Previous: Kuiye's road with a baby
The Legendary series of Old Days Glory with a New (NTR) Journey
If a game combines combat, exploration and puzzle solving in terms of gameplay, has a male hormone style that overflows the screen in the overall style, has epic and magnificent battle scenes, ups and downs, and anti-traditional dark protagonists, and it performs well in these aspects, then it must be a game that all gamers (especially European and American players) dream of. It is one of the most glorious series in the history of the PS platform, it is the golden sign that Santa Monica Studio has been able to make a living and even famous, it is the "God Killer" who defeated "Red Dead Redemption 2" on the TGA in 2018, it is the fire of victory, it is the burning blood, it is the will to rebel, it is the indomitable spirit, it is "God of War".
Greek mythology has always been a favorite "material" mecca for many cultural creators, from the recently familiar Marvel Universe's "Thor" tetralogy to the "Saint Seiya" intertwined with the beauty of the middle two when he was a child - in the Greek gods' originally untangled and chaotic complex love-hate and blood relations, it is easier to find one or two charismatic villains: this is also one of the biggest difficulties encountered in many games. Because it is easy for the player to substitute as a "righteous partner" and save the world in the process of growing, it is difficult to establish a counterpoint that is desperate in strength and can match the "protagonist team" in thought, intelligence and behavior.
Then with the theme of Greek and Norse mythology, it is too easy to find such a "villain BOSS", such as in the "God of War" series - not one or two here, I mean, all the gods present, are villains, and then let Qui ye wield his double knife representing resistance and anger, from the bottom of the abyss to the top of Mount Olympus, how cheerful, how freehand!
So when the latest game of the God of War series, God of War, landed on the PC platform on January 15, 2022, it was not difficult to understand that countless PC players (NTR carnival) were celebrating the crown - yes, this is already the game of the last Olympic cycle; yes, it is already a cabbage price on the PS platform; yes, it is a fact that Sony's first party has carried exclusive games to the PC on a large scale (the past is no longer, the dawn of Horizon Zero, etc.), but the presence of the new God of War still has some different meanings. That is, one day, Sony crossed its own borders, embarked on a strange country, and began an adventure completely different from the past. It's like in God of War, When Kratos comes to the realm of Northern Europe Odin, he and his long-estranged son Atreus bring the ashes of his lover Fe to the highest mountain in the Nine Realms...
Story: Take your mother's ashes to the highest mountain
"God of War" has a very clever classical tragic style of interest in the structure of the story, this tragic color with a quiet and poignant grand world and ubiquitous vision, a good shape of their own story of the distant and sad "wind bone".
Mythical & aristocratic figures were the favorite of ancient Greek tragic writers: the tragic protagonist in Aeschylus's The Bound Prometheus is the god of heaven; Agamemnon is the king; Eurybides' Medea is the princess; The Woman of Trojany is the queen; Sophocles' Antigone is the princess and the prince; and the Oedipus king is the king.
Compared with the clash of gods and the conflict of fate in the previous game, the story of the new "God of War" begins to return more to the "human world", we see only an old father with hundreds of millions of points of outstanding combat power leading the child through a fantasy journey, but the core of the story is still composed of some tragic elements, such as fatalism: the plot when first encountering the "witch in the forest" Freya has foreshadowed the end of the story that is finally related to her plot...
In the previous "God of War" trilogy, the story that belongs to Kui Ye himself has actually drawn a perfect end, so how to continue to write a legend in the new work? "Hero Twilight" is a common tactic, such as the curtain call between Professor X and Wolverine in Wolverine: The Battle of the Dead, but in the new God of War, a different path is chosen: Qui-Ye's partner In Northern Europe, Fischer, begins with the cutting down of the trees used for the remains of the spark, and then he embarks on the road of sprinkling Philae's ashes on the highest mountain of the Nine Realms...
With baby: Kui Ye from the entrance to the pit
Father-Son topics
The construction of the relationship between father and son on the journey, which originally had emotional estrangement, is actually a genre that is not uncommon and easy to shine in film and television works, such as the semi-autobiographical award-winning novel "Светътт е голям и с The film of the same name adapted fromпение дебне отвсякъде adaptation of the film of the same name ("Encounter love at the corner of the world"), we are more familiar with "The Mountain" The emotional establishment of Liu Ye and the postman's father on the journey of delivering letters in the mountains in "The Man, the Dog", and the search for the "dislocated" father-son relationship in "A Thousand Miles to Ride Alone"...
But this script style challenge in the game is not easy, we have seen similar companion style games in the past, such as "ICO" and inspired by "The Last Survivor", "Brother Legend", and "BioShock Infinite", but there is no game "guardian" and "child" has such a big contrast as in "God of War": for The God of War, perhaps a bigger challenge than Olympus's God of War comes from the baby - the God of War only needs to be faster, bigger, stronger, This is the foundation of Kuiye's life and has always been a strong point; but what is needed to take care of the baby is patience, love and care to take care of the delicate but sensitive young mind at that moment, which is definitely not an easy task for Quitos, who has been wandering for many years and is not close to Atreus.
A child with a strong sense of "Boy"
Just as the biggest advantage of "Wind Country" seems to me to be that it establishes Xiao Shan's "little friend" attribute more vividly, the first eye-catching link of "God of War" is also the establishment of atelius's "boy" attribute: he will look for all possible opportunities to play, he will kick the branches of the roadside when he is bored, he will look for Kuiye's attention with chattering but meaningless topics... If you're a player who has a chance to come into contact with a little boy in your life, you can't help but be amused to see the small details of Atreus's behavior— this is the moment when this character "came alive" in my mind.
But on the other hand, Atreus is not a wayward and mischievous child, and in the process of getting along with Kratos, it can be seen that his mother Fei gave him a very good education and spiritual protection. The kindness of not being able to slaughter when he first taught hunting, the care of discovering clues and collecting objects, the pride of solving puzzles, and the natural attachment to Freya (because he lost his mother early) further deepened the "boy feeling" of this character - including after learning that his father was actually a god, his first reaction was: Can you transform into an animal?
Gentle but clumsy father
Quintos can't transform into animals, he can reduce all animals to food and leather if needed... Usually a grumpy old father who makes a living from war and spends half his life on horseback will not be impatient with such meaningless questions, and this is true of Quitos's performance at the beginning. But after Kui Ye experienced the ups and downs of Bunsen's "god" world, in that slightly old face and beard mixed with white hair, he also began to have a gentleness in his heart.
If you are familiar with the first three God of War stories, it will be very Quirky mentality: he has experienced too much sorrow and suffering, he has experienced too much torture and betrayal, which has created a cold attitude of doubting everything (especially gods), but even so, he still names his son at Atreus, the gentlest and sunny of the Spartan warriors - if he has difficulty smiling in this world, then at least hope that Atreus can always live with a smile.
In the face of Atreus, the god of war, Qui-Ye began to show a gentle side of his heart - this is to make the character more deeply rooted in people's hearts, but also to make the game "sublimated" the setting, just like Atreus's "Boy" sense, Santa Monica Studio's delicate performance in this "clumsy and gentle" old father setting of Qui-Ye is equally moving: Qui-Ye wants to be gentle with his son, but what he has learned, or what he is good at, is to use the most rigorous training to fight against this cruel world So how many times did he withdraw the hand he wanted to put on his son's shoulder, and how many times did he use the afterglow to pay attention to his son's inner small emotions and reactions.
The growth of the Father and the Son
Regarding the father-son relationship in "God of War", another interesting point is that most of the journey in the game, Kuiye is called Atreus "boy", and Atreus calls Kuiye "sir" - this reflects the sense of alienation between the two, Atreus is not without trying to get closer, but will not get a gentle response, so he will secretly mutter, "If it is a mother, what will she do", and these words are actually slowly dissolving the iceberg in Kuiye's heart, at the end of the game, He finally called Atreus "son" for the first time.
For children, the greatest warmth comes from companionship, and the greatest hurt comes from separation - in fact, Both Qui-Ye and Atreus are aware of this, Qui-Ye blames himself for his long-term "dislocation", and Atreus resents Kui's long-term "dislocation". After Quixote lost in the pillar of light, the "arrogant" Atreus finally broke down emotionally: "You don't want to abandon me again", behind him, the corpses of the dark elves have been piled up on the ground - here our reaction may be: Ah, it is indeed the god of war Atreus and his old father... However, compared with the growth embodied in the "combat effectiveness", this is actually the first step in the growth of the father-son relationship.
So, in the journey of companionship, Qui-Ye not only taught Atreus the skills of fighting and survival (and also learned a lot of cultural knowledge from Atreus), but more importantly, learned how to be a father - in classical Greek mythology, fatherhood is often matched with divinity, and in the parent-child relationship, only selfishness and desire are reflected, and the former Kui Ye may be the same, but now that the "mother" Fei has lost his position, he begins to play a more complex father role.
Among them, the most important thing is to change himself, such as when he felt that Atreus did not need to know too much, so he hid his origins - but then found that the honesty between father and son was so relaxed, for example, at first he would be very resistant to telling Atreus stories and even tired of the stories Mimir told on the road - but at the end of the game he took the initiative to tell Atreus a story about the past before he became a god. Changing himself is never easy, in the accompanying journey, both father and son have grown, once lost themselves, Atreus began to understand the meaning of the barrier set by his father - this also understood Qui-ye's love for him and his mother, when he realized that Qui-Ye is another person in this world who loves Fie deeply, Atreus finally completely accepted his setting as a father in his heart, and in the process, Qui-Ye finally released Atreus from his own complete protection. Untie the straps that have been wrapped around his arms for many years and hand over the ashes to his son, there is no excessive verbal expression and emotional expression, but this kind of letting go of the heart and giving trust is all in the words: "You are now ready."
epilogue
The journey of father and son and the growth of each other's relationship are the roof of the new God of War, which determines the success of the "RPG" transformation path that this work brings to the God of War series: RPG is not necessarily to use Ubisoft-style canned tasks to pile up a huge map of a dead horse, and RPG does not have to "enrich" the "garbage time" between those plots with equipment that is constantly replaced from level 1 to 99. The ultimate goal of RPG is the establishment of characters - the divine characters also come from the perspective of human nature, and to give us a more flesh-and-blood, more emotional resonance story, then it is the ultimate fun that can be achieved in this fantasy genre game work. So in addition to the lofty building, what are the gains and losses of God of War in terms of gameplay as a "foundation", that is, what will be discussed in the next content.
Next: The Wrathful Soul of the God of War
Battle: Atreus, the god of war, and his old father
Red: Rookie chicken to the king to share the fun
As far as "God of War" is concerned, "War" is undoubtedly the most important part of gameplay, in fact, "God of War" is basically in the best queue of the ARPG type in the design of the combat system - it can allow the master to seek some of the fun of accurate operation between the electric light and flint such as part throwing and nailing the wall, and can also let the rookie player (such as me) kill the enemy in ordinary difficulty through simple button operation. In other words, God of War maximizes the "friendliness" and "challenge" of the system through some clever design.
There are many small "tricks" to achieve this - such as the "slow motion" reaction time during precise blocking, which is not only used to give the player a chance to observe and breathe, but also to use RT or RB to connect the counterattack skill, similar settings also have a counterattack after "changing posture", counterattack after "recovering weapon", counterattack after "dodging" and counterattack after "sprinting", so in this "optional operation", combining the switching of the flame double knife and the frozen battle axe, as well as the attack of melee and throwing, God of War has achieved a very rich "operability", which fully satisfies the hands-on pleasure of "operating cancer" patients, but makes such an operation threshold as low as possible.
Another trick comes from the righteous fight of the "true god of war" Atreus: even if you choose to be a lewd axe thrower or even the whole time you are on the run to protect yourself, just by relying on Atreus's archery and rune output, you can still handle almost all the battles. As a follower who is truly involved in the battle, Atreus can automatically recover after a certain period of time, even if he falls into a situation where he can no longer rise.
And the game in the "double battle" put a lot of effort: for example, there is a "broken defense bar" and "health bar" double-click broken setting, this is not new, but in terms of "broken defense", the new god of war is very different from many games, that is, in the "backstabbing", "imbalance", "collision" and other situations can greatly increase the "breaking defense value", this is the meaning of the two-person cooperation, Kui ye and Atreus can create "backstab" opportunities for each other - Atreus's Light Arrow can almost shoot a miscellaneous soldier's broken defense bar with 4 backstabbs after the point is full of defense upgrades, so that even in high difficulty, Qui Ye can make full use of this to get the invincible time of execution to avoid damage and gain respite time for recovery.
As mentioned above, the more difficult it is, the more effective the damage against the "defense break value" - after the defense is broken, the miscellaneous soldiers can be executed, and the elite have more tricks to play. For example, the "mountain monster" can be used as a "tank", and in the scene where it needs to fight against two "elites" at the same time, the battle effect of being able to quickly ride a mountain monster is much more cost-effective than the hard battle below... In addition, the game maximizes the use of the "impact" setting, both knockback, flying and collision, collision can bring the general effect of "bowling ball", so the throwing effect after grabbing the enemy is extraordinary, and combined with some cliff terrain can be a second kill, which is also a must-master skill in the difficulty of the God of War.
In these battles, the tricks in these battles exist and in the "skills", the experience points obtained by the skills are mainly from the mission rewards and some "achievement" objectives (such as killing XX enemies), in the "God of War", under the general difficulty, even if one skill is not point, with the light and heavy attacks of melee combat, the light and heavy attacks of throwing and the anger accumulated after the full value of the "Spartan Fury" can also cope with most of the battles (except for the Valkyrie), but if you want to play tricks, play style, there is still a certain amount of room for your own research. For example, in "Mitterrod Survival Fear", Sajie's missiles can aim at multiple enemies or multiple parts of the same enemy, which finds the opportunity to pour massive output in the gap between the attack and defense conversion of that "turn-based", in fact, there is a similar design in "God of War" - the axe's RB (light attack) throwing can also aim at up to 8 enemies or 8 parts of an enemy, and when there is a double knife in the later stage, it is completely possible to throw out an axe to automatically claim the enemy. Then switch the combat style of the double knife to continue fighting.
Although there is no de facto "growth" in terms of skill points, the game is not impossible to increase the number - collecting 3 apples increases the maximum health, collecting 3 pots of blood wine increases the maximum anger, and equipment and the runes embedded on it can provide additional attributes such as strength (attack damage), runes (skill damage), defense, stamina (health), CD (skill cooldown), and some passive effects. For the "hand-crippled" action hard hand, after making a high level of equipment and runes in normal difficulty, it is not a difficult achievement to challenge the Valkyrie after familiarizing and backstabbing.
Black: The Legend of the Mountain Monster of God of War
At the 2015 E3 Bethesda launch, when Marty Stratton announced the return of the new Doom, it told the core features of the doom warrior's combat system: badass Demons, big F*cking Gun, and moving really really fast — the three elements that make up doom's core experience unlike other games. That is, through skill and manipulation, the player can defeat enemies that seem to be much more powerful than themselves, so as to achieve a "after-the-fact" kind of exciting experience.
In fact, this high-speed movement to defeat a giant enemy that seems impossible to defeat is also one of the biggest pleasures of the God of War trilogy, aside from the performance effect of the QTE combination. However, although the new God of War embodies the improvement in the picture quality of the stunning grand scenes of 2018 and the improvement in modeling, unfortunately this visual effect improvement is not applied to the traditional strength of the series, that is, the battle against the giant enemy.
The only battle against giant and powerful creatures in the game is probably the Thunder Dragon in the middle plate, and almost in the first 1/3 of the game, the mobs and elite templates we encounter are all the "categories" included - the follow-up is nothing more than changes in attributes & skins.
Take "Mountain Monster" as an example, as the first small boss to appear very amazing, but God knows how many times it will come out later... Even the Boss, who is a "heavyweight" in the plot, is also a template to "OEM", but it adds two stealth and "wave" skills that do not have much sense of existence. This overall shrinkage in terms of combat content is undoubtedly a bit disappointing.
World: Puzzle solving and content filling for exploration
Red: The Shore of the Nine Realms of The Scene Design Teaching Book
At the beginning of the series, "fighting, exploring, solving puzzles" was defined as the core mechanism of gameplay, and this design idea has been consistently inherited, in general, the 2018 "God of War" may not have many new elements for today's players in terms of exploration content, but it can be regarded as representing the highest level of the game industry in that year.
The word "industrial" sounds a bit routine, in fact, in addition to the sandbox decryption based on the ancient Norse language, the other exploration content in "God of War" can more or less find some routine déjà vu, such as the ability to unlock the switch similar to "Galaxy City", and climbing up and down frequently in "Uncharted Seas" and "Tomb Raider". These "routines" have been widely used as a mature level flow design paradigm in many later games, and God of War does have a very delicate completion of these contents, but that's about it.
The real highlight is the design of the scene: whether it is the overlooking mountains from the top of the mountain, or the Nine Realms coast that connects everything under the protection of the world's snakes, it reflects the excellent performance of God of War under the design of the scene, especially considering that this is designed under the very limited functional limitations of the PS4 (of course, the version on the PS5 and high-end PC can largely make up for the lack of image processing capabilities in the past), and it is perhaps not too much to call it a miracle of video games.
But even more amazing than the technical ability is the imagination: the bridge on the shores of the Nine Realms is like a clock wheel, it can lead to the worlds, everything is centered on the "control room" as the core, and the amazing point is that this "control room" even has an "anti-city" inverted version, and the game's portrayal of each world is also impressive, although the only one who really makes the "big" map is Helheim.
In the Coast of the Nine Realms, there are a large number of explorable locations, this area can be regarded as a small "sandbox", although these are not necessary to explore the content, there is no main line (or even branch) content to connect, but in the degree of design sophistication is absolutely no hasty, take a location "Light Elf Graveyard" as an example, which from the hidden content (rift), rune treasure chest, puzzle content, terrain design and other aspects are remarkable.
In these explorations, "ringing the bell" or smashing the rune treasure chest of the jar may be some (challenging) annoying content - in my PS4 brush God of War, there were some places to find the mentality explosion (it is easy to open the eyes, just under the eyelids), but now in the PC second brush is probably because of psychological expectations, plus the location of many runes is probably still impressive, the relative experience is still very good.
It is worth mentioning that this kind of secret room sealed with crystals, originally using the handle to find the connection point is actually somewhat difficult (knocking slowly, before knocking on the reply), but it is relatively easy to use the mouse, which is also a rare "superiority" embodiment of the PC version in addition to visual effects.
Black: It's not that big
As with the content of the battle, the capacity of the new God of War is also a bit disappointing in terms of the size of the explorable map - the Nine Realms Coast is almost a full-score map, but the surrounding areas are actually only a few areas. The otherworld that the bridge leads to is either impassable or small, and if there is a "scene reuse" in a future sequel, hopefully there will be a larger scale of explorable scenes.
Optimization: People's joys and sorrows are not connected
Red: 99% of people enjoy god-level optimization
I've had a lot of lucky moments before, that is, the general statement that the optimization is very scummy, and I didn't have any problems in the game of not going in and out, but this time it was finally my turn to "pay off the debt":
Black: But I'm that 1%
The main problem is probably that the GPU can not be pulled full of it - 2K full height, the GPU still obviously has the remaining strength of the case of the frame rate is not ideal, memory and CPU is directly take off, my 16GDDR4 memory and 9600KF CPU is indeed a few years ago configuration, but also significantly higher than the official configuration requirements, after updating the 511 version of the driver after the flashback problem greatly alleviated (it seems that it did not flash back), but the GPU running dissatisfaction with the situation is still the same, if it is the CPU bottleneck, Then before playing FF7RE is able to pull the GPU full with little CPU usage, and maintain a full high quality 120 frames in most occasions...
Conclusion: One of the Greatest Masterpieces of the PS4 Era
Overall, God of War is one of the highest masterpieces of the PS4 era. For a mature series that has been "finished", it is not easy to make changes and climb another peak, but "God of War" achieves this through a human perspective and a growth journey that touches the soul: Kratos may be the hardest iron, the coldest ice, many years later he has long been introverted and mature as a human being, but the journey with Atreus, although not long but ups and downs, fully shows the growth of father and son, and then from a unique perspective, in an introverted and gentle way, More rely on the details of character action, expression and body language to express the flow and transformation of emotions, and realize the sublimation of narrative style. At the game's gameplay level, the peak level of the game industry led in 2018 is still outdated today, and the scene design such as the Nine Realms Coast, the high "width" battle system to achieve the game fun that can be shared by all types of players, and the high level presented by the soundtrack make this game still stand on the top of today's video game industry at the gameplay level, whether you have experienced this story on PS4 before, Reliving this journey now will be a wonderful experience.