God of War Ragnarök review: A scattered but strong sequel

Expand / Compatibility with me for a second, Kratos... It's been four years now since Sony reimagined the ruthless god of war Kratos as a meme-worthy single dad struggling to connect with his son. A few years have also passed between the events of that game and those of God of War: Ragnarök, a less focused game that still serves as a worthy sequel that fits easily into the same rhythm as this reboot. .

In Ragnarök, the young and passionate Atreus from the latest God of War has been replaced by a headstrong preteen who constantly opposes his father's headstrong attitude . As the title suggests, father and son find themselves battling the Fimbulwinter that marks the realm, a prelude to the world-ending battle of Ragnarök.

Yet even the prospect of the end of the world is not enough to rekindle Kratos' desire for war. He is eager to avoid battle, seeing it as the best way to fulfill his single-minded desire to protect his son at all costs. Atreus, meanwhile, considers his father to be overly cautious and struggles to convince Kratos to trust his more active (and risky) plans to avoid an outcome that is literally fatal.

The writing and characterization of

Ragnarök pushes very hard in an attempt to achieve the same kind of moments of growth and understanding between Kratos and Atreus that the last game achieved effortlessly. Sadly, for the most part, those moments don't pan out as well as they did in the last game.

Part of the problem is performance: Kratos and Atreus have some of the weakest and least efficient line deliveries in a game that's full of powerful voice and motion capture. As a result, I never quite bought into the pre-teen angst that drives Atreus to explode in a startling (and momentous) outburst of defiance at a key moment in the middle of the narrative. Kratos' almost constant defensive crouching at the thought of his son being in danger, meanwhile, is much less interesting and touching than his growth into the reluctant but caring father of the last game (and often seems in direct opposition to all the fights he did between cutscenes).

Meet the team

Another problem is the game's lack of narrative focus. While Kratos and Atreus are always at the center of this story, Ragnarök constantly diverts its attention to narrative interludes based on the small group of characters. reluctant allies that formed around this base pair. Besides distracting from the parent-child narrative that could serve as the emotional core of the game, these digressions end up being more than a little uneven.

The game puts a lot of effort into a heavily telegraphed "redemption" arc for Freya, for example. The transition from a murderous rage goddess after Kratos kills her son to a reluctant partnership doesn't have much believable justification and ends up feeling undeserved. I also found myself utterly unable to relate to the overworked story of the two dwarven brothers who serve as resident blacksmiths for the crew.

Enlarge / Freya's Ark in Ragnarök is one of the least believable, seeming to exist primarily for narrative convenience,

I was a little more intrigued by Tyr, another ancient god of war who suffered a long confinement under Odin and, like Kratos, renounced violence...