Yeah.
*57:03*
This this game
*57:04*
Fun fact, is technically, like on a actual technical level, the worst visually God of War game.
*57:06*
It is 720p instead of 1080.
*57:14*
Um and it is an uncapped frame rate that rarely goes above 30.
*57:16*
It is just it is a it is a really bad frame rate time.
*57:21*
Uh
*57:25*
I was actually quite jarred by it coming through.
*57:26*
Even I I was looking it up here uh very briefly.
*57:30*
even God of War Three, so an earlier PS3 game, uncapped frame rate, but seems to be based off this Digital Foundry video pretty consistently in the like mid forties to fifties.
*57:35*
So it's even a higher frame rate there.
*57:47*
In God of War 3, as we'll get to, definitely has a better, I think, visual design than this.
*57:50*
So I just I don't know what happened to the single player game, but this
*57:56*
720p is not running all that great.
*57:59*
It's just it's a bummer.
*58:04*
Um sure the PSP games run on PSP, but those were remastered for PS3 and they run at 1080, 60.
*58:06*
So
*58:12*
It's it's actually quite disappointing, both on a technical and visual design element.
*58:13*
One uh one quick thing I want to mention just because I thought it was funny, because I had the Wikipedia page here pulled out next to me, just uh
*58:19*
To get some which is what we normally do when we do these.
*58:26*
Um anyway the final line of like the intro
*58:30*
Of Ascension on the Wikipedia page.
*58:34*
It says Ascension sold less than its predecessor predecessors and received no awards.
*58:36*
But it did receive several nominations, including Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing.
*58:41*
Uh at the Writers Guild of America video game awards.
*58:47*
What?
*58:51*
What?
*58:52*
Huh?
*58:53*
What?
*58:54*
Must have been a weak year!
*58:54*
Must have not must have not had any good stories to pull from with The Last of Us in Bioshock Info.
*58:56*
I'm being sarcastic.
*59:02*
No, I'm being sarcastic.
*59:04*
Yeah
*59:08*
It's very funny to see that that would have been nominated alongside those other games.
*59:09*
Those other games surely were the winners.
*59:14*
I know some people think the story of Infinite is trash.
*59:16*
I still like this story.
*59:18*
But uh I like I like it too.
*59:20*
I guess wrapping up here, God War Ascension Not a uh great God War game.
*59:22*
Um
*59:30*
Yeah, I feel like um it just feels so weird.
*59:32*
Like it feels so uninspired in a lot of ways.
*59:36*
I feel like the play I do agree that the aspects that were probably the most inspired with this game
*59:38*
came with the multiplayer, but then they just slapped this quick story together that was just very clear that they needed to not do another Greek game and they did another Greek game and they did another prequel and
*59:44*
I guess the one thing I didn't mention before too is that it doesn't even feel like Kratos is in this game sometimes.
*59:58*
It just feels like you're controlling a man who has
*01:00:05*
uh chain blades and he's running around because he barely talks in this game like he is so devoid of any sort of character or
*01:00:08*
uh usual traits of Kratos.
*01:00:19*
Like he's not even screaming in this game very much.
*01:00:22*
He doesn't do anything.
*01:00:24*
He's just kind of guy with weapons fighting monsters and stuff.
*01:00:26*
Like he only talks a couple times throughout the whole game.
*01:00:33*
I totally agree with you.
*01:00:36*
And actually I I found this line from the God of War fandom wiki page.
*01:00:37*
Kind of interesting.
*01:00:42*
I think it it's reflective of it.
*01:00:43*
Um
*01:00:45*
It's basically talking about he's killed his wife and child.
*01:00:47*
However, Kratos, enraged and saddened by the accidental killing, became a self-pitying recluse.
*01:00:53*
unable to forgive himself for his crime, and adamantly vowing never to serve Ares again.
*01:00:59*
End quote.
*01:01:04*
So
*01:01:06*
Kratos is clearly depressed and he's not out to kill Ares yet, as we learn, because he he takes ten years to actually get to that point apparently.
*01:01:07*
Why is he depressed?
*01:01:17*
Oh, I killed my family.
*01:01:21*
No Yeah.
*01:01:23*
It's just he's clearly quiet and it's not
*01:01:24*
It's because I don't think they had anything to explore his character with.
*01:01:29*
And that's the problem, is that by the time they got to three, I feel like they had fully fleshed out his arc.
*01:01:33*
And by going back and doing this, I feel like they didn't want to potentially undo anything that they felt like they had closed the book on with
*01:01:38*
three.
*01:01:47*
So they're like, okay, we'll go back and we'll do a prequel, but we can't mix up too much because we like where he's at a good spot further down the road and we don't want to
*01:01:48*
undo that somehow with a pre yeah, it's very I almost would have been more fine if this game was totally just a God of War game where he's like, yo
*01:01:57*
Ares, I'm rocking with you.
*01:02:07*
Let's go kill some people.
*01:02:09*
Like that would have been ten times better if you were just like that would have been interesting.
*01:02:10*
A brutal, like murderous Kratos, who is a very much not good guy when you play as him.
*01:02:13*
That could have been interesting.
*01:02:20*
At least I think that this game when I think about this game now.
*01:02:21*
You know, the initial stuff like, uh, it's a multiplayer.
*01:02:27*
Ha ha, wow, what a not a great idea for God of War.
*01:02:30*
Um
*01:02:34*
This game, I think, really, really, really put the pressure on them to reboot what would become God of War 28.
*01:02:35*
Like this really prompted us to be like, okay, stop
*01:02:46*
You need to do something else.
*01:02:49*
Yeah, it really and that pressure ultimately paid off, you know, and
*01:02:51*
We'll talk about it when we get to 2018, but the fact that it is all canonical is all tied together.
*01:02:58*
Like they didn't they didn't restart, they didn't scratch everything and just say new Kratos, new world, like everything connects.
*01:03:04*
Even this.
*01:03:12*
Even God of War Betrayal, the mobile game, which I want to play, but you don't want to.
*01:03:12*
Nothing.
*01:03:17*
And I respect that.
*01:03:17*
But and this game almost again, uh hindsight's 2020, but without this game
*01:03:20*
I don't uh God of War 2018 still would have been an achievement, but I feel like it is more so because this is what
*01:03:28*
um preceded it.
*01:03:36*
And I I I r I kinda like that, you know?
*01:03:37*
Yeah.
*01:03:42*
Yeah.
*01:03:43*
It's uh
*01:03:44*
I don't know.
*01:03:46*
As a whole, this is an it's an interesting entry in the larger series.
*01:03:47*
It's one that was not the best by any means, but I think it also allowed them to kind of go back to the drawing board.
*01:03:52*
So I think in some senses it's um I don't think they would have done another Greek game after this regardless as if of it.
*01:04:00*
I think it could have been more successful than even like three or better well received, and I still don't think they would have done another Greek game after this.
*01:04:07*
Um but this game being pretty bland and uh dismal, I think really
*01:04:15*
did push them in the right direction for the reboot.
*01:04:23*
Um so by that account it's probably important, but not important in the way that you would think.
*01:04:26*
Um yes.
*01:04:33*
So yeah.
*01:04:34*
Did you have anything else you wanted to say about Ascension here?
*01:04:36*
It's a fascinating game.
*01:04:39*
Um
*01:04:41*
It's one of the three prequels.
*01:04:42*
So two more left.
*01:04:44*
Yeah, and it's just it's a game stuck in time, uh especially when the servers get shut off.
*01:04:45*
Like it it it'll always be a part of God of War, but it it
*01:04:51*
And won't necessarily be the most fondest one.
*01:04:55*
It's very much the one that I think is the least favorite in the series, to be honest.
*01:04:58*
Even more so than the handheld games.
*01:05:02*
Because I don't I mean, I don't think people dislike those necessarily.
*01:05:04*
They're
*01:05:08*
Uh a little smaller in scale because they had to be on the PlayStation Portable PSP baby.
*01:05:09*
But uh I think people like those games more and those were more well received.
*01:05:15*
This is the one that people look back on, they're like, eh
*01:05:19*
No, don't really like this one.
*01:05:22*
And so uh seems like our consensus is pretty similar now, nearly, like you said, eight, nine years later.
*01:05:24*
Um but yeah, cool.
*01:05:33*
Uh that does it for episode two of chapter select here.
*01:05:35*
So we will be back uh next time around with uh obviously episode three, which is going to be on God of War II.
*01:05:38*
So we are doing
*01:05:45*
Uh the second entry in the series, which is widely considered one of the best.
*01:05:47*
Uh we'll see if that still holds up
*01:05:51*
Fifteen years later?
*01:05:54*
When did that come out?
*01:05:55*
Two thousand five or six?
*01:05:56*
I think six, honestly.
*01:05:58*
No, two thousand five was the first game.
*01:05:59*
Okay.
*01:06:00*
So I think six then.
*01:06:01*
I think four was the first game, if I'm correct.
*01:06:02*
We just did an episode on it, buddy.
*01:06:07*
Two thousand five.
*01:06:09*
It was two thousand five.
*01:06:10*
Was God of War One, yeah.
*01:06:12*
So wait when God of War II came out in two thousand seven.
*01:06:13*
That was wow.
*01:06:16*
Um
*01:06:17*
March thirteenth, which is the same thing.
*01:06:18*
Surprising for some reason.
*01:06:21*
A lot of these games came out in March.
*01:06:23*
That's very surprising for some reason.
*01:06:24*
I don't know why.
*01:06:26*
Um I knew that game came out after the PlayStation 3, but I thought it ca I thought it came out uh
*01:06:27*
I thought it came out before and then the PS3 launch.
*01:06:32*
I I forgot that it straight up launched after the PS2.
*01:06:35*
Yes.
*01:06:38*
Um
*01:06:39*
Shuhei Yushida.
*01:06:40*
Anywho, uh the Cory the first Cory Barlog game.
*01:06:41*
Uh that'll be the so that'll be what we do next time, and we will have a guest on that episode as well.
*01:06:46*
uh if you would like a tease in that regard.
*01:06:50*
So we'll have a third person join us to talk through God of War II and see how we feel about it all these
*01:06:53*
All these years later.
*01:07:00*
Until that time, though, thank you for listening to this episode.
*01:07:01*
If you want to keep following along with us, you can follow Max and myself on Twitter.
*01:07:05*
I am at more man12
*01:07:10*
Max is at uh Max Roberts143.
*01:07:12*
You can also follow the show now on Twitter at chapter select, right?
*01:07:15*
We did get that?
*01:07:19*
Yep, we got it.
*01:07:20*
Okay, cool.
*01:07:21*
We did.
*01:07:22*
Thank you.
*01:07:22*
for the man who gave us that at.
*01:07:24*
Uh because I I know we had to ask for that.
*01:07:26*
So at chapter select, uh you can also follow the podcast now and we'll be tweeting out
*01:07:29*
uh when things go live and future updates and things like that.
*01:07:34*
But yeah, that should be everything for this episode.
*01:07:39*
And we'll see you back here next time with episode three.
*01:07:43*
Until then, have a good
*01:07:46*
evening, week, whatever it might be, and we'll see you soon.
*01:07:49*
Bye.
*01:07:52*
Adios.
*01:07:53*
Chapter Select is a max frequency production
*01:07:55*
This episode was researched, produced, and edited by me, Max Roberts.
*01:07:58*
Season two is hosted by Logan Moore and myself.
*01:08:03*
And it's all about God of War.
*01:08:06*
For more on this season, go to chapterselect.
*01:08:09*
com forward slash season two.
*01:08:11*
To check out previous seasons, go to chapterselect.
*01:08:14*
com.
*01:08:17*