Down to the wire, the 11th hour and 2025 is drawing to a close and I have time for the last in this wrap up trio before I get to things I was aware of this year but didn’t or couldn’t cover. Some of these will be games that released this year, others will be old enough to legally drink in the U.S. Looking back on it, I played more games than I watched anime and the problem with anime I’ve had is one of the same ones I’ve had with television, standard or otherwise. The commitment to a series is more than a game that can last between 4 and 400 hours, not to mention as much as I loathe the binge watching method, one benefit it has is that I can clear out my watchlist sooner, but the drawback I see is not being able to fully absorb a show, nuances and all.
For the games I’ve played this year:
Grand Theft Auto III (2001)
God of War (2005)
Silent Hill f (2025)
Mafia: The Old Country (2025)
Call of Duty: World at War (2008), Black Ops (2010), Black Ops II (2012)
Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Max Payne (2001), Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003), Max Payne 3 (2012)
Spec Ops: The Line (2012)
This is neither an exhaustive nor ranked in order list. Just ones that I spent a lot of time on this year and yes, for those who know, Max Payne is up there again. It’s my favorite series after all. Actually, looking at this list, I have reverence for games as old as myself, beginning with:
One of the few Rockstar products nearly banned in the U.S.
Banning and heavily scrutinizing entertainment products has been a time-honored tradition ever since Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and Doom were released in the early 1990s. Violence, gore, and in Night Trap’s case, violence against women. All of these follow on a legacy of learning too late that being devil may care about the contents of an entertainment product can lead to controversy and public outcry. Not all of these can be accurately predicted, but if I didn’t do my research on Jaws or Gremlins before taking my kids there, I’d really have only myself to blame if the kids have nightmares.
Never mind the boat, you’re gonna need to explain to the misses why Timmy doesn’t like sharks all of a sudden before sleeping on the couch tonight.
I call this one a humble brag of sorts as I look back to the games I had available on my old PS2. From the day I got it (c. 2003) to the day I canned it (March 2013), I had a large library of games. Not exactly enough to fill a whole bookcase, but large enough to dedicate one of the shelves of the bookcase to them for storage. My ever reliable memory may fail me here, but I’ll go ahead with the ones that I remember dedicating the most time to, starting with this.
3D Mortal Kombat Games (2002-06): Starting with a classic series, you might be surprised to learn how I got into Mortal Kombat. My mother actually was a fan during the 90s’ 2D era Mortal Kombat games.
Considering the steps the franchise has taken since and now with a new game debuting in the middle of September, it’s nostalgic to look back at these 2D sprites of digitized martial artist-actors and think that this was the first of a phenomenal and influential video game series. The blood, the characters, the story, the moves, and best of all the fatalities; something this popular and this controversial — so much so that it helped birth the ESRB — was not lacking in graphic content, nor even imitators for that matter.
There were always fighting games before, during, and after MK’s big debut, but I’m not sure if any other fighting franchise can boast about having as many imitators as MK did at the time, and probably still does. Then again, a few come to mind…
MK’s transition to 3D in 1997 wasn’t without its missteps however. It tried its best, but Ed Boon even admitted that Mortal Kombat 4’s quality wasn’t up to snuff, and this isn’t even mentioning the media getting in on the then-hyper realistic graphics and their supposed influence on the impressionable and possible contribution to real-world violence–an accusation that video games couldn’t seem to shake off for years. But nevertheless, Midway trudged on and met the 2000s swinging at the fences.
Although Deadly Alliance came first in 2002, the first MK game I had was 2004’s Deception. The simple numbering system for sequels isn’t concrete giving way to creativity most of the time, but an average consumer without even a bit of knowledge in what they’re buying may not notice until after they buy the game. Fortunately for us, Blockbuster Video was a popular rental store for those who wanted to test an entertainment medium before committing or just didn’t see themselves owning it for good.
This was how I found out about Deadly Alliance. Being a bit older than Deception, most of the features in Deception aren’t in Deadly Alliance. It did have the 3D animations, fighting styles, and arenas that followed it into Armageddon and MK vs DC Universe (I personally don’t count this as an MK game), but what it was lacking in is what makes Deception look like an upgrade by comparison. This doesn’t mean Deadly Alliance was barebones, far from it. It’s Konquest mode was a great big tutorial for how to move and maneuver the characters and their combos, the endings were all unique with some connecting to others, the krypt had loads of secrets and collectibles to find, and the soundtrack stands as one of my favorites in video gaming.
On the later end of the 3D era, Armageddon had the same fighting mechanics of the last two games with several more added features, several mini-games and an in-depth plot about the fate of existence like that of Deception, and has possibly featured nearly every character ever introduced in Mortal Kombat since its inception 14 years earlier, but seems more than a little bit barebones compared to its predecessors. The previous two games gave the characters two fighting styles and a weapon, an arsenal of special moves, one fatality in Deadly Alliance and two in Deception including a Hara-Kiri/suicide move. Deception and Armageddon fixed the error that Deadly Alliance committed by omitting the stage fatalities, but committed some of its own cardinal sins.
Technically, it’s possible to have mastery over two or more martial arts styles. I was never the biggest fan of the old style-branching combos with so many of them being so difficult to pull off in rapid succession, but for the most part, the variety they added to a fight by chaining multiple combos between styles and sometimes ending with a strong weapon attack was the definition of a power move, or dare I say, a pro gamer move.
So while they might be gone from Armageddon, at least the characters feel and play differently: males apart from females apart from creature-types like Motaro or Baraka apart from the literal beasts like Goro, Onaga or even Blaze himself after the glow up from his addition as a secret character from MK Deadly Alliance.
The other cardinal sin committed, one that’s less forgivable or defendable is that of the fatalities. If you’ve played these older games, you’ll know that the window of opportunity was notoriously unforgiving and the combos so precise that one slip-up could turn a head ripper into a slap in the face which some would say added to the reward. I actually discovered Armageddon’s fatality system by accident after trying to finish a character off by way of special move only to unintentionally dismember them and squeeze his head. Yeah, Armageddon got lazy with the fatalities.
No room for practicing something difficult anymore, everyone regardless of physicality is capable of committing many of the same fatalities and input combos, with different tiers depending on what’s done to the victim. Single moves aren’t anything special where as a full-on prolonged dismemberment and maiming before the big finish creates what the game calls an “Ultimate Fatality.”
I can call this a lot of things, but part of me used to believe the titling of Armageddon was a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes. Just now, a Google search revealed that there was more going on under the hood that resulted in Midway shutting down in 2009, not the least of which was an overdependence on Mortal Kombat along with financial mishandling, so while I wasn’t off the mark, I wasn’t entirely accurate either.
3D Grand Theft Auto Games (2001-2006): This brings me back to an arguable bygone era of RockStar Games, a time when the next game was literally a few years or even months away than a full-on decade and change. Think about it: the last GTA game will turn ten years old in less than a month as of writing this. Also, the most recent release was an ambitious project that lived up to its purported hype if not beyond and RockStar is seeking to abandon it.
But we’re getting off track. The most iconic games of the GTA era were released seemingly back to back between October 2001 and October 2004 and have set the precedent for 3D gaming ever since, finding the solution to a complex problem. For GTA III, full 3D graphics have been realized and helped struggling developers hit the ground running when they eventually tried it in their own IPs (though I argue this was also perfected in another game published that year, Max Payne). For 2002’s Vice City, while admittedly an asset flip that has helped with the influence of future methods of lazy rip-offs and asset flips (arguable again, I can’t put fault for all of that on one game), it added more to the GTA franchise and gaming in general with the setting, plot, characters, star studded voice actors and features. Finally, for 2004’s San Andreas, the features present in that game got an even bigger boost across a much larger open-world game. It incorporated several RPG-like elements regarding character customization, had expanded on bonuses featured in prior entries, expanded on the ownership of assets from Vice City and many more features that are too numerous to name.
Additionally, there were spin-offs set in between these games like Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories, both of which I’ve covered on this blog earlier this year. From GTA III to 2006’s VCS, the 3D era games show the most innovation and imagination to me. GTA III walked so the succeeding games could sprint, to the point that in lists describing games that have aged poorly, GTA III consistently places in the middle for what the succeeding games have that it didn’t.
It’s hard to say when silent protagonists lost their favor with developers with them becoming more rare as personable protagonists became more commonplace, but Claude having no voiced lines would make him forgettable if it wasn’t for his attire. Green cargos, a leather jacket, and what looks like navy blue Nikes or Vans; at least he’s recognizable. But without a voice, players are left with his actions to characterize him. The Professional makes a case for him being a textbook psychopath. Although the game is majority player-driven, Claude not even second guessing his own actions before nodding and blasting sounds like a worry spot for criminal profilers to watch out for.
His successor, Tommy Vercetti, was much more animated and well-acted, which may have something to do with his voice actor.
An ambitious move on RockStar’s part, hiring A-list actors for main roles was an ingenious move that continued well into the 2010s to help shape the numerous protagonists going forward. Tommy Vercetti is an embittered ex-mobster who was given all the freedom to screw over a boss who wronged him ages ago. To this end, he’s mostly stuck working with a hapless, cocaine-addled lawyer whose voice lines whenever you get busted by the cops are some of the most humorous in the game.
He was initially supposed to go down to Vice City, Florida to make money for the mob and send the earnings back to the Forelli family, but with all that’s happening in VC thus far, coupled with a complicated past of betrayal, Tommy’s choices are clearer than they were. Forget the mob, Vercetti’s the big boss of this neon-lit city, and the ownership of assets from a cab company to a print shop to a cocaine distributor masquerading as an ice cream factory reflects this. It all comes to a head when the news and not the money reaches the mob’s ears and thus comes the final mission paying homage to the 1983 remake of Scarface.
I’m not kidding, this is a remake of a 1930s movie.
Anyway, GTA: San Andreas’s use of RPG elements was peak customization. VC allowed you to change your clothing, but SA gives you way more freedom. Whole outfits can be created by changing a simple article of clothing, the player can ink themselves up, and get any haircut they desire. There’s also a sort of leveling system based on how often you perform such an action. From my own experience, I’ve employed what some could consider a Call of Duty method to shooting. What I mean is, most of the time, my accuracy in shooting got a boost each time I crouched down and took aim. So I started on the AK firing at the hip and ended the game firing it from the shoulder as God intended.
Relationships also got an upgrade. The protagonists of the last games had more business partners than personal friendships, but CJ sets this apart since he’s a native San Andrean coming back to settle debts with friends and old gang members, especially when corrupt LSPD officers Frank Tenpenny and Eddie Pulaski (voiced by legends Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn respectively) instruct (read: coerce) them to do their dirty work. Interestingly, the inspiration for much of SA’s plot comes from the 1992 L.A. Rodney King riots and the Rampart scandal in the LAPD. There’s a chance an Angeleno who witnessed either or even both of these personally got an ugly reminder of these events while playing the game.
Of all the games from the 3D era, due to them being released before the internet and multiplayer games caught up with each other, these were the ones that got remastered more than the other games between their respective ten-year anniversaries and GTA III’s 20th anniversary culminating in the largely reviled Grove Street Games definitive edition.
Take my opinion for what it’s worth as this section of this week’s entry as well as opinions made earlier this year have made it quite clear where I stand on games this old, but not only was this a black eye to the image of a company that might be doing too much with one franchise while neglecting another and moving too slowly to get a long-awaited sequel out, it was also somewhat unnecessary. In the lead up to the Definitive Edition’s release, the originals were all delisted on Steam. Fortunately for me, I managed to blaze through the originals on PC. I bought and beat VC on Steam before that happened, I pirated and beat GTA III and I managed to snag San Andreas for free from the RockStar Games Launcher. So, have at it RockStar.
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja and Uzumaki Chronicles Games (2002-07): The influence and spread of the Naruto franchise at the outset is not to be understated. It did not take long for cartoon distributors to air it soon after getting the green light. Naturally, this lead to widespread marketing across the western world, even with western toymakers like Mattel, some of which I owned myself. The video games themselves each centered around different arcs from the series. 1-3 covered the whole of Part 1, 4 and 5 covered about a fifth or so of Shippuden, though only Japan and Europe got a hold of the fifth installment of the Ultimate Ninja series before it got another chance as the Storm series, finishing all of Naruto and adapting the Boruto movie in the game.
As for the rest of the game, with the entirety of the main arc being relatively easy to clear, there were game exclusive arcs that could be boiled down to an OVA. In UN2, after Tsunade returns to the village to become the Fifth Hokage, Orochimaru returns to again coerce her into healing his arms after getting his sealed during his fight with the Third, even going as far as using forbidden jutsu like the the Gedo Mark and Reanimation to destroy the Leaf Village until she capitulates. Interesting from a plot perspective but ignorant of established lore with its own set of plot holes.
Ultimate Ninja 3 had its exclusive arc adapted into an OVA to promote the game. In it, Tsunade hosts a battle royale featuring Leaf and Sand shinobi with the promise that the winner can put up a regulation of their own choosing for a week. You don’t know what everyone’s is, but the biggest one is the one that eventually becomes canon and sits in the background while Naruto’s son does the plot things. Rather than precede or even succeed any of the adapted arcs, it’s its own separate thing altogether.
Ultimate Ninja 4, has its OVA-like arc before Naruto and Jiraiya returns to the village. Arguably, one of my favorites, Naruto and Jiraiya are wrapping up their training with a final lesson. Naruto wears weighted beads on his wrists and ankles for an extended period of time. They change color as he goes on. Meanwhile, he and Jiraiya stumble on a village that made use of its mining industry at the expense of safety. An ancient spirit from within dwells within and takes regular sacrifices, one of them being a little girl that Naruto tries to Talk no Jutsu into coming back to her village. As he learns more about her and her motives, he eventually comes through to her, aids in her predicament and makes a new friend. However, due to her being non-canon and this being Naruto, he got used to not being able to keep her as a friend. Then the rest of Shippuden happens all the way up until Gaara is taken back to the Akatsuki hideout.
The fifth game includes that and the Tenchi Bridge arc but North America wouldn’t be able to witness that through conventional means, culminating in this:
For the gameplay, it was on a pair of 2D planes with one acting as the background and the other the fore ground allowing players to transition between them whenever they desired. As for move sets, unlike Mortal Kombat, the same buttons do the same things across the games: there’s one attack, one charge, one ultimate move button, a jump, and a throwables button. This sounds like the games are one note, but most of the move sets are unique to the characters and true to their depictions in the series.
It was a working formula for the games, but according to the Naruto Wiki they were pumped out at a breakneck pace which may explain the issues with continuing it past Number 5 and getting it to the rest of the world. Fortunately, Ultimate Ninja Storm fixed what was broken and gets to a proper, more complete adaptation instead of simply cutting corners.
I think it was for the best that Ultimate Ninja got the boot. Rapid adaptations before the series is even finished is good for marketing, but if the game catches up to the series, it tends to force the devs to get creative. Unlike original IPs like GTA or MK or even Mario for that matter, adapting something that exists isn’t always easy. In the case of Naruto, it allegedly made things easy by way of all the fillers it has separating the canon from the actual plot, but for something that was still in serialization, Bandai Namco seemed to have struggled in some areas.
Earlier when I mentioned the UN2 exclusive arc about reanimation and forbidden jutsu, if you don’t know, powerful jutsu often demand large chakra reserves and a critically crippled Orochimaru trying this even through Kabuto shows his desperation but there’s a fine line between desperation and suicide. According to the lore, it should’ve killed him. Then again, Kishimoto’s method of storytelling was by way of drip feed then downpour, so are the devs still at fault for that arc? Well, I don’t think so. It’s all fiction anyway.
Racing Games (2000-07): I’ll close off with the racing games I played with. Back in April (time surely flies), I made a post about my top 3 racing games from best to worst and in that order mine were Midnight Club 3, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 and L.A. Rush. Thanks to a video by the YouTuber BlueTag, I was reminded of how much I hated the last of those three. But just because those three were the most memorable doesn’t mean those were the only games I engaged in regarding racing. I vaguely remember the Gran Turismo series though I don’t remember engaging that much with it. L.A. Rush definitely turned me off of that game for reasons expressed many moons before.
Midnight Club however motivated me to check out the earlier entries and while they weren’t bad, they reminded me of what I wrote about GTA in this post. The succeeding games got better and better and better and as a result the older games aged so badly that you have to get used to a whole new set of rules, like transitioning from horses to cars but backwards in this case. Also, a feature that is underappreciated is the freedom to cruise around a given city. I remember Midnight Club 2 incessantly reminding you to race other racers, whereas in MC3, you could do what you want in the world. The racers and races and tournaments were there, but there was almost no pressure to knock them all off the streets as fast as possible. Above all, the series always harped praise and reward on you the player to be the best racer ever and get 1st place all the time. MC3 to me was the easiest game to 100% complete.
On the other end of the spectrum, skill and learning have almost always been a cornerstone of EA games as I found out playing Battlefield 1. It takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of an EA game, you’ll feel like a master in no time. NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 had a noticeable difficulty curve and didn’t always drive you (get it?) to be number 1 all the time. By working on a points system, it carries over from race to race, so there’s no pressure to be 1st all the time, but it does help. Tournaments and knockouts also make a difference regarding the rules of the race, so few races played the same.
The downside though was that the customization wasn’t as extensive as MC3. If you’re a creative or artsy type of person, the cosmetics in Midnight Club make it feel as though you’ve walked into God’s personal workshop ready to design your greatest fleet of dream cars. As part of an experiment, I played MC3 last winter on PCSX2 without a controller. Thanks to my abnormally long fingers I was able to 100% the game and unlock all the collectibles on the keyboard. But it was so tedious that I resorted to using a program that tricks Windows into thinking my PS3 controller was an Xbox controller and haven’t really looked back since. Even now that I got Flight Simulator working I used the controller for that among others. So the game and whichever program I’m running will depend on what control scheme I need.
As far as my library goes, I mentioned all these games on this nostalgia trip but it’s not an exhaustive list. I didn’t even mention the Dragon Ball Z games, Ribbit King, Max Payne, other anime-esque games and puzzle games that my mom really liked, some of the arcade collections; as I said, my memory is unreliable and bound to fail me once again. I might do this for other game systems I had, though I’ve gotta reach deep. Some are iconic, others are weird and obscure.
Looking at this now reminds me of most of the anime from the early 2000s just by the art style. Oh, how the times change before our giant anime eyes.
The last recommendation for the month of August is DashieGames a.k.a. DashieXP.
This is a throwback for me. I was introduced to DashieXP through a friend while we were looking for gameplay of the new Tomb Raider reboot and after pushing me to check out the rest of his content, I was momentarily obsessed with catching everything he put out, truth be told. I don’t watch everything he puts out and occasionally go back to select videos and gameplays for old time’s sake. DashieXP actually has his start as a rapper and skit actor of sorts online. His skit channel DashieXP was where he started with a bunch of different parodies and whatnot. After a year on that channel, he started DashieGames in 2011 and gradually turned that channel into his main one with all the time it steals from him.
The comedy style is a bit of an acquired taste. When I was in high school, his schtick would glue me to the computer but as I got older, I found other channels and my tastes have matured a bit. I do still have a soft spot for the guy, but thankfully he’s not the only YouTuber I watch anymore. If you’re interested, give him a watch.
A week-long journey in rewriting a fictional storyline
Two weeks ago, I made a post in the midst of a memory lapse concerning the God of War timeline. My vague notes were misinterpreted as a detailed look at the timeline, but on reflection, I realized that it may have been more in line with making the timeline make better sense due to the plot holes as well as mythical inaccuracies. In a rough draft, I attempted to do this for the entire chronology of Greek era God of War and unweaving one thread meant unweaving another and, fittingly, this would mean further opening Pandora’s box.
Some of the points I brought up were based on The Mythology Guy’s videos on listing all the mythical inaccuracies in the series, and there are a lot. But then again, Mythology Guy did it all for fun. That’s kind of how it started for me until the script sprouted wings and flew south for the winter.
I still think it’s fun to look at all the inaccuracies in the games and at the end of the day, that’s what they are. It’s generally not that deep despite the lore built up, but I didn’t want to let it all go just like that. I do still think there are things to address in accordance with the series plot. Some of these changes might be radical enough to essentially rewrite one or more of the games, but even if we acknowledge more than a few inaccuracies (like nonexistent weapons and relics for example), there’s still a few things that need some TLC.
The length of my draft opened my eyes to how untenable rewriting six games to be more mythically accurate could get. I’ve always given the games leeway since myths tend to be based on a version of reality while also having multiple tellings and retellings over time, such is the case with Egyptian mythology, but one of the examples I think should be changed regards Kratos’ ability to kill gods. One of the most famous victims of his goals being Hades’ wife, Persephone.
As we can see from this picture above, in-game Persephone has a dark aroma about her. Wearing a dark dress, gloomy demeanor, and spoiler for God of War: Chains of Olympus, plans to use a titan to destroy Olympus in revenge for her kidnapping. Mythical Persephone was the goddess of springtime and her presence on the surface signifies the changing seasons while her absence signifies a coming winter. Changing this aspect of her isn’t a new thing for Santa Monica and it followed them well into the development of the Norse saga.
Just to clarify, I’m not trying to say fat Thor is inaccurate. His personality as a villainous god undyingly loyal to Odin is the inaccuracy. Still makes for an exciting game though.
The portrayal of Persephone as seeking vengeance against Olympus for abandoning her can be chalked up to different versions of the myths. Don’t quote me on this, but I think the version where she willingly wandered into the realm of Hades and grew an affection for the god of the underworld is a relatively recent retelling differing from the myths where she’s a kidnap victim. The kidnap victim angle works hand-in-hand with the double-cross from Olympus and makes for good villain. The point of change that I would say needed a change would be her death. For a while, I ran with the theory that she was a goddess of lesser importance, but commenters in The Mythology Guy’s video on Chains of Olympus stated that the Gauntlet of Zeus was the god-killing weapon specifically.
By this logic, Pandora’s box can grant a mortal the ability to kill god with any weapon since the sword Kratos used on Ares wasn’t all that special, merely acting as a bridge on the outskirts of Athens while the Gauntlet of Zeus bears the name and is the sole property of the king of Olympus, which would apply like the diamond rule where only a diamond can cut another diamond. In this instance, only a tool blessed by an Olympian can kill an Olympian, which also seems to be in line with the Blade of Olympus, from the Titanomachy in the games. So I’ll give the commenters in that video the W for explaining and confirming it, since this is before Kratos gets the powers to kill a god by any other means from the box of Pandora, but another point where Kratos kills a god without gaining the ability from the box or is in possession of a godly weapon comes from God of War: Ascension and the main baddies there: the Furies.
This picture also works to show that despite being a demigod, Kratos was also capable of mutilating a deity with just the blades of Chaos. And you can argue that the blades of Chaos, later Athena, later Exile are all godly weapons capable of killing gods, then Pandora’s Box would be unnecessary later unless the box is capable of making sure the gods, primordials and Olympians alike, but some of this hasn’t been confirmed, so it exists as a retcon.
There’s other stuff that, if changed, or addressed would essentially rewrite the narrative of the games. Personally, I’ve found a newfound appreciation for God of War II for the references and other heroes and characters who appear in the game like Theseus and Perseus, who have an indirect connection through Perseus’ descendant Hercules/Heracles. What I like about Perseus in this game come to the weapons on his person: the reflective shield, the helm of invisibility, the voice acting talents of Harry Hamlin who played the character in 1981’s Clash of the Titans. It’s all so good. To add to this, the point of divergence in his life comes from Kratos taking the head of Medusa instead of him which, in the myths, he was supposed to use on Cetus to save Andromeda from peril, and his quest to see the Sisters of Fate reflects the negative consequences of that in a “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” aspect.
But there’s different things about Perseus to nitpick. Highlighted once again by the Mythology Guy, the sword is the wrong shape and his boots don’t have wings as described in the myths. As for the part of him where he never sought the sisters or died in battle, I’ll leave that part alone. Additionally, before this point, Kratos encounters an elderly Theseus who works as the gatekeeper of the steeds of time, which Kratos himself pointed out was the last thing he expected out of him since Theseus was so famously arrogant and cocky. Something students of Greek mythology are also likely to point out just before the fight on one of the horses.
He’s still quite arrogant in the game, but him having decades on Perseus or even Heracles in God of War III is a strange direction for the developers to take since Perseus is the one who should be an old man instead. In the myths, their indirect connection comes from Perseus being Heracles’ direct ancestor and Heracles encountered Theseus during one of his labors. If we want to alter this slightly, perhaps have a disgruntled and elderly Perseus trade spots with Theseus who’d be obsessed with attempting to regain his fame as the founder-king of Athens.
On the subject of weird directions to take, Hobo Icarus doesn’t make much sense. In the myths, Icarus was warned by his father Daedalus to neither fly too close to the sun or the heat would melt the binding wax that holds the feathers, not too close to the sea or the water would wash away the adhesive. Failing to adhere, the sun melts the wax and sends the boy into the sea to drown and Daedalus buries him on an island.
This would make more sense if it was Daedalus seeking the sisters to see if they could do something about his son as opposed to him becoming a victim of the gods’ cruelty and being forced to work on that labyrinthine Rubik’s cube in God of War III.
In the same game, there’s the issue of the Fates. In Ghost of Sparta, Thanatos tells Kratos and Deimos before fighting them that the Fates determine the paths of everyone in the Greek world, but normally at the behest of the gods, which is also confirmed by Theseus before his own fight in God of War II as well as Lahkesis herself at her own temple before the sisters face their own ultimate fate. A major plot hole here is that the Fates meant for Kratos to beat the odds and get to the temple, but strictly state that there is no changing one’s fate. Whatever happens happens. By this point, Kratos is hellbent on angering his way to Zeus and burying him under the soil of Olympus (or what’s left of it) by the end.
But I have to ask why the Fates would bring him this far if he wasn’t supposed to win. Probably to live up to the prophecy revealed in Ascension and follow the trend of failing to avoid fate by eventually being the cause of it, coupled with Kratos never really losing those god-killing powers from the first game since the Sisters fall to him with more Olympians to follow suit in God of War III. That’s my explanation, but admittedly I’m only working with the powers of extrapolation so I know damn well I’m wrong somewhere.
Not as wrong as Heracles is with his own labors though. He claims in God of War III that he performed all twelve of them, but by my count three of them were taken by Kratos, namely the hydra, the Cerberus, and the Geryon. The first two appeared in GoW 1 as the first battle and the Challenge of Poseidon respectively. The Geryon was the teleporting monster on the island of Crete from Ghost of Sparta, which is fitting since the enemy appears in Heracles’ namesake city in the game. For reference:
Granted in the myth, it didn’t teleport and was described as a three-headed giant or a three-torsoed giant that got bodied by Heracles. I’d still keep the Heracles fight, but maybe change the lines to make the timeline a little bit more consistent than what we got. Going back to Chains of Olympus briefly, Morpheus was pretty much teased as a major figure and him being the god of dreams should have been a golden opportunity for Kratos to combat him in the hopes of getting some kind of relief from his nightmares. Just saying, the series uses the Rule of Three cliché quite a bit so why not give him a third deity to fight unless there were plans that were scrapped? Such a shame we didn’t get to see this.
Speaking of missed opportunities, God of War III has Kratos toppling Olympus in an attempt to reach Zeus. An awesome concept that honestly should have included more deities in the pantheon. We already know about the vacancies left by Ares, Athena, and Persephone, but others either made only one appearance or none at all. Why reference Apollo’s bow but omit the god himself? Or leave Artemis out of the last of the games? Would she have been too OP even for Kratos since she’s a goddess of the hunt? Well, that giant sword she gives him in the first game would suggest that she’s one of the gods you wouldn’t want to trifle with, especially since she turned one of her followers into a bear after an affair with Zeus.
Hades losing his wife to Kratos along with his brother and niece would be a sore spot of reference, and I imagine Zeus would force him to put up with it so he can lend him control of the dead in his fight with Ares, but Hades wouldn’t be the only one pissed off about that. Persephone’s mother should’ve also been there to stop Kratos. Lastly, there are Dionysus and Hestia. Admittedly, some of these omitted gods wouldn’t have any battle prowess, but with the chaos unleashed from the box of Pandora, I’d still think they’d put up a fight of some kind. Dionysus could’ve afflicted Kratos with drunkenness, Hestia and Demeter are both said to wield scepters, and Artemis and Apollo both have bows. Or if this would extend an already pretty long game, how about challenges bearing their names like the first game? Just a thought.
This is just what I think could be used to fix some of God of War’s plot holes, I don’t think they’re egregious and make the games unplayable or unenjoyable, and I understand that some concepts don’t always make it to the final product, like Atlantis getting scrapped and becoming a major plot point for Ghost of Sparta, but some of these points, when examined, don’t often make a lot of sense.
Before I move onto the YouTube channel recommendations, I want to briefly address one recommendation I made in the past. Two weeks ago, I recommended the YouTube channel iilluminaughtii because of her in-depth anticorporatist, anti-MLM documentaries, but earlier this week, it was revealed that former editors and collaborators on her channel and associated channels have dug out some skeletons from her closet.
She attempted to defame another YouTuber when one of his editors questioned the techniques of her editing team on Discord. This specific editor is a YouTuber himself and had simply asked for tips and tricks, which comes with the territory on YouTube, but when the same editing tricks made their way into a video, iilluminaughtii, or in this case Blair herself, got mad and falsely claimed plagiarism on Twitter, which others were quick to point out the hypocrisy as her channel has plagiarized other documentaries in the past.
Now there’s nothing wrong with calling someone out if you believe they stole material or even with referencing a documentary for use in a video or article you yourself are making. The points of divergence come with what Blair claimed and the YouTuber she attempted to accuse of theft. What she claimed was a practice that is common all over the site and the YouTuber she attempted to defame was Devin Stone, a real-life attorney operating in the Washington, DC area whose content focuses on real-life and fictional law cases from the trial in SpongeBob SquarePants to Better Call Saul.
Furthermore, ex-editors and such have come out on Twitter to describe Blair as a person and as a YouTuber personally and none of them have nice things to say about her. For a start, she doesn’t seem to keep a tidy dwelling and is quite accusatory as seen with the nontroversy she tried to start with an actual attorney. She’s also not a good neighbor and doesn’t always practice what she preaches, shaming and lambasting the uber-wealthy, but now that she’d found success from her own channel, she allegedly shopped for luxurious items like expensive clothing brands and cars, sometimes after publishing a video on why X brand doesn’t live up to its purported reputation.
Looking back, it was quite alarming that she could pump out so many documentaries in such a short amount of time considering documentaries take far longer to make than any given movie thanks to the research that goes into them. After what I’d heard about another documentary YouTuber, Jake Tran, I thought I’d be over hypocritical content creators becoming the monsters they sought to destroy, and I make this comparison because this was what I’d thought of with the Twitter threads and YouTube videos released this week that talk about this sort of thing amongst other YouTuber controversies as of late. But whereas Jake Tran took histories lessons as a handbook instead of a warning, Blair is doing the exact thing she often accuses real-life public figures of doing, so what gives?
I’ll still make recommendations for YouTube channels I like and I might cover the topic more in-depth in the future but I can’t make promises to the latter. I don’t really like delving into content creator drama. Personally, I stick around for the content. Online and in Hollywood there are too many examples of celebrities falling victim of their own hubris and I’ll always praise those who try their best to remain controversy-free and point people in their direction since they tend to have evidence of their services to the unfortunate, either through donations or fundraisers, but I can’t say everyone I recommend will be or remain a good person five, ten, twenty years for now. I only promise to try.
As for channels I recommend, to make up for the shortfall that came with Blair “iilluminaughtii,” I have two recommendations this time around. Yes, a two-fer! The first one is Monsieur Z.
Monsieur Z, also known as Mr. Z, real name Dean, is also a history YouTuber who delves into alternate history most of the time. His channel is a bit more frequent than that of Cody Franklin’s Alternate History Hub et al and incidentally, both have been confused with each other because of their deep voices. Politically, Mr. Z leans conservative and has some videos that tacitly or overtly criticize left-leaning and liberal viewpoints, but he’s not a primary current events channel. Most of the time, it’s looking at different points in history that could’ve gone differently like the aforementioned Alternate History Hub.
To throw a bone to Devin Stone, I’m also recommending his channel: LegalEagle.
Devin Stone of LegalEagle fame is, as I stated above a real-life attorney who often examines real ongoing law cases as well as fictionalized lawsuits in media. He’s also active on the website Nebula with other similar YouTubers, and even has courses and guides for aspiring lawyers in the US. Whether you hope to become an attorney in the US, you want to know more about the legalese we laymen aren’t always privy to, or if you just want to see how fictionalized court cases compare to real-world practices common in a court room, check out the channel. For both Mr. Z and LegalEagle, they have dedicated Patreon pages and other such outlets for which to support the work that they do, found in their respective about pages.
Also, Devin was a good sport in spite of the dubious claims made against him by Blair. If you’d like, you can look around on YouTube to hear what others have been saying. To summarize, it’s not a very good look for Blair.
Going back to notes on future topics, I hadn’t really planned all that well for future topics. This week just says God of War original, but I didn’t really elaborate any further on what I meant by that; I was just listing things off for what I’d like to cover well into September of this year, though for reasons to be revealed much later as more details come to me, I doubt I’ll be anywhere near a device long enough to make regular weekly Friday blog posts.
For this week, I don’t remember whether I wanted to talk about what makes even Greek Kratos a good character along with Norse Kratos or if I wanted to cover a timeline of the Greek era games. I’ve seen more videos contextualizing and/or defending Greek Kratos to rebut the game journalists who were ready to discard him with very little knowledge of the rest of the series, and I’ve done this before as well. My first blog post defends Kratos while still acknowledge that his behavior and actions are downright brutal, so instead of repeating that, I think I’ll put together a comprehensive timeline.
Note: this will mostly before the Greek era and may only cover the games I’ve played, so although the developers claim God of War: Betrayal is canon, I currently don’t have a means to play this. I did find and save a comment on r/GodofWar that tells people how to play on a modern smartphone since it was developed for cell phones when they looked like this:
So I don’t think I can add it to the timeline I’ll create since I haven’t played it yet. Also, most people haven’t really played it either due to how much of a hassle mobile games were in the mid-2000s, so whether its omission changes anything or not depends. To my knowledge, it doesn’t all come to a head until God of War III, but let’s not jump the gun and follow Kratos on his journey.
The extras in the first God of War game set the stage for Kratos the character who coincidentally shares the same name of the mythological god of power and strength and one of Zeus’ best agents/servants.
Kratos’ Origins:
As I recall, the extras in the first game explain his origin story. A mortal woman with a child of dubious paternity in tow was cast out of her city-state and chose to make a home in Sparta and raise her son accordingly. Later, the same mortal woman mothers a second child but cannot establish his father either. The boys live the typical life of a burgeoning Spartan warrior in preparation for the lifelong training to be undergone by young boys around the age of 7.
Tragedy strikes the younger of the brothers. Born with a distinctive birthmark, the gods of Olympus are warned that a marked warrior will bring doom to Olympus, and set out to virtually erase this boy’s existence. Two gods, a brother and sister, take the younger brother and wound the elder. Normally, Greek gods seldom leave survivors so the older brother and their mother had to live with the fact that the younger brother had perished.
This failure to save the younger brother motivated the older brother to become a fully devoted Spartan warrior. Native son or not, this was his home and he was determined to fight in his memory, even gaining a distinctive tattoo to honor his brother’s memory.
Later in life, the older brother known as Kratos married the most beautiful woman in Sparta: Lysandra and fathered a girl named Calliope. In Ancient Sparta, the health of the infant determined their lot. Sickly children were often discarded and Calliope born sickly would surely have been abandoned pertaining to Spartan law.
Kratos made a promise that he wouldn’t be weak and fulfilling that promise, after hearing about the Ambrosia of Asclepius, god of medicine and healing, he sets out to find it to save his daughter. The problem here is that he’s not the only champion who sets out on this quest. Other champions, personally gambled on like race horses by the gods of Olympus, are also on the hunt for the ambrosia. Kratos eventually wins this wager without knowing he was being bet on and sees Calliope well into her own childhood.
After this, he set out on campaigns to expand and strengthen Sparta’s brutal reputation, but his relationship with his family suffers as a result. One such battle eliminates a large number of Spartans and almost spells the end for Kratos until he pleads to the god of war, Ares to save him from death. His offer was his life. Following on this, Ares gifts Kratos a brand new set of weapons to carry into battle. Their chains were seared onto his arms to remind him of his oath to the god of war, never to be removed.
These blades took the head of their first victim soon after, and would set a course for Kratos’ downfall. His time as a devotee to the god who saved him drove him to extremes, you’d grow to be scared of the monster he was becoming. Across the Greek world, Kratos’ name would be made infamous with one single act.
The final straw that broke the camel’s back came when he set his fellow devotees on a rampage against followers of Ares’ sister, Athena, the god of wisdom. The village was massacred behind Kratos as he set his sights on the temple in the middle of the village.
The associated oracle warns him not to go inside, but the prophecy falls on deaf ears as he slaughters the lot of these civilians, the final two pulled him to his senses. Through trickery and manipulation, Kratos slaughtered his family.
Soon after Kratos understands the horror at his feet, an image of his patron god appears to praise him on his lack of mercy and make him into a warrior with nothing to lose. Ares misunderstood though that Kratos’ family was what kept him going for so long. Now that he’s widowed and fatherless, he can’t bring himself to continue to worship Ares.
As punishment for spilling familial blood, the oracle fastens the ashes of his family to his skin, a sign to all of what he was, thus birthing the Ghost of Sparta, a derisive moniker to remind him of his crimes. Worse yet for Kratos, the Furies, keepers of oaths and goddesses of vengeance punish him for breaking away from the god of war.
Ascension:
Breaking away from any deity is a punishable offense. As an example, the Hecatonchires, Aegaeon, was punished by having his many heads and limbs turned into a living prison, or more accurately a zombie prison since Aegaeon’s corpse was used extensively as the prison and he doesn’t get to move until activated by the cruel Furies.
Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto all vow to bring Kratos back to Ares or kill him whichever one comes first. Along his journey, their son, Orkos, guides him on his path to free him from the crippling visions that have since followed him. Part of this journey involves seeking out the Oracle of Delphi, Aletheia. Guarded by slave workers and their owner Castor and Pollux (reimagined as conjoined twins), Kratos climbs up the the temple to seek an audience with the Oracle, though without tribute as would be expected. Castor attempted to turn him away for forgoing this rule, but learned first hand why he was the Ghost of Sparta.
The fight carries a third casualty; armed with the Amulet of Ouraborus, Castor destroys the temple and mortally wounds Aletheia, but fortunately for Kratos, she survives long enough to further assist him. His next move is to travel to the island of Delos, home of the statue of Apollo currently in disrepair to gain the eyes of the oracle.
At the same time, the Furies give chase and almost have him prisoner until Orkos intervenes and gives him the stone he uses to be in multiple places at once. At the same time, Kratos rebuilds the statue with the amulet and eventually gains the eyes of the oracle, but doesn’t hold onto them for long. The other mystical relics on this journey of his are confiscated while he gets chained to the Hecatonchires prison. He later regains them and fights off the Furies as they fail to entice or coerce him into serving Ares once more.
To this end, the last method used is the image of his family. But Kratos chooses reality and kills the Furies, seemingly freeing him of his oath until Orkos reveals that as a last ditch effort, Orkos was made the oathkeeper and Kratos can’t be free of his hallucinations until he kills Orkos, which he does reluctantly.
Chains of Olympus:
The journey of redemption is a long one. Kratos stopped serving Ares after it cost him his family, but still seeks to forget his past while under the service of the rest of Olympus. As such, he serves as the main guide for the Attica military in the midst of a Persian invasion with a basilisk in tow. Kratos fights off the Persian Army, their king and destroys the fire breathing beast, thus saving Attica, but Kratos, halfway through his decade of servitude for penance demands another challenge.
On cue, the sun falls out of the sky as a black fog engulfs the lands. At Helios’ temple, a statue of Athena reveals that Helios was kidnapped and without his command of the sun, Morpheus, god of dreams has taken over the lands.
Morpheus doesn’t physically appear in Chains of Olympus, just his name is used. Kratos finds Helios’ sister, Eos, goddess of dawn, who tells him that Atlas the titan kidnapped Helios. She doesn’t know where they went and can’t help any further weakened by the absence of Helios. However, he can still find him by activating the steeds that pull the chariot everyday.
We’re all adults here, but the images of Eos in game have her with her breasts uncovered and I don’t want to risk myself or anyone else reading getting flagged. I could definitely censor the bare nipples, but I chose the easier method of showing her back since I wanna finish this in time for lunch.
Anyway, Kratos activates the steeds and they take him to Hades where Helios was taken by Atlas. On his way, he demands the ferryman Charon bring him to where Helios is being kept. Charon refuses as the gods still needs him and soundly defeats him in battle and sends him to Tartarus.
Kratos breaks out and acquires the gauntlet of Zeus. Climbing out with this new weapon, Kratos returns to the docks to defeat the ferryman and take his ship further into Hades. An apparition haunting him since he was at Helios’ temple was that of Calliope, whom Kratos gifted a carved flute for her to play in reference to her namesake being one of the nine muses.
This apparition of his daughter takes him off his course to save humanity and he willingly sacrifices his powers to be with her in Elysium since there’s no other way for him to get into Elysium elsewise, at the instruction of Persephone.
The reunion is short-lived as the goddess of spring and wife of Hades reveals that she was the one who freed Atlas and used him to kidnap Helios. The next phase of her plan was to use him to destroy the pillar that holds up the world. Instead, Kratos traps the titan beneath the world and uses the gauntlet of Zeus to kill Persephone. The sacrifice he made though was his own daughter. If the pillar was destroyed then Kratos would lose her and her memory, but if it was spared and the world saved, he would have to abandon her. Nonetheless, he fulfills his promise and begrudgingly accepts his place as the servant of the gods.
2005:
Five years after the events of Chains of Olympus, Kratos onboard a ship combats the hydra and sets a course for Athens. Athena calls upon Kratos to save her city from her brother. This doubles as a chance at redemption and a means for Kratos get his revenge on Ares. Before he had to live with his crimes as nightmares, but with a chance to defeat Ares in sight, he jumped at the opportunity hoping it would mean his nightmares would finally end.
Chaos is ensuing at just the gates to Athens proper, and Kratos goes to the oracle of Athens to consult a guide on defeating Ares. He saves her from the minions of Ares and tells him that the power to slay even a god rests within the box of Pandora.
Still a risky picture, but there’s significantly less breast exposure. The oracle tells Kratos that the path to the box is through the desert and Athena, through her statues, elaborates that it’s hidden at the highest level of the temple which is in turn chained to the back of Chronos, who is forced to forever traverse the desert.
Along the way, Kratos comes across deadly traps and perilous enemies, while also being aided by the gods. Finally he reaches the box itself, but is then killed by Ares and has the box taken from him. He still has this task to complete and fights his way out of Hades to complete it with aid of a grave digger that he ran across earlier in the game.
I’ve seen the above photo several times, and only now has it dawned on me that the bottom half is like that meme of the elegantly drawn horse but half-finished. Back at the Temple of the Oracle, Kratos treks through the building to reach Ares, now proclaiming his possession of the box, and threatening to use it on Olympus.
Kratos hurls a Zeus lightning bolt at the chain holding the box, opens it, and uses its power to kill Ares. A mortal man defeated a god for the first time in history, and Athens can rebuild anew, but Kratos learned that he was only set up for redemption and forgiveness. He’s stuck with those nightmares for life. Taking this as a betrayal, he sought to end his own life, but the gods had other plans. Because of his service to Olympus, he’s given the seat of the God of War as consolation. But this wasn’t enough for Kratos.
Ghost of Sparta:
Now that he has the throne of Ares, a long repressed memory of his brother Deimos resurfaces. This time, though, he seeks an answer as to the true fate of his brother. Organizing a fleet of sailors, he sets a course for Atlantis where his mother, Callisto, rests in a chamber, ailing and waiting for her son’s arrival. Knowing his intentions, the gods attempt to dissuade Kratos by unleashing beasts like Scylla, but it doesn’t work out as they hoped.
Through whooping coughs, she reveals that she was forced to lie to Kratos about the fate of his brother at the behest of his father, whose identity she was also cursed to keep secret. Failure to do so transforms her into a beast that Kratos kills. In her dying breath, Callisto urges Kratos travel to Sparta and find a key to the Gate of Death, the realm of the primordial Greek god Thanatos.
After this battle, he travels through the Methana Volcano and acquires the bane of Thera which imbues his blades with fire. In doing so, the stability of the volcano’s interior is in jeopardy as Kratos also uses the fire to destroy the gears that operate the Archimedes screws that regulate the temperature of the volcano. Without all of these, the volcano begins to erupt and Atlantis sinks to the seabed.
The resulting eruption sends Kratos flying into the city of Heraklion, where the Grave Digger greets him, this time with a warning that the destruction of Atlantis will cost him whatever favor he gained from his prior service to Olympus, especially Zeus. Unfortunately for Olympus, occupying the god of war’s throne wasn’t what he desired, and so he sets forth to continue on his trek to Deimos.
Part of this path takes him through the Aronia Mountains where young Spartans are sent to conquer their fears. Going back to the god of death foreshadowing, he and his daughter Erinys are tasked with preventing Kratos from reaching his goal.
During the battle, Kratos conveniently returns to Sparta and his treated as a legend among his countrymen. While there, he comes across a dissenter in the jails who nearly gets him killed. Despite the results of his battle, there’s a small minority of devotees to Ares. Nevertheless, Kratos makes it out of the jails of Sparta and travels to the temple of the fallen god of war to retrieve the key: the skull of Keres.
With the skull in hand, he sets a course back to the now submerged Atlantis to activate the Gate of Death with the key. The realm of death (which I interpreted as Purgatory) is described as a place where neither god nor mortal dares enter willingly.
Navigating the realm, Kratos finally finds his brother, but the reunion is a bloody affair. The associated trophy suggests that Kratos held back because he just wanted his brother back even if it meant he died with hatred in his heart. Not long afterward, Thanatos took Deimos away again and when Kratos returns to save his brother from death again, the two engaged in battle with Thanatos, who admitted the short-sightedness of Olympus’ decision to take Deimos and not Kratos. Though it wouldn’t have made a difference which brother was abducted.
Deimos dies in the fight and after Kratos kills Thanatos, he lays his brother to rest for real this time. Now that it’s only him left, Athena arrives to bestow godhood to Kratos as he now lacks a familial bond on earth. Kratos doesn’t take very kindly to being forced to massacre his family piecemeal and promises to topple Olympus for it one way or another.
II:
Now a god, Kratos relished in the comfort of battle and war in defiance of the peace that Olympus desired in the world. Athena implores him to stop, but he refuses and continues to aid in an ongoing invasion of Rhodes. His brutality turned out to be worse than what Ares was capable of, so Zeus strips him of a fraction of his godhood while bringing the Colossus of Helios at Rhodes to life to fight Kratos and defend the city.
Kratos battles the statue, but Zeus feigns aid by lending him the Blade of Olympus. He’s tricked into pouring the last of his powers into the blade and uses it to destroy the statue soundly, but falling debris causes him to drop the blade and his mortality returns to him. He tried to save face and retrieve the blade, but Zeus beat him to the punch. He expressed his disappointment at what’s become of the Ghost of Sparta.
When Kratos refuses this last opportunity to stand by Zeus, Zeus killed him and annihilated the combating armies of Sparta and Rhodes, save for one lone Spartan. Kratos was then resurrected and encouraged by Gaia to return to the world of the living. He greeted the last Spartan and issued orders to return and fortify Sparta’s defenses while he prepared to face Zeus again, commandeering a Pegasus who doesn’t take him straight to his destination of choice.
A pair of titans has keys he needs to even stand a chance against the king of Olympus. Typhon’s Bane to be retrieved from its namesake’s eye, and the Rage of the Titans to be retrieved from sacrificing Prometheus to the fires of Olympus. With both, Kratos frees the Pegasus previously trapped beneath Typhon’s hand and travels with his new weapons to the Isle of Creation.
This island is the home of the Sisters of Fate, where travelers can request an audience with the sisters. As it turns out, others had similar ideas. The island is filled with numerous traps and guarded by the Steeds of Time which were meant as a gift from Chronos in a feeble attempt to change his own fate from what Zeus had done to him after the Titanomachy.
The steeds are guarded by the last person you’d expect to serve anyone before himself: Theseus.
The old man challenges Kratos to battle and gets trounced by the Ghost of Sparta who then uses his key to traverse the rest of the island and acquires some of Chronos’ lightning magic. Here, he encounters the first of his old enemies in search of a do-over from the sisters: the Barbarian King who fought on the Persian side all those years ago.
Long dead, he returns as a zombie in possession of an undead horse and the hammer that almost killed Kratos when he pleaded for a second chance. The barbarian dies a second time, and Kratos takes his hammer as a secondary weapon. He then encounters Jason and his Argonauts stranded around the island and in varying degrees of screwed. Jason himself in possession of the golden fleece when he gets eaten by a Cerberus beast.
Kratos retrieves the relic and now has the ability to throw attacks back and parry limitlessly. This acquisition of extra relics takes him through Euryale’s temple where he battles her and takes her head as he did her sister years ago in Athens.
The second person seeking counsel with the sisters is Perseus who failed in his myth to save Andromeda without Medusa’s head. Kratos kills him and stumbles upon hobo Icarus who attempts to reserve the right to seek the sisters of fate.
In their fight, Kratos takes his wings and navigates the body of Atlas. Before breaking out from the chasm, Kratos is discovered by the titan who is convinced to stop exacting revenge on the Spartan after hearing of his plan to use the Blade of Olympus on Zeus himself.
Atlas talks about the first time he encountered that blade and what he would’ve done if not sentenced to his position by Kratos. Now that they’re both enemies of Olympus, Atlas grants him his magic and helps him reach the Palace of the Fates. Kratos once again fights his way inside, dodging the traps and enemies inside to get reach the sisters, even defeating the kraken that Perseus was supposed to defeat.
Finally reaching the sisters, Kratos proclaims that fate doesn’t work on him and the sisters fight him in a last ditch effort to prevent him from fighting Zeus, expecting the death of Olympus to follow suit. Kratos proceeds anyway and fights the king of the gods on Olympus, but with Athena protecting her father, he misses the opportunity and accidentally kills Athena in the process. She used her dying breath to reveal what Callisto would have revealed in Atlantis about Zeus being his father and urges him to spare Olympus, which was his original goal.
Kratos declares that only Zeus is his target but won’t let anyone get in his way. Calling forth the Titans from the Titanomachy, Kratos declares war on Zeus and any remaining Olympians.
III:
Expecting heavy resistance, Kratos welcomed the challenge brought on by the Olympians, the first of them being Poseidon himself. The sea god is the first to fall and his death negatively impacts bodies of water across the world. Another confrontation with Zeus leads to Gaia losing her hand and Kratos falling to the underworld again after Gaia reveals he was a means to an end for the titans.
Kratos’ circle of allies shrunk rapidly and now that he’s in Hades, the king of the dead isn’t going to let him slip through his fingers again. Armed with the bow of Apollo, recovered from Peirithous’ corpse, Kratos kills Hades which unbinds the souls from the realm of the dead, and leaves the dead in limbo while Kratos gets to use Hades’ titular claws in battle.
Between battles, Kratos encounters the former Olympian smith god, Hephaestus.
Encountering the smith god, Kratos learns about the Flame of Olympus and is encouraged by the spirit of Athena to find it. After battling with Helios and taking his head (and blotting out the sun) Kratos comes across the labyrinth of Daedalus and more than once in this game. While here, the messenger of the gods, Hermes, taunts him as a challenge, despite the Spartan’s best efforts to ignore the little bugger.
For this, Hermes loses his legs and his death causes plague on Olympus. Traveling further, he comes across his stepmother Hera who would happily turn a blind eye to the death of her husband, but when Kratos asks for Pandora, whom Athena tells him is needed to reach her namesake box, she sicks his half brother Hercules on him.
Under the false promise of godhood over the ancillary nonsense from his labors, Hercules attempts to kill Kratos on Hera’s orders, but gets bludgeoned and robbed of his Nemean Cestus. The world now in ruins without the gods to control it, Kratos continues on in search of Pandora to defeat Zeus. This takes him back to Hephaestus who now turns on Kratos when he learns that Pandora is his new target of acquisition. He claims to need the Omphalos Stone to craft a fourth weapon, though Kratos deems it unnecessary considering the number on his hip already.
The stone turns out to be in Chronos’ stomach and is violently torn from his intestines. Kratos caught on to the double cross and once the electric Nemesis Whip is gifted to Kratos, Hephaestus follows through on his double cross and tries to kill him to protect his daughter.
He fails and Kratos continues on alone in search of the girl.
Along the way, he killed Hera for badmouthing Pandora and moved the cubes of Daedalus’ labyrinth causing his death as well. Pandora is found unconscious and when they return to the flame, she attempts to fulfill her fate. Then Zeus returns to stop Kratos from causing further chaos. In a final battle, Pandora attempts again to fulfill her destiny. At first Kratos prevents her but he was goaded by Zeus and let her go. The flame was extinguished and he learns that the box was empty. Now father and son end this rivalry once and for all while Gaia reveals she survived and isn’t happy to learn that her plan had destructive consequences. The battle continues inside the titaness and the two emerge, with the blade impaled in Zeus.
With the last of his might, he sentences Kratos to a nightmare world, but with the power of hope, he breaks free and beats Zeus to death for good this time. The cost of his revenge was the state of humanity, and when told by Athena to transfer his power to her, he takes his own life in defiance. Only Kratos is essentially unkillable and the post-credits scene reveals that he escaped to Midgard while Greece rebuilt likely under Roman supervision.
I omitted and reworked some stuff for this timeline to fit it all in chronological order since some games begin in medias res, but I think I did an okay job of mapping out the greek timeline. I say “timeline” when this is a recounting of the games’ chronology since calendar dates aren’t exactly shown. Mythologies may be based on a version of the truth, but with oral tradition birthing many different versions of the same story, it’s hard to put Kratos in the timeline in a way that doesn’t have him jumping back and forth between events.
Norse Kratos preceding Fimbulwinter makes more sense temporally as scholars and historians believe a real-life world changing event likely caused by a medieval volcanic eruption called the Volcanic Winter of 536 served as an inspiration for the Norse myth of Fimbulwinter. The Greek era prequels’ release order being what it is, one could believe erroneously that Kratos was in two places at once.
So the timeline is faulty, but keeping in mind that most myths are inconsistent, I’d say it tracks. Thankfully, next week, I know what I want to talk about and I have a better research method to use. I won’t reveal too much, but let this picture be a teaser:
Eagle-eyed readers know what to expect, but in case I need to provide a further hint, it’s about a series of video games.
For this week, my channel recommendation is iilluminaughtii, spelled as seen here.
The channel, run by a woman named Blair, takes a hard look at companies and corporations and exposes their dirty laundry for all to see. Blair doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt and dispels their friendly image, uncovers a dark history they thought they’d buried under history and legalese, criticizes them for a professed hypocritical message, or any combination of the three and then some. I don’t tune in to all of her videos. Some topics interest me, some don’t. The ones that do interest me, I can’t recommend them highly enough.
On her channel, her introductory video is an in-depth look at why we all hate PETA. Good stuff so far.
Before I leave, I’m gonna try something at the bottom:
Admittedly a censorship test. Sometimes I write these blog posts in public and if a reference image is NSFW/L, then the safer route is the most preferred, if it exists. The next time I bring up a mature series, the censor blocks will be used when I’m certain I won’t get in trouble for it. Some risks aren’t worth it.
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