Since Baldur died, all nine realms have been thrust into Fimbulwinter - a precursor to Ragnarök - which is sort of analogous to drastic, world-ending climate change.
Kratos and Atreus start off in Midgard, quietly reeling from the giants’ prophecy that warned of impending apocalypse and Kratos’ death. Image: SIE Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon And while the writing does a much better job at building out the characters and their respective places in this world, the end result is a passably good but unevenly paced experience that, more often than not, feels like something I could binge on Disney Plus in any given week. Like its predecessor(s), Ragnarök is the distillation of an everyman power fantasy, in which you enact powerful and badass acts of redemptive vengeance upon your enemies while retaining the moral high ground you are, after all, playing a struggling parent with a whole lot of hang-ups. It is, in essence, the most non-Marvel Marvel story I’ve seen in a game, from the eminently recognizable story beats - heroes face difficult dilemmas, friends become enemies and vice versa, boy meets girl, beloved characters die, and so on - to its practiced use of comedy and tragedy (the two classical storytelling genders) to push the player’s buttons. In 2022, God of War Ragnarök has improved on that recipe, taking a page from the success and spectacle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sitting down to write this, I realize now that the finer points of the story were almost forgettable, which is kind of what happens when you follow the game-as-a-prestige-movie story path that seems to color a lot of the AAA landscape. A big part of my God of War experience - something that didn’t click until later - was the one-off novelty of playing a big blockbuster on a “new” console.
But I fired it up on my shiny new toy, keen to try something different. It was the first Big Console I’d had since the days of the slim PlayStation 2, and it came with God of War (2018), a new game from a series I wasn’t too familiar with.
In 2019, I bought my first PlayStation 4.
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