There were reports that the team over at Santa Monica Studio were worried that God of War: Ragnarök wasn’t good a few months before release and damn were they right. From the jump Ragnarök is a slog. You liked 2018’s God of War well here’s more of it but with a stack of Marvel writing to make it torturous to play. Listen to the talking head quip! Woah haha the talking head! It made a quip! Oh Kratos, is that a quip?

I hate Marvel writing. Absolutely loathe it. If something’s been Joss Whedon’d, it is no doubt terrible. Atreus, Kratos- who gives a fuck. I can’t get past how boring it all is. I can’t get past how many quips are happening. I can’t get past being told how to do a puzzle three seconds into trying it.

“But Mateo, certainly the broader story is more interesting?” No! God of War (2018) had a certain quaintness to its story. You’re just living in the woods chilling with your son then go on a journey to spread your late wife’s ashes. It gets bigger from there, but the core remains the same, and while that game wasn’t especially interesting at least it stuck to its laurels. I also liked Freya a lot- her place in the story set up some really interesting parallels and conflicts. Meanwhile I barely remember anything about Ragnarök’s plot. It’s all a blend of quips and snow to me…

Ragnarök is the lowest of the low for me. It is a well-crafted game with fantastic environments, okay (generic) music, and some okay combat, but the writing made it unplayable for me. People like to criticize the old God of War games for their writing and place these new ones on a pedestal- but those old games hit exactly what they were going for: Greek epics with a lot of angst. They’re supposed to be dramatic and large- that was the era! This one only achieves anachronisms and the lowest of low quality Whedonisms. I stopped playing after I ended up in another Atreus walk-and-talk with some random other character. I then sold my PS5.